Monetize Your Content: From Content Creator to Content Entrepreneur

[00:00:00] The Women Conquer business show is an educational how-to women in business podcast. That features stories, marketing news and real life experiences from fun and friendly hosts. Jen McFarland and Shelley

[00:00:13] Carney. Join us as we dive

[00:00:15] into the details. So you can slay marketing, overwhelm, streamline processes

[00:00:20] and amplify your impact.

[00:00:22] You'll learn strategies and tactics, leadership skills, and practical advice from successful women entrepreneurs to help you grow, nurture, and sustain your business.

[00:00:38] Whoa. Hey, welcome to Women Conquer Business. I'm Jen McFarland. We are talking today, Shelley Carney and I are talking today about how to monetize your content. From content creator to content entrepreneur being a content entrepreneur drives the creator economy. We have, we've been reading all of these studies about how much money content creators make, what it is that they do all the time.

[00:01:00] And we think it's important to really talk about how a creator economy helps your audience helps you build your business. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna explore the ways you move from having a hobby to a jobby, to becoming a business owner while creating the content that you love.

[00:01:17] So we'll talk about preparing mentally, emotionally, and physically to become a digital CEO and how to build a money making machine. This is exciting. think I'm just gonna listen.

[00:01:28] I'm just gonna listen. I wanna money making machine, how

[00:01:31] do I do it? How do I do it? How do I do it? No, I have, and Shelley knows I've monetized.

[00:01:35] For a long time. And so this is exciting to really share some of what I know, listen to what Shelley knows and help you along the way.

[00:01:43] That's right. And we're excited to share this and if you also have some great ideas for things that you've done, we hope that you'll share that with us.

[00:01:51] Yeah. Let us know in the chat. If you are watching today, live, if you're listening please send us an email. Reach out to us, let us know how you're doing [00:02:00] it. Or if we miss something like, there's all kinds of ways of doing this. There's no one right way. That's right. We're gonna share what we know and what we've learned.

[00:02:07] What's up over there in New Mexico?

[00:02:09] Hey, I'm home in New Mexico and I'm very happy to be home with my husband and with Toby, once again, I'm in the studio. So I have sounds yay. And all the bells and whistles, which I love. So that means I can get back to work on my course, recording the videos, keeping them short and focused.

[00:02:32] The problem with livecast life YouTube series that we have is each one is about an hour long, and nobody wants to sit through 18, 19 hours of content to pull out the best pieces. So I'm gonna do that. For you. You're welcome. And if you're interested in learning more about all this live streaming stuff, and how does this work and how do I do a podcast that is video first?

[00:02:56] And because that is now a really big thing. So I'll be talking all about that in this course and to

[00:03:02] it, you know why video first is such a big deal? There's a lot of reasons people love video, but it's also that they've found that audiograms don't work.

[00:03:09] Why is that? Why don't people love my audiograms?

[00:03:12] They're so cool. I worked hard

[00:03:14] on them. They're not really interactive, think about it. It's like, why would I look at a picture with like words like scrolling? I don't know. Anyway it's so weird. I think you sent me that link too. Which one? The audiogram one.

[00:03:28] Oh, I don't know. Or no I love my audiograms, but they are work and.

[00:03:33] It's just so much easier just to show up, live and

[00:03:35] Do a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Even though Descript makes it a little easier. That's why I use lately to chop up the videos and share 'em on social media because people like to see videos. They like to do that. So that's my chopping up videos sound.

[00:03:53] So so I was on the Tactus Media Podcast with Bryan [00:04:00] Cargill. We had a really great time. It was one of the first times I've talked about the Strategic Marketing Membership out in the wild. And it was like right as I had turned on the website and it was just so cool to talk. We talked about streamlining your marketing processes and it's on both YouTube and on Spotify and all the regular podcast places, but it was just really neat to talk about the Strategic Marketing Membership and why I'm so passionate about like you said, short courses that help people just get through the decision making that they have to do without having.

[00:04:30] Pour over 20 hours of content and then be like yeah, no, I don't wanna do that.

[00:04:34] . Yeah. And they can make that decision so much quicker and they can modify it to their own needs and that's so helpful. Yeah. And you're gonna put that link in the description for everybody.

[00:04:44] I put that in the oh, should I put it as a comment?

[00:04:47] Can people,

[00:04:48] you can certainly do that. Let me do that. Oh my goodness. Put it in there, but yeah.

[00:04:54] Yeah, it is a so we have. It's on YouTube. And again, I don't have the link in front of me for, Spotify, you can you can certainly, sorry, my mom's on my like, list. So she just called me in the middle of this.

[00:05:08] I'm like, I thought I do not disturb on, but,

[00:05:11] but she's allowed in

[00:05:13] anytime she's allowed in anytime. ,

[00:05:15] isn't that funny? Our family always seem to call us right in the

[00:05:17] middle of a live show. I know. It's fun.

[00:05:19] If you people would watch our live show you'd know when you were live

[00:05:22] yeah, obviously mom, you're not on there.

[00:05:24] So so if you wanna learn more about the Strategic Marketing Membership, head over to wcb.community or take the time to watch this interview with Bryan Cargill at Tactus Media, he does all kinds of cool stuff with the video as well. He's a local person that I've met in several different groups and he's just a really cool guy.

[00:05:42] Let's talk about breaking news.

[00:05:45] Let's do it. All right.

