In this episode, we'll learn seven proven strategies for making money online as a content creator!

We categorize content creators into influencers, educators, and entertainers, and then delve into how each can monetize their presence through the 7 most common ways of making money online, including affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, digital products, physical products, coaching or consulting, platform-specific programs, and ad revenue.

With over 10 years of experience as a blogger, podcaster, course creator, vlogger and ecommerce owner, Bonnie provides valuable insights and emphasizes the importance of diversifying income streams. She also offers a free mini course to guide aspiring content creators in starting their online businesses.

Get the free mini course here! Use code CREATEFREE

Download Bonnie's free guide to getting your coaching business up and running in ONE weekend.

Ready to work together? Schedule a call to explore your goals and learn how I can help you.

00:00 Introduction to Making Money Online

00:31 Understanding Content Creation

01:08 Seven Ways to Monetize Your Content

02:57 Types of Content Creators

03:54 Influencers: Affiliate Marketing and Brand Partnerships

09:04 Educators: Sharing Knowledge and Selling Products

11:26 Entertainers: Making Life Fun and Profitable

13:22 Platform-Specific Programs and Ad Revenue

15:08 Summary and Final Tips

16:22 Free Mini Course Offer and Conclusion

You're listening to episode 54 of

burning brightly seven ways to make

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money as a content creator online.

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This is Burning Brightly, a podcast

for Christian moms who are feeling

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called to build a business and

share their light with the world.

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I'm Bonnie Wiscombe, a life coach,

mom, and entrepreneur, and I'm honored

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to be your guide as you face this

business building adventure full of

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highs, lows, and everything in between.

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This is where we help each

other find the courage to shine.

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Hello.

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Hello, welcome back.

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I want to talk to you guys about

something that the whole world seems

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to want to know now, and that's how to

make money online as a content creator.

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Every other day, we seem to

be seeing somebody online.

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Social media, or we hear through the

grapevine that somebody is making a ton

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of money, just doing that online thing.

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And we're thinking, how is this happening?

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How is this working?

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And is this legal

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and the internet, uh, It didn't even

exist when I was a kid and now people

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are making all this money on it.

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Like what is happening here right now?

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If you are already a content creator,

this is also going to be useful for you

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because it might help you explore

alternative ways of making money yourself.

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Maybe you've already nailed down a

couple of these different income streams.

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But you want to diversify a little

bit, which I highly recommend.

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We'll talk about that in a second,

but today I'm going to talk about

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seven very specific, different,

distinct ways of making money online.

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Okay.

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Are you ready?

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All right now, there's actually not

enough time in the world to outline all

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the ways that people make money online.

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And I'm not even aware of them all,

but these seven are very, very common.

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I myself have made money with almost

all of these, maybe all of them.

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I think all of them.

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And I have friends who make

money with all of these as well.

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So I know for a fact

that they are legit and.

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Many people are very successful making

6, 7, 8 figures doing these things.

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Okay.

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But in reality, everything starts small.

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You're going to have to start small,

no matter what you're building.

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So be patient.

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Take it one day at a time, and I

promise you, you can find success

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as a content creator as well..

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So just a little background on me.

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I've been building businesses

for over 10 years online.

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I started out as a blogger and then I

had some online products and digital

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products, and then I had some physical

products and now I am a coach and I

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help people build their own businesses.

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So I've had my hand in a lot of

different ways of making money online.

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And let me just tell

you, it's a lot of fun.

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It is really, really fun to spend

time on your computer, creating

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something out of nothing and

having people pay money for it.

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And I think it helps make the

world a little bit better place.

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All right.

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So I'm not going to tell you just

what you have to do to become a

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content creator, because that's easy.

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You just post on Instagram or Tik TOK

or YouTube, but I'm going to tell you

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actually how to monetize it because

too often we hear, oh, he's a YouTuber.

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He makes money.

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Yeah.

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But how who's paying him money?

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Is it YouTube?

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Is it some other random person?

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Is it the audience?

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Is it.

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Uh, product that he's selling.

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Right.

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And in reality, it's all of these

things very often, but we're going

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to talk about the specific ways

the money is actually coming in.

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So that's probably the first thing I

want to make sure, you know, just posting

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on YouTube, just creating a podcast or

just having a popular Instagram is not

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going to be enough to make you money.

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You actually have to go out

and monetize it on purpose.

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All right.

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So, first of all, let's talk about

the three different types of online.

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Creators there are, there are influencers.

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There are educators and

there are entertainers.

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Now there's probably

subclasses of all these.

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Maybe there's even more classes

I'm not really aware of, but in my

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experience, most content creators

are one or multiple of these things.

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Influencer educator, entertainer.

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And you probably already know

what you are or what you want to

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be an influencer, as we all know.

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Someone who generally uses

their lifestyle or opinions.

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To influence others in one way or another.

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So maybe a fashion influencer

is like, Hey, I'm really good

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at putting outfits together.

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I'm going to give you

tips on how to do that.

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Maybe a pet influencers.

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Like I have all these dogs and I'm

really good at taking care of them.

