Welcome to How to Make Money as a Content Creator, the course that covers everything you need to start earning money online doing what you love. I’m James Caran, content creator at WayAway and Travelpayouts.
As a content creator, you’ve spent countless hours setting business goals, getting ideas and planning your content, as well as researching how to get in front of your audience. So how can you make money off of those efforts? In this Module, we’ll introduce you to the most popular “money-making strategies” to monetize your digital content. We have some great suggestions and resources – so let’s get to it!
Today, we’ll cover 5 of the most effective ways to make money online with your original content.
At this point, you’ve put in the hard work creating content that:
So what are some ways that you can start making money to show a return on your investment? Let’s get to it with our first money-making strategy! Join an advertising network. An advertising network is a platform that connects businesses wanting to advertise their offers with digital creators looking to host ads on their content to earn money off of visitor clicks and views!
Our first ad network recommendation is Google AdSense. The beauty of Google AdSense is that getting started is simple, and free! Just sign up, copy and paste an “ad code” into your articles, and wait for approval from the platform. Once you get the approval, Google Ads will appear when users visit your page. Every time someone clicks on your ad, Google will pay you!
Your earning potential depends on how many visitors you have. But you can use the AdSense revenue calculator to see how much you could earn with their network, so we’ve added it to our resources section. And be sure to check out some of our tips from Module 3 about how to get more traffic to your content!
Before starting out with any ad network, you should know your average number of visitors per month, or average monthly traffic. It’s a good idea to connect your website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console, so you can start tracking those important numbers! For more detailed information about the earning potential of the network, I recommend bookmarking some of the links we’ve included in our resources section.
Our second option for Ad networks for beginners is Mediavine. Mediavine takes AdSense to the next level by partnering with companies outside of the Google Ads Network. This increases your earning power because there’s a wider variety of ads that can be placed on your page!
There are some requirements you need to meet in order to qualify for the network. These requirements include good standing with Google AdSense, around 60,000 page views per month according to data taken from Google Analytics, and high quality, engaging content. (which, if you followed our tips in Module 2, you already have!) Another thing is that Mediavine is run by a team that supports you through your journey. So if you’re looking for customer support and a bigger network — Mediavine is a great option.
Okay, onto our 2nd strategy for making money online with your content. Selling your digital products! Some popular digital offers to sell are: e-books, online courses, and downloadable templates. Let’s brainstorm some ideas together.
This is an awesome money-making strategy as most processes can be automated online, which makes it a very lucrative source of passive income, with no need for inventory to get started!
Our 3rd money-making strategy is influencer marketing! What’s an influencer? They’re people who usually have a large following and a lot of authority in their niche, leveraging their popularity to promote brands! Once you start creating content and building an active, loyal audience – you can start earning a decent income with influencer marketing. Starting out as a “micro” influencer means you may not have a huge following at first. But having an active, regular stream of visitors is most important for beginners!
Becoming an influencer has huge earning potential since people trust word-of-mouth recommendations over traditional marketing methods nowadays. Brands love working with influencers because of this very reason!
The best way to get started is to “up” your networking game. Start conversations with different influencers and see how you can connect.
There are a ton of influencer marketplaces where brands and influencers meet – a few examples are Intellifluence.com and creator.co. Check out these marketplaces along with the influencer pitch templates in our resources section. Use these when reaching out to brands about product endorsements, direct ads, branded campaigns, and sponsored reviews.
Let’s say you’re working in the travel niche – customize those template pitches to connect with: airlines, hotels, and local establishments. Share your content with them and ask if they’d be willing to swap a free night, flight, or meal for an honest review on your growing platform!
Let’s take a quick look at another way to monetize your content — selling guest blog spots. Remember we discussed in module 3 that guest blogging is one of the proven ways to rank higher in search results and build your traffic? Once you’ve built authority in your niche and steady traffic to your content, you can start charging guest bloggers who want to publish content on your website.
Our last and final money-making strategy for today is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a popular marketing strategy that allows you to earn a commission for marketing a brand’s products or services. As an affiliate partner, you get unique affiliate links and earn money when someone clicks on them and then makes a purchase or visits a brand’s website!
So what happens when you receive an affiliate link? Let’s say you’re a travel blogger and partner with a brand that offers a 10% commission rate for any sales you make. You write a post about the 5 top hotels in Las Vegas and post your unique affiliate links to the brand’s website where you can book the hotels. When someone clicks on your link and books a hotel for $1000, you will receive $100! It’s a win-win!
If you want to do affiliate marketing, you can either join a direct program with companies like Amazon Associates and Booking.com or join affiliate platforms, like Travelpayouts.com.
If you want to partner with several programs, it can be a pain to manually apply to each one separately. You don’t have to worry about this with a partnership platform like Travelpayouts! With Travelpayouts you can apply to different programs and choose from 100 + leading travel brands to partner with in just a few clicks! Not only that, but you can easily manage everything from a single dashboard!
We’ll dive more into monetizing your content with Travelpayouts in our next lesson, but for now, let’s do a quick recap.
The 5 most effective ways to start monetizing your online content are:
In the next lesson, we will show you how to use Travelpayouts to monetize your content! Learn everything you need about making money on our travel partnership platform, Travelpayouts.