[00:05:48] So Google who is not into privacy. They're going through all sorts of lawsuits in Europe where, they have GDPR, they have all these privacy [00:06:00] laws and Google is always just kinda Eh, and even though they have privacy laws in California and they're out of California, I think they're still like, eh, whatever we don't care.

[00:06:09] So now in the wake of the Dobbs decision by the Supreme court on abortion, Everybody was saying what's Google gonna do. People are gonna be able to track where they've gone. That gets sent, shared with data brokers. People are gonna know where women are going. If they're gonna, if they're going to abortion clinics or even counselors or anything.

[00:06:27] Now Google has said they're gonna auto delete location. If it was, if it's in a quote sensitive place, . I don't believe them. A lot of people don't believe them. I have a link to an article about it from my friends over at nearmedia.co. And it's an interesting thing. So I talk a lot about privacy.

[00:06:47] I've said before that I don't have. Alexa and all kinds of things in my house. And it's because I worked in data privacy so it's not just some fly by night. Jen's crazy conspiracy theory kind of thing. It's because I know how easy it is to track information and get the information and sell it to other people.

[00:07:05] So people know about it. And I personally don't believe Google because I've been following all of these court cases. Where they're just kinda eh, we'll pay the fine. So if you wanna learn more about Google auto tracking your location and this and that they wanna auto delete it, or they're saying that auto-delete it head over to nearmedia.co.

[00:07:26] We will also put the link in the show notes as I think it's a pretty. Interesting read. And I always like to support David Mim and his partners over there. They do a lot of really great stuff. As some of, David is the architect of the prosper Portland, inclusive business resource networks pro digital marketing program.

[00:07:46] I've worked with David for a long time. He's a trusted friend. So whatever they say over there for the most part is just like right. Aligned with my own views. When it comes to marketing. So that's an interesting thing. There's also [00:08:00] an interesting tidbit in that article about Shopify and how they're trying to really conquer more of the consumer market.

[00:08:08] They've done really well with B2B. If you have like ShopPay and some, they have whole host of apps now with Shopify. That they're trying to break more into the consumer market. I got the shop pay app once. Cause I wanted to try, I bought my husband a guitar and I wanted to know when the guitar was coming.

[00:08:23] And then I realized that it would tell me when, whenever I ordered from a Shopify website, which I'm not always paying attention to that, it would tell me when all of those orders would come. And so it's a really cool app. And so they have a whole bunch of apps and that's also in that article which is a pretty interesting read overall.

[00:08:40] The other tidbit the other form of breaking news that I have is 20, 22 is the year of relationship marketing. Now I've been teaching relationship marketing for a long time. I've talked about it for a really long time because I've followed people. That also talk about relationship marketing for a long time.

[00:09:00] So the quote from the article that I think is really intriguing is as a marketer treating, using personalization is not something that you can sleep on anymore. Not after COVID people want to have a voice, they want to be recognized and they want to be given recognition for their allegiance and loyalty to brands.

[00:09:18] So it means that you can't just. Automate your marketing. You can't automate every, your personalization you have to really work harder to make sure that your customers. Special and heard and needed. So that's what this means. In terms of relationship marketing. Now I'm in Portland, Oregon. I was teaching to a group even last night and talking about mark Schaefer, who says, the most human company wins.

[00:09:46] There are a lot of people that talk about this in Portland, this is the only way to do business relationship marketing is how we teach, how I teach marketing 100% of the time, because Portland is the biggest small [00:10:00] town I've ever lived in. Everybody seems to know everybody.

[00:10:02] If you start, messing everything up, then, word gets out and it's really hard. I think that's the case in a lot of communities, but in Portland we have so many small businesses. We don't have a ton of fortune 500 companies until you may, and even in Oregon in general. So it's run on small business, which is built on relationships.

[00:10:21] And so when I see this, I'm like certainly 20, 22 is the year of relationship marketing given COVID and COVID, changed the way that we shop. But I would argue that for small businesses, it's been the year of relationship marketing forever. it's just how you do marketing. Is you talk about what's going on.

[00:10:41] You help people on a one-to-one basis. Marketing is also tied to your customer service efforts and different things like that. So I don't, I, I think this article is really interesting. It's in marketingtechnews.net, and we'll put that also in the chat and also in the show notes. It's an interesting read.

[00:11:02] And I would say that every year is the year of relationship marketing. In my opinion,

[00:11:08] well, I was listening to a podcast and. They were making a great point that. Is, there's a thing. There's a trend coming up and it's especially prevalent in business travel that the these different companies, like for instance hotels and rental cars and things like that they're getting to where they're like seeing how much they can get away with not giving you anymore and still charging you the same amount.

[00:11:36] Yeah. Not cleaning your. If, unless you specifically requested. Toby just stayed in a hotel on his trip to Florida. And they told him they would clean the room every three days if he requested it. And he said can I request it more often? I wanted every day. And they're like, oh okay. It's like you, you have to beg for the things that they used to just be part of the customer experience.

[00:11:59] So they're [00:12:00] just taking things. Airlines. Yeah. Have those clubs. They're limiting the amount of time that you can spend in that club now. Because families have been starting to come in and use the resources that they're being offered and they're staying in there taking away business traveler basically, but they've just made this rule.

[00:12:17] Clubs this much time, then you're out. And they're just starting this, eating away at all of the customer experience and it's, it's, and they're seeing how much they can get away with without, you complaining and you quitting on them and there's other places like print media instead.

