Ep45 Transcript: Ways to Monetize your Content – Quick Fix Friday

Andrea Vahl: Are you a content creator and you want to make a little bit more money from your content? Or are you thinking about starting a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, and aren’t sure how to actually monetize that? Then listen in to today’s Quick Fix Friday, where I talk about how to monetize your content.

Intro: Hello Dreamers. Welcome to the Late Starters Club, giving you the inspiration mindset and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond. Remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

Andrea Vahl: First of all, what does that even mean? Monetize your content.

I am going to turn this blog post into money.

You may have heard that before, and what I’m here to share with you is some different strategies that you can think about if you are setting up a new content marketing program or if you have an existing program where you would like to make more money from it.

There are basically three main types of monetization strategies.

One is to create your own product or service and use the content as the draw to let people know about that product or service. I’ll explain more about that in a bit.

Number two is to use affiliate programs to advertise or showcase someone else’s product or service, and you get a commission if someone were to buy that product or service with your special link.

Number three is sponsored content, and what I mean by that is either ad placement that is within your blog, your podcast, your videos. And that’s basically a payment you get based on views sometimes, or based on the volume you have of listeners, for example. And that doesn’t depend on someone actually buying that product. It’s just add placement on your content.

So we’ll dive a little bit deeper into all three of these strategies, and I’ll give you some examples.

So let’s first talk about creating your own product or service to sell. Now, this is actually my favorite way to create income, and I think it’s typically the most successful. I know there’s a lot of talk out there about affiliate sales or getting ad sense or things like that, but I think you really stand to make some of the biggest money from your own products or services, and you have more control over those. So you can do anything from, create an ebook, create a series of training videos, a program or course that people would go through online. Maybe it’s even consulting or one-on-one services that you’re selling, but you’re just using your content to draw people in to let them know about you. Maybe you get better ranking on Google so that people can find you easier. Then they get to know and trust you through your content and either hire you or buy your product.

I’m actually going to include getting donations in this umbrella because in a sense that is getting people to buy something from you, for creating that content. But you can use something like Patreon to do that.

Now let’s dive into affiliate products. Using affiliate programs can involve a lot of different possible options. So for example, you could be an affiliate of Amazon, and in episode 43, I talked to Jim Fuse, who was an Amazon influencer. And so what he was doing was creating videos that people would then buy the product that he was showcasing, and he would get an affiliate income from that.

You don’t have to be an Amazon influencer in order to get commissions from Amazon. You can just sign up as an Amazon affiliate. And give links to products that are on Amazon after maybe reviewing them or talking about them. So for example, I do that kind of thing with my microphone stand that I have here and the microphone with different products that I’m using in my business that I then showcase in blog posts or eBooks. But Jim said, becoming an Amazon influencer can be a great way to get a little bit more visibility since Amazon is pushing those videos out in a bigger way, and it gives you a chance to make commissions even when you aren’t necessarily driving that audience to that video.

Other types of affiliate options come from different affiliate sites where you can sign up as an affiliate and then see all the products that are available to promote and then use a special tracking link to put that in your content. And then if someone were to buy a product from that link, you would then get a small commission.

There are sites like Commission Junction and Share-a-Sale that list a lot of d. Products and programs that are available for affiliate income, but there are also private programs that allow for affiliate commissions. For example, when I open up some of my programs around advertising, I do allow people to promote those with a special link. And then they get a commission if someone buys that product from their link. There’s lots of other people who do sell online training and courses who offer affiliate commissions as well.

So the third type of monetization strategy is sponsored content or getting sponsors. So sponsored content doesn’t depend on people buying it. It just basically depends on how many visitors you have and how many times ads get seen. So for example, if you decide to put ads on your website with something like Google AdSense or maybe a product like Out Brain that will show ads on your content. But you probably want to have a really high traffic amount in order to make those ads profitable for you.

You can also do things like monetizing your YouTube channel with ads. So for example, once you hit a certain threshold in terms of subscribers and watch time, YouTube will allow you to generate income from the ads that are already being shown on your videos. So now you get to participate and make some money from that.

Sponsored content may also be someone approaching you to be an actual sponsor, either on your blog with a link or a mention, for example, or in your email list or run and ad on your podcast.

So on this podcast, I’m going to be taking sponsors. So if you would like to reach this audience and you’re listening and want to become a sponsor, please definitely contact me at latestartersclub.com.

The nice thing about sponsored content, like I mentioned, is. It doesn’t depend on someone actually making a sale. It’s based on the number of listeners you have, the number of subscribers you have, the number of website hits you have, and other things that people are interested in as far as getting in front of your audience.

If you are looking at creating new content or starting a blog or starting a podcast, I highly suggest you start to think about the type of monetization strategies you are going to have and use a variety of them be because why not make extra income in lots of different ways?

Outro: Hope that was helpful, and make sure you grab the free guide Top Tools for Late Starters on the website at latestartersclub.com and let’s turn dreaming into doing