17 Different Ways That Influencers Can Monetize Their Content

One of the main reasons that people get started influencing is because they want to add another stream of revenue to their lives. For many, influencing starts as a side project while they’re still working some type of full or part-time job. This is a smart move because if you only have one source of income, you can be in trouble if it gets cut off.

We think that this same logic should apply to your influencing business as well. In fact, most influencers who are making the big bucks rely on 3-4 different streams of income. The most common way to make money as an influencer is to land a brand deal. This is where a brand pays you to promote their products/services. However, landing a brand deal can be difficult and time-consuming.

Luckily, there are tons of other ways that you can make money using your skills as an influencer. To help identify a few, we’ve put together this list…

Choosing the right method for you

Before we jump into the different options you have for monetization, we want to say that it’s important to choose the right method for you. By this, we mean that you should take a hard look at your skillset and audience and choose the method that you think would work best for you. Once you’ve chosen a method start running in that direction!

It’s recommended to have multiple revenue streams, however, to start, we’d focus on getting really good at just one. Once you have consistent revenue coming in, you can build off of that.

#17 – Advertising (YouTube and blogs only)

Making money through advertising is only possible for Youtubers and bloggers. That’s because no other social platforms allow you to run and profit from your own ads.

The most common method for making money off of ads on your site is with Google AdSense. For free, Google will put ads on your blog and allow you to profit every time someone clicks on one of them.

For YouTubers, you have the ability to profit off of the ads that play before your videos. The amount of money that you can earn from this varies but is roughly $18 per 1,000 views ($.01-$.03 per view). This number depends on how many people actually click on the video.

It’s worth noting that in order to get paid from YouTube, you need to reach a minimum of a $100 balance (approximately 20,000 views). YouTube (owned by Google) also keeps 45% of all Adsense revenue and the other 55% is paid out to creators.

If you have a blog that’s getting serious web traffic, Mediavine, Adthrive, and Monumetric are good options for professional ad management.

#16 Affiliate marketing

This is when influencers refer other companies’ products to their viewers. Generally, the referrer gets 5%-20% of any referral sales that they generate. If this sounds like it’d be of interest, a few places you can get started are:

Rakuten
CJ Affiliate
Clickbank – An affiliate platform with a tier-based commission that’s open to everyone.
RewardStyle – An invitation-only fashion and lifestyle influencer network that offers 20% commissions.
Amazon Associates – A popular option that pays out a 10% commission.

This is a good place to start for most influencers because it can be incorporated very easily. For example, if you’re already creating content regularly, you can sign up with one of the services above and select products that would be relevant to your audience. From there you just include the backlinks in your posts and make a commission off of each sale.

#15 Create your own digital courses

Creating your own digital products is another good place to start since most influencers are already so successful with content creation. This method involves a lot of upfront work but will allow you to profit multiple times from something that you create once.

Here are a few ideas of digital products that you could create:

Create and sell a course for your followers designed around your niche. This should help them achieve a skill that you already have.
Create a step by step course helps other people achieve something that you’ve achieved.
Think about something that would be valuable for your followers and create that.

The number of digital products that you can create is only limited by your imagination. It’s also a good place to start because it’s very easy to post your courses and collect payments online.

Check out Udemy or Skillshare for places to post online courses.

#14 Manage the social profiles for companies

You’d be surprised how many companies are still struggling with their social pages and would be willing to pay someone to handle it for them. Essentially, you could act as a consultant and handle a brand’s posting and content creation.

The best types of companies to approach would be small to intermediate-sized brands who sell a product to consumers. The key is to find small companies who are big enough that they’d be willing to pay someone to run their pages.

Here are a few ways to find good companies to work for:

Scroll through Instagram and find pages with low followers or content that could be improved.
Head to job posting sites like Glassdoor, Monster.com, or Indeed and run a search for “social media” and see what pops up.
DM/email brands that you’re already a consumer for to see if they’re interested.

The best part is that you already have a portfolio of work that you can show them…your own social pages! If you’ve been successful in building up your own pages then that’s all the ammo you need.

While this isn’t directly related to your own influencing business, it’s a good way to use the skills that you’ve gained from influencing to start making cash.

NOTE: Try to avoid the feeling that you might not be qualified for this. As an influencer, you post on social media are have been working on your own pages for hours on end. Trust us, you’re definitely qualified.

#13 Merchandising (physical products)

This is one of our favorite methods because it’s so easy. Instead of selling other people’s products to your followers, just sell your own. You can create your own logo, T-shirts, water bottles, or whatever you can think of.

The process to make products is actually much easier than you might think. Take advantage of these services to have products created and shipped for you:

These services are known as “print-on-demand” and are a great method for creating a revenue stream almost out of thin air! For best results, create products around one of your catchphrases from your social pages.

We hope that you’ve found this article valuable when it comes to learning a few ways that you can monetize your content as an influencer.

Interested in reading the other 12 methods to monetize your content as an influencer?