[00:12:34] We're not able to send you a magazine anymore because of supply chain issues. So we're just gonna change it over to an electronic magazine and that, and we're gonna charge you the same amount and that's gonna be okay.

[00:12:47] And see, this is where it's, you can take advantage of the fact that you're small and because this is a small business show you have the ability as long as it's within your margins. And you have the ability to make things personal. You have the ability to be very personalized in your marketing.

[00:13:07] It may take a little longer sometimes to provide that extra customer service. But one of the things that we found during COVID is. Not a lot of people feel loyalty anymore. And I think it's because of what you just described. why would I feel loyalty? Why would I go back to the hotel? That's I'm only gonna clean the room if I don't know if you whine about it, if you whine about it if you've complain, we don't even wanna come in every three days, Uhhuh

[00:13:34] Yeah. But they're gonna charge the same and that's

[00:13:38] right, so

[00:13:41] it's, let's get on it. Yeah. So it's crazy. I, I don't get it. But as a small business, you have the ability to. Give people something a little extra, you have the ability to maintain your same level of services. If not increase them in little ways that are low cost [00:14:00] and mean the world to your customers.

[00:14:01] And

[00:14:01] you might see places like this where you can. Jump into that empty space, oh people aren't happy with their hotels. Maybe I can do an Airbnb that's cleaned every day or whatever it is. How can I take advantage of these big companies not offering the full customer experience anymore?

[00:14:19] Can I supplement that customer experience? Can that be a business

[00:14:22] for me? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Did you have anything under breaking news? Are you ready to do the training?

[00:14:29] Move into it. Are you ready? Move into it. Here we go. I'm ready. we have some slides. Let's do our slides here. We. Monetize your content from content creator to content entrepreneur.

[00:14:46] And that's a differentiation, isn't it. It's going from a hobby to a jobby, to a business. So what is a hobby? A hobby is. Something that's fun. You like to play in your hobby and you do not expect to make money from it. Often you expect to put money into it. We spend money on our hobbies. If our hobby is knitting, we go out and we buy the yarn.

[00:15:11] We buy the patterns and we watch the YouTube videos and we make art knitting projects. And we don't expect to make money from that. but someday we might have some things that we would sell on Etsy. And that might be a jobby because we are maybe making. Even amount we're spending as much as we're making or, we're processing through that from a hobby to a jobby and selling some of our items, our crafts.

[00:15:36] And then we say, you know what? I really wanna make a business that makes money makes more money than I'm spending. And actually. Gives me money to spend on other things. Now it's a business now I care now it's serious. From playing to trying to committing. And we go from renting. Like we rent when we are on social [00:16:00] media.

[00:16:00] When we are on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and all of the social media we're renting, we are just testing it out. We're saying, hi everybody, come follow me. Look what I'm doing. And I've got stuff to tell you. That's great. That's a wonderful way to start, but. Those platforms can be taken away. They can change overnight.

[00:16:22] And they often do everybody's like right now, really excited about TikTok that could change. I have a friend who's got over 2 million followers on TikTok, but does he make a living from that? No, he does not. And TikTok is not owned by him, he can't. If they decide to make a change and then we can subscribe, right?

[00:16:41] We can get like applica applications and software programs that we subscribe to that we pay monthly on. And we have a little bit more control then for instance, stream yard we subscribe to stream yard. We pay monthly on it and we have some control there. They listen to us. If we ask for certain things, we say, here's what I need from stream yard to do my.

[00:17:04] To do my content creation and to spread my message, I need these things and they will consider it because you are a subscriber they're making money from you. But when you own something, like when you buy, for instance, SendFox, which we'll be talking about later, you now own that app. And when you have ownership over something like your email list or your website, now you have some control and it's not going to change overnight.

[00:17:31] You can have some dependability within that ownership. You can go from one social platform as a hobby. I'm on YouTube and I'm great. And I love YouTube and that's it because it's a hobby, but when you start going, you know what, maybe I wanna be on YouTube and I wanna be on LinkedIn and I wanna be on Twitter and I wanna have video and I wanna have audio and I wanna have text and I have all these formats and I have all this material, all this content [00:18:00] that would be more of a commitment.

[00:18:02] And it's moving you along. That path towards a branded experience. And the branded experience is just enveloping the customer in you, everything that is you and your world and bringing them into that world. What

[00:18:18] do you think, Jen? I think that's absolutely true. I think that, and it is a process, as, and part of it too, is if you are an entrepreneur and you start creating content are you becoming a content entrepreneur or are you a hobby creator?

[00:18:34] And I went on a journey like this, where I had my consulting business. I started creating content cuz I wanted to, not because I had some big master plan. I don't recommend this necessarily as business tactic. Okay. But when the women conquer business show started, I just thought it would be. And thought I would have a good time and I did, but it was not part of any sort of strategy.

[00:18:58] This was before podcasting was what it is today was just a good thing to do. It seemed fun. And. Then I just realized I really enjoyed it. So it started, I started moving through this cycle that you're talking about all the while, continuing to create, and coach and be a business strategist and marketer at the same time.

[00:19:20] So I started committing slowly to make it a little bit more central to my business. And now, that it's. It's monetized, the money I spend on the podcast is it's it's taken care of because it's, that's why I have all these toys and stuff is because it's paid for by, by the monetization revenue streams that I have for it.

[00:19:44] That's right. That's right.

[00:19:47] So this slide is from the tilt and they talked about the top channels that content creators use to reach their audiences. And of course the number one is social media. And again, that's a really good place to [00:20:00] start, but remember that's rented and you don't have a lot of control over it.

[00:20:04] Then the next one is an email newsletter, so that. Awesome. That's exactly what you wanna get going is getting those people from social media to subscribing to your email newsletter, because now they're on your email list and you can have that one-on-one conversation with them through email.

[00:20:25] The other thing about email versus social media is that it's, before we get onto the blog, the email, when you want somebody to do something like buy something or read some, read something, watch you listen to you. People social media's kind of more to be social, right? So the email newsletter is where people go and expect to have some sort of transaction happen.

[00:20:47] That's why they're letting you into their inbox. That's why they've subscribed. So as a more transactional space, you need to take advantage of that. And if you're not doing it, which as many of I wasn't, when we started doing this show again in. Last winter then, it changes things when you start talking about it and it helps boost things like listeners and reviewers and things like that when you're really sharing what it is that you're doing, because most people don't see what you're doing on social media.

[00:21:15] And I have a really good friend again, he's got more than 2 million followers on TikTok. He's got like close to 10,000, I think around 10,000 on YouTube. And I asked him I'm. Do you have an email list? Do you have a newsletter? No. Why not? I don't really like reading newsletters. I'm like, it's not about you.

[00:21:36] well, and it's also people that really wanna

[00:21:38] hear from you. And it's also to your point, you made earlier about. Algorithms and the rented space and stuff like it could all change and those people could go away. You don't own your followers. So it's not like a space that you own, not that you ever own your followers, but you can't, it's not a list.

[00:21:53] You can't just pick up that list of people and say, now I'm going over here. But people who really wanna engage with you, [00:22:00] people who really wanna learn from you, people who wanna listen to you. They subscribe and then wherever you go, they will continue to follow you. And that's why I tell a lot of people to make sure you're asking people to, to subscribe to.

[00:22:13] Email list on social media and a lot of people don't do it, even though it works. Yeah.

[00:22:18] And part of his issue is that on TikTok because he is on TikTok, he has a lot of young people maybe even, under 18 who are watching him and he's concerned about. Getting them on an email list and then him having this email list of young people that are under 18.

[00:22:34] And I said then you just have to put some kind of a disclaimer because he does that on the rest of his show. He talks about, if you're under 18, if you're gonna send me anything, make sure you get your parents permission and blah, blah, blah, cuz he's always. Really good about that. And I said, just do that again, but you've got to have that email list.

[00:22:50] If you're not, if you don't have any control over your, who's in your, who's in your audience and how you can communicate with them then what have you got?

[00:22:58] Yeah. And and when you look at this is what's so interesting about this graphic. You notice that millennials and gen Z creators they don't use blogs or email newsletters, or even like online events and stuff.

[00:23:10] They have a different approach. But what I don't see is how. How they are capturing like a customer list from, a group of followers from the way that they're doing it. If you teach online or in-person events, you can collect names and email addresses, you know, ways to contact people later.

[00:23:30] If you have a blog on a website that has like a way for people to subscribe. An email newsletter, those kinds of things. You have ways that you can capture people's attention and then people who really like you can continue to follow you. But a lot, from looking at this, it just seems like people are like people in my generation don't email, cuz I've heard that, Gen Z and younger, they don't really do email.

[00:23:53] There has to be some way there has to be some way that you can reach out to people. And so that's the challenge. If [00:24:00] you have a younger customer base is you still have to have some way that you can have your followers engage with you on a platform that you own so that if something happens, you're still gonna be able to reach out to.

[00:24:13] Yeah,

[00:24:14] and I think it's a performer mentality. Performers are used to, working with venues showing up and then whoever's in the audience is who they perform for. But when you become, a performer who has a following who has a fan base, then it's really important to be able to have some kind of a communication going on with your fan base outside of just showing up.

[00:24:39] Yeah.

[00:24:40] I follow all kinds of performers and I get emails from them. How else am I gonna know when they're speaking in my area? So yeah, you have to have a way to communicate with your followers so that they know what's going on.

[00:24:52] That's right. Let's move to the next slide. You also wanna think about multiple revenue streams.

[00:24:57] Now you're not gonna start off with this. , this is something you grow into multiple platforms being in for instance, right now we are on three Facebook pages, one is one LinkedIn page, two YouTube channels, and two Twitter accounts. A lot right now. We are multiple platforms and then. We take this material and we share it out in other places as well.

[00:25:22] I share it on my LinkedIn blog or my newsletter. Jen does the same and she also shares it out as social media posts. And funny thing is we're both in missing letters. So she puts it up there as curated content. And I. End up. Oh, do you sharing it that way? And I'm like, I got credits for it too that way.

[00:25:41] And it's my stuff. So it's pretty cool. Take advantage of the system so funny, right? Multiple platforms, multiple formats. That includes video audio. Text images using all of that medium to attract the attention of people who learn and consume in different ways and then multiple [00:26:00] income opportunities.

[00:26:00] And that's your revenue streams. And we're gonna get more deeply into that. And Jen's gonna share some of her revenue

[00:26:06] streams with us. Yeah, I think that if we could go back to the previous slide if you can do that, when we're talking about multiple platforms, it's important to go, to talk about that.

[00:26:15] So when we were talking about multiple platforms we do social media, we do email marketing, we do a blog on our websites. We I have in the past done online events. I'm looking to launch a few in the coming months. I've done in-person events. I taught last night. to a group of people I teach all the time.

[00:26:35] I have a podcast. There are a few things that I haven't done. But I have been a blogger I've blogged on other people's sites at times. So you have to, when you look at this for like how this works, you have to look at this and be like, oh, that's a lot of work. Or if you're like, oh, this looks interesting.

[00:26:50] That's maybe a hint that you're gonna move into being more of a creator entrepreneur. And you also have to look at this as This is what it looks like when you start to go and look at multiple channels and multiple different streams. Anyway, sorry, not to back this up a slide but this is really fundamentally what we're talking about.

[00:27:08] And you can

[00:27:08] see print media, and I count that as also having books available on Amazon for people to buy. Yeah. Can have a grab my book here. They can have a book in their hands that you wrote, and you can take this when you go to teach in person and speak at conferences and you can sell these in the back of the room, and you can, see, I am an author, I wrote this and you have a lot of authority because of that.

[00:27:32] And it sets you up that content entrepreneur,

[00:27:35] it certainly gives you a lot of gravitas to, to stand there and say, I've done this, I've taken all of my thoughts about a certain topic and put them out there and that's another way of doing it, not just for the sales that you can make, but it shows commitment for what you're doing when you take the time to write a book.

[00:27:51] That's right. All of which is to say you have so many options when it comes to revenue streams, when it comes to [00:28:00] what these channels look like for you that you don't need to really feel limited at all. Cause we're not even talking about web three is a whole separate thing.

[00:28:08] Like where you can go out and own your channels and have NFTs and all kinds of stuff. That's a whole separate thing. So there's like a whole. Range of the quote unquote right way to do it. And that's what you really have to think about is where are your people, how am I gonna do it?

[00:28:23] How am I gonna create a place that I own?

[00:28:25] That's right, and these bubbles that we're showing right now we've talked about this Jen and I both Our biggest bubble is the consulting and coaching . And then second biggest is the online courses and digital products, which is a great revenue stream, but it takes time to build those.

[00:28:42] And but once they're up and running, then you can just, keep that going and bringing in more money. And yeah. What are some of your other big revenue streams?

[00:28:50] So I would say that, it's so funny to look at these bubbles. I actually moved the, moved it bigger. So it's in front of me so I can I can look at it, because certainly when I've run live events or online events, those were mostly to drive people into coaching and consulting.

[00:29:05] It wasn't so much to have them go into anything else. I'm assuming that books are one of your big bubbles, one of my big ones, and we were trying to, it was so funny before the show, we were trying to figure out where it fits into this. Bubble structure. For those of you who are listening, it's a list with percentages and we'll put this in the show notes of things like paid content versus sponsored content donations, coaches, and consulting, barters, memberships, books, advertising.

[00:29:34] There's so many different options on here in terms of how you can monetize your content. And then what they've done is the size of the bubble is based on, how big. That little slice of the pie is among the, I believe 1000 content creators or content entrepreneurs that they interviewed for this.

[00:29:50] And the two biggest bubbles are consulting and coaching. What I have, and we decided, I believe that it was a paid content subscription, but what it, what I [00:30:00] have that has grown as time went on is it's a subscription that I don't run. so part of me looks at it is since it's not something I own, it could go away at any time.

[00:30:13] And I view it like that. So I don't use it as a, even though it is five figures, I don't necessarily view it as something that is central to my business. Cause I also feel like it could go away. I love that I have it. And because I don't own that company, it's not something that I.

[00:30:32] Just, latch my whole business onto, so the way it works and this is the way that it works. I think a lot with content creators is you have to know when to say no. And you have to know when to say yes. So when I started my podcast, I was approached by a company. That wanted to repurpose shows.

[00:30:50] And this was like four years ago and I thought, why not? I'll take a flyer on this. So if you create content that appeals, so these are corporate. These are corporate people that use them as lessons. And it's the baseline for what we've created over the Strategic Marketing Membership, which is these are short 20 minute or less audio lessons that I've created and it's sold on a whole other platform.

[00:31:14] That people pay a lot of money for their corporate their corporations and their employees to learn. And then I've taken them because it's non exclusive. And I still own the content and I've placed them on the Strategic Marketing Membership to help small business owners, because it translates very well into both environments.

[00:31:32] But before that content subscription that I don't own, I get 12% of every listen and. I don't unfortunately have all the stats, so I don't know what's most popular or anything like that, but I make a tidy sum off of content that somebody else is advertising. Somebody else is running. And it's a small bubble on this tilt thing, because I think it's very unusual.

[00:31:57] But what I would say is if you are in [00:32:00] like teaching and you do how to, which is a lot of what I do. Or you have some content that's really unique. Sometimes you just have to find if there's another place that it could be, that it could be sold. So this is completely like when people talk about passive income this is about the most passive income that it could possibly be.

[00:32:20] I don't have to market it. All I had to do was edit it to their specifications way back years ago. And. The amount of money I make from it continues to grow because the longer it's there, the more people seem to find it and listen to it on this other platform. So it doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be a lot of work.

[00:32:40] It just means you have to find the thing that makes the most sense for what it is that you're creating. So I would say that for me. Yeah. Certainly coaching and consulting is my biggest, output from all the creative work that I do. I also get speaker fees. And then, like I said, I also have this paid content subscription on a platform.

[00:33:00] I don't own that I'm also building my own platform. , that'll be a membership, which is another one on here. One of the things that I think is really interesting. So one of the marketers that I follow a lot, his name is mark Schaefer. He has a social, I believe it's a social token that you can get. And one of, part of my pushback on, NFTs and crypto and everything is that it's really bad for the environment.

[00:33:24] So he found a place where it's not bad for the environment and I was like now I can't, I don't have that. I no longer have that complaint. But so I, it's interesting that as much as I see NFTs and social tokens and crypto web three, that I see all of this talked about everywhere. They are actually a very tiny portion of how people.

[00:33:47] Monetize their content, at least at this time. The interesting thing about what the tilt said is that content creators need to be more aware of it. And I would agree with that. Anyway, it's just really interesting to me. I think you have to do more than one of these [00:34:00] to be successful. What do you think?

[00:34:02] Oh, absolutely. Multiple revenue streams are going to support you. When one is not working one is, Being in affected by what's going on in the world and say, COVID is going on in the world. And suddenly you can't do speaking in person anymore. So something else needs to take over your online events needs to take over.

[00:34:19] You need to have those multiple streams so that you can. Be more resilient and pivot and, adapt as needed so that you're always bringing in income. And you'll find those that work best for you that are more reliable or more predictable, such as a membership. Once you've built that you might have a monthly.

[00:34:40] Amount that you can pretty much depend upon and then you'll know, okay, here's my budget. And now I know how much I can spend on advertising and things of that nature. So it's a place that you have to get to. It takes some time but it is something that you can look forward to doing.

[00:34:57] So what are the biggest ones for you?

[00:34:58] You have different monetization than I do because you have a following on. I've noticed now that Twitter has super followers, so they're doing the same thing now where you can have, you can super follow someone on Twitter. My friend Bridget is doing this Bridget Willard where you can be a super follower and paid

[00:35:15] three bucks a month and get exclusive content. You do something similar on YouTube. Is that right where you have super it's not, is it super? We have, what is it? Super follower, super chat. We have

[00:35:26] a well, super chat is just for anybody who wants to come in. Once you have a thousand. Subscribers in 4,000 watch hours during the year, you can monetize your channel in one of those perks is that you can offer super chat.

[00:35:37] People can give you money during your live stream, or they have super thanks, which is they can go to a past video and they can give you money on that video because they just wanna support you and your, and whatever it is that you're doing. That's more of a donation type of a thing, and then there's memberships.

[00:35:54] YouTube does offer a membership, which we've tried and we just, haven't been really happy with the, [00:36:00] they take 30% of everything a model. So we're trying to build our own membership separate from that. And you do this as you learn, you go and One of the things that you were talking about now, we don't make the money that you do at by selling the content on another platform.

[00:36:16] But we have done Udemy courses and we have had many people go through our live streaming, Udemy course, and we make a little bit of money off of that, but we have known people who have had many courses on Udemy. They make a good, a good living off of it. So it is possible to do, but you have to keep at

[00:36:34] it.

[00:36:34] Yeah. You have to keep at it. And the, then one of the reasons why I like ghosts so much is they don't take 30% off of your membership. So there's just a lot of different ways to slice and dice this again. There's no one right way. I do love this super follow. I love the super chat. I, it's, I'm looking at these bubbles and I'm like, I don't, oh, donations are 9%.

[00:36:53] So I'm in a ghost creator. Community. And it's amazing. There's like these large publications on there. So these are people who are making a lot of money off of content. , some of it's blogs, some of it videos, not a ton of podcasters on there, and some of them make tons of money on donations alone.

[00:37:13] And I need to dig into that a little bit deeper. Cause I don't know anybody that just off of. I've heard about it on Patreon. You could use ghost as a Patreon, where they won't take the 30% because it's just not how it, they don't do it that way. , and you own your own website on Ghost.

[00:37:27] It's a lot like WordPress in that regard. And you can do donations through Ghost for that. But it's interesting because some people are like, oh, donations, nobody does that. And then other people are like, no, it really works. So I've always been intrigued by the idea of donations either through YouTube or, have you gotten a lot of that where people go back and they watch old content and they donate.

[00:37:48] Not so much past ones, it's more live ones. It's in the moment people get excited. We have gotten contributions anywhere from 99 cents, all the way up to [00:38:00] $500, one time. So it, they're really excited about whatever it is you're talking about and they're, and they wanna, it's amazing supporting.

[00:38:09] That thing,

[00:38:10] I guess my thing, and one of the things that was interesting about this tilt survey is, they said that like people only spend 40% of their time creating content and they spend the rest of the time, like really promoting these monetization channels. And one of the reasons why I have never pursued like a super follow, for example, like on Twitter is like the idea of creating even more content is a little overwhelming for me.

[00:38:32] Yeah. Then I have these people who are paying me every month and I have to have something else that's special. But I know that's a thing that like people love that, Patreon is very successful. Some people can really make it work by creating more. How do you feel about that?

[00:38:44] Doing, doing that special membership special subscription where you create.

[00:38:52] I I had that friend that I keep telling you about, he does this and he's got the different levels of membership and he uses the YouTube membership to do that. And he does have to create that additional now for him. That's okay, because he's doing it anyways.

[00:39:05] For instance, he's going to be recording an album and he's going to do a video of them recording the album, and that's going to be content for the membership. Some of these things that he's. Anyway, he's just recording it and giving it to the membership. So if you're doing it anyway, as part of your business part is what you do, then that's great.

[00:39:24] Go ahead and offer that. But if it's going to be an imposition to go out and do that extra stuff for me would, for me we don't offer anything extra to our YouTube membership. If they wanna join money. That's a donation basically. Go ahead. That's how I look at it is if it's something you're doing.

[00:39:42] Video it stick it in there for the members. Yeah.

[00:39:45] Yeah. I think that, for example, super follow, it really makes sense for my friend Bridget Willard, because she does, she talks about Twitter. she's on Twitter. She's a thought leader in Twitter. And so why wouldn't people pay to learn more about Twitter from her?[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] She's doing information that everybody else is. So she's offering something special, so it makes a lot of sense. So to me, and to me, that's when. Those types of subscriptions really make sense. That's just my take on that, but I love this. I love these monetization channels. It's given me a lot to really think about in my own business.

[00:40:18] And hopefully it's given everybody out there something to really think about as well.

[00:40:21] Let's get through the rest of the slides real quick, sorry. Time, investment, right? Time investment. So a hobby doesn't take that much time. A side gig takes a little more time. Part-time a little more time and full time all of your time.

[00:40:34] So the more time you invest upfront, the quicker you're gonna see results. And that also applies to, how long is it gonna take? How many months is it gonna take to get to where you wanna. There are different levels of financial maturity, more than 50% of full-time content creators are supporting at least one person.

[00:40:51] So if you're going to go full-time, you are going to be able to have a business supporting you a lot sooner than if it's just, if you can only dedicate it. Enough time to it to be a hobby or a side gig. So again, we're showing another slide talking about pre-revenue, which is not earning money yet early revenue, which earns money, but not enough to support one person, a solopreneur supports one person and an entrepreneur substantial money and supports multiple people.

[00:41:21] And that's that. That meant, what do you call that?

[00:41:26] so the trajectory for like how things work, and so I love this because I feel like it really dispels the myth that only a handful of people make money by creating content. That's right. Because the people who are in pre-revenue or in early revenue, it's a side gig and they're still making some.

[00:41:45] And so what it really does is it says, look, there are a lot of people out there. You don't have to be super famous to support yourself, creating content and monetizing it a

[00:41:57] hundred true fans, a thousand true fans. You work your [00:42:00] way,

[00:42:00] work your way up. You start small and you just keep creating things that people enjoy and want to learn more about.

[00:42:06] And I think that's, what's really important here is we've given you a lot of different options for how you can monetize. And now we're telling you. More than 50% of full time content creators are supporting at least one person that's right. So you can do this.

[00:42:20] You wanna commit. To your goals as a content entrepreneur, you need to build a system.

[00:42:26] And that could be as simple as on Mondays. I do these two things on Tuesday. I do these two things on Wednesday. I do a live show on Thursday. I do this, having that mapped out and that you commit to doing those things every single week diversify your revenue streams. If. You want to bring in advertising from YouTube because you've hit monetization levels.

[00:42:47] , that's one revenue stream that you can work on if you have things that you're. Selling online digital products. That's another revenue stream. If you're speaking fees, if you're doing coaching, tho all those revenue streams you wanna diversify, start thinking about, okay, I make, I'm solid on coaching right now.

[00:43:04] So what else can I create to bring in another stream? Own your own assets. That's why after meeting Jen, I learned about app Sumo and buying things that we used to subscribe to and now we own these things owning our own email list, owning our website, all those things that you have control over owning those assets.

[00:43:24] And that is a thing that you wanna shoot for establishing your brand, making sure that you strengthen your brand every time you appear every time. You put out content, you're strengthening your brand and treat it as a serious business because the sooner you do that, the sooner you really commit to it, the sooner you're gonna start seeing a revenue come in

[00:43:45] and it is a serious business making content takes time.

[00:43:48] And if you love doing it and you realize that it takes a long time to edit the videos and everything, it is a serious. It is serious. I wanna like circle back to diversifying your [00:44:00] revenue streams because I have to tell you there actually was a time when I relied on my, residuals or royalties to help support me.

[00:44:07] Because when the pandemic hit, I'm a small business marketing person. like I had nobody. Like I lost everybody. So I had to rely on that and I created like a whole bunch of content, and now I'm reaping the benefits of that, but I was like, okay, I have nothing else. What's something that I can do.

[00:44:26] And I'm like, I can make lessons , and so I just devoted like so much of my time to that. And so that's really the beauty of it is when one thing dries up for one reason or another. then, something else you can do something else. It gives you all of these options. And I think that's, what's so important is it gives you that backup plan.

[00:44:45] And I think you mentioned that before but I wanted to give like a concrete real example of that.

[00:44:50] Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So how long does it take to build a successful content business? Launch to earned first dollar on average, take six and a half months. And in order to get there, you're gonna need to know who's your target audience.

[00:45:07] What's their biggest problem. How do you solve that problem? That's what a business owner knows about their audience and to be that business owner to be serious, whether you're just talking about Weird Al Yankovic or whether you're, giving advice on how to go to a concert and things of that nature, whatever it is, you need to know who you're talking to.

[00:45:28] What's their biggest problem. And how can you solve that problem? And that's how you get to your first earned dollar in six and a half months. Then in 17 months, you, on average people who are content, entrepreneurs are supporting one person. So if you have a partnership, you might be like only half supported, but that's okay.

[00:45:49] If it's what keeps you going. Then a partnership's the way to go. And then at 25 months hired help for the first time you maybe get a VA or you hired somebody on FIverr [00:46:00] or whatever it is, you're spending a little bit of money because you are making enough money to feel comfortable doing that.

[00:46:05] . What do you think

[00:46:06] anything? I think that this is all great. I think that it shows though, that you do have to be doing other things, I this may be a longer timeline for people who aren't married or on their own. Yeah. Because you, you're not gonna be able to do content creation full time.

[00:46:22] Like you'll, you're gonna have to side gig it, which it. Is something that is fine. A lot of us side gig it, and then as it grows and grows, then we transition more into being full-time content creators. It's a process. So don't look at these months and think, oh, I'm successful or I'm not success is a different timeline for everybody.

[00:46:43] These are averages.

[00:46:44] That's right. Those are averages. And it's really cool because your first dollar might just be somebody donated to you, somebody put money into your Patreon or in some way maybe they sent you something through the mail. That was cool. Maybe it wasn't even a dollar.

[00:47:00] Maybe it was a gift of some kind that you could really use. That was the amount of that gift was money. You didn't have to spend. And that's happened. I . I can tell you how many things people sent me jewelry and other things liquor and stuff, that that they sent.

[00:47:16] Woo. You got BOOZE on YouTube? Oh yeah, we did. We got all kinds of things. We even got invited to spend a weekend at somebody's really fancy. They call it a cabin, but it's like on the top of this hill, it looks down over this lake and it's just. Gorgeous. It's a mansion, we're like, so things like that can happen because you are a star on YouTube or whatever because you're a content entrepreneur and people look at look to you as a leader.

[00:47:44] Yeah, a lot of great things can happen and not just money. It's. It's awesome. It's a lot of other stuff going on as well.

[00:47:51] That's awesome. So if you like today's lesson, then join the waiting list for the upcoming livecast live livecast [00:48:00] lifestyle course that Shelley is putting together. She'll put the link, we'll put it in the show notes and then we'll also put it in the chat and you can also subscribe to the women conquer business newsletter.

[00:48:11] Every week I send out one actionable tip one strategy for your marketing. As a small business owner, you can pursue. I think we're starting to run outta time. So let's skip tweaks of the week, since both of us were about it. And we can come back to those later. Let's move ahead to the inspirational nugget.

[00:48:29] All

[00:48:30] right.

[00:48:34] Inspiration's inspiration comes from Seneca's borrow letters and he said, this is what you should teach me. How to be like Odious, how to love my country, wife, and father, and how even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends. If you got everything else wrong from the Odyssey, but you left understanding the importance of perseverance, the dangers of hubris, the risks of temptation and distraction, then you really learn.

[00:49:04] We have to, I got really excited. I thought we were gonna talk about the Illiad and Odyssey today. and

[00:49:10] Odeyseus tell us more about what the Odyssey means to.

[00:49:14] So it's really about going on a big journey and staying the course, and there's all kinds of perseverance that happens along the way. That's right.

[00:49:22] And I think it's really important to really show that determination of perseverance. That's like the next question is can I show Odysseus-like determination of perseverance? And it really is the case. I think for what we're talking about today, which is you could be talking to no one for a long time.

[00:49:41] But if you just keep going, the people will learn, if you spend the time, getting people out there and understanding what it is that you do. That's

[00:49:50] right. If you're trying to truly help people, if your focus is on the person behind the other side of that camera It's gonna [00:50:00] happen because that's how the, that's how the universe works.

[00:50:02] You put money in the big vending machine of life and you're gonna get something back out again. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Also, if you get those content. Creation systems in place. Every Monday, I do this every Tuesday. I do this every Wednesday. I do this and you stay on track with those, just that simple system.

[00:50:23] Then when things come up, like my mom had a stroke and I had to go. Help her out to transition back home. I was still able to keep up with all of my work because I had a simple system. So build your system, build your support network so that when those things happen and they always do things always Now that's shipwreck. Can you get back on track? If you have that system, if you have that support network, you can get back on track. I had Jen stepped up, she took care of some things that normally I would be doing. Toby stepped up. He took care of the newsletter and some other things so that I was able to focus on being with my family and still keep going.

[00:51:07] We could stay on track together. That's that support network and that system that we had in place. It's

[00:51:14] so important. It's so important. Yeah. Oh, thank you, Shelley. Yeah. What a great show. Thanks for leading us through this whole content creation process and sending over The Tilt. It's our lives. Isn't it?

[00:51:26] Yeah, it's what we're doing, man.

[00:51:28] This is our lives. This is what we do. So yeah, this is our topic, man. If you've got any questions we're here, we're ready to help you to, to follow along in our, our faltering footsteps and help you stay away from the shoals and the shipwrecks.

[00:51:46] Have a great week, everybody. Thank you for listening and watching the Women Conquer Business Show.

[00:51:53] Thank you for joining the Women Conquer Business podcast hosted by Shelley Carney and Jen [00:52:00] McFarland, please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their brand and share their message with the.

[00:52:15] Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.