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And I'm gonna teach you

how to be great pet owner.

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Right.

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It could be literally anything,

but those influencers take.

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What they're good at?

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They put it on a social

media channel generally.

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And the create a large following in one

way or another bike teaching people.

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How to be more like them basically.

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It's a little narcissistic,

if you think about it, but

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this is the world we live in.

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So most influencers make

money in two main ways.

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So these are the first two

ways you can make money online.

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Number one, affiliate marketing

and number two brand partnerships.

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So affiliates, we're probably all

aware of affiliates now because

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the FTC requires to everyone.

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Disclose when you're

using an affiliate link.

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So you've probably seen someone say,

this is an affiliate link, or this

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isn't an affiliate link because there

are some pretty strict regulations

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about when you have to disclose that.

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But affiliate.

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Happened when let's say I share

something with a special link online.

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So let's say I have this

really great microphone.

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I like, and I want to

share it with you guys.

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I'll say, Hey.

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Go get this.

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Awesome microphone on Amazon.

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Use my link.

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And if you use my link, it's got

a special code embedded in it.

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That is going to tell Amazon

to give me a kickback of.

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Whatever you paid.

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Okay.

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Now the important thing to realize

is when you use someone's affiliate

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link, you're not paying more

than you would normally write.

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The microphone is like

whatever, a hundred bucks.

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With an affiliate link or without

Amazon is taking a cut of their

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profit and giving it to the influencer

for sending the traffic to Amazon.

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Does that make sense?

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So go get this mic on Amazon.

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Use my link.

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Amazon will kick me back a

tiny commission for the record.

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Affiliate commissions are generally very

tiny, not always, but usually very tiny.

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So some of the pros of sharing

affiliate links and getting affiliate

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commission is that it's easy to do.

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It's easy for me to say, Hey, I love this.

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T-shirt go get it.

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Use my link or these earrings of

this lipstick or whatever if you're

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already sharing your favorite things

online, it's very easy to just

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share an affiliate link with it.

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You basically become

this living testimonial.

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Everybody loves reviews, right?

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And you're like a living review.

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Oh my gosh.

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These earrings are amazing.

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You got to go get them.

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People are much more

likely to go buy them.

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If they have a live person telling

them that they love this thing.

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You can also help other people

find it, both services and products

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that they love, which is so great.

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You're saying, oh my gosh,

I had this guy come clean.

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My carpets.

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He was incredible.

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I want you to have clean carpets

to go check them out and you make

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a little money by doing that.

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Now there are a few outcomes that

come with affiliate marketing as well.

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Affiliate marketing requires a

lot of traffic to be lucrative.

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In my experience,

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most affiliate commissions are

very small, like five to 8%.

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I have found in industries I've

worked in art is pretty common.

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So you have to have.

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Tens of thousands of followers and

have hundreds and hundreds, thousands

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of people purchasing this link to

make any significant amount of money.

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It's not nothing, but it's not,

you're not going to live off it unless

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you have thousands and thousands

of people purchasing your link.

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You also have to actively be a

part of an affiliate program.

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Most people are not going to come

hunt you down unless you have

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a really, really large audience

and say, be one of my affiliates.

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You have to go hunt down the program.

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Yourself.

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Amazon is a great place to start.

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If you want to start sharing

affiliate links because Amazon

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sells almost everything.

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And it's a very easy program to get into.

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And then they make it very easy

to share affiliate links as well,

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but it just takes some time.

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And energy to set that up.

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You also have to be very

honest with your audience.

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It is very easy to share something

that you maybe don't super love

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because you know, you're going

to get an affiliate commission.

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But that totally breaks down the

rapport and the trust that

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you have with your audience.

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So you have to have a rapport, people

have to know and like, and trust

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you in order to be willing to buy

your recommended product or item.

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Also one more con that I don't

love about affiliate marketing

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is that it promotes consumerism.

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I personally am not a fan of

telling people to just go buy,

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buy, buy, buy, buy all the time.

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It doesn't really sit well with me.

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Now, if I have a product that has

genuinely made my life better, I'm

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totally going to share it with you.

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Come hang out with me on Instagram.

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I will tell you what my story

is, what vacuum is the best.

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And keeps my house clean

with a million children.

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I will tell you what nail Polish

stays on over and over, but I'm

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not going to actively be buying

lots of crap just to get you to buy

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more crap, to fill your house with,

for no reason, just to make money.

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See what I'm saying.

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But of course that's a personal thing.

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So that's affiliate marketing

that most influencers do.

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The other one that a lot of

influencers do are brand partnerships.

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Now, brand partnerships happen

when let's say I team up with like

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Nike or Walmart or some big brand.

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They will often send me products

for free or at a steep discount so

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I can share them with my audience.

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And then they usually pay me a flat

fee and, or an affiliate commission.

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Let's say Walmart is like, Hey, we are

promoting this new line of swimsuits.

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We want you to promote it.

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And so they send me a couple and so I

put them on and I show my audience and I

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was like, this is what I love about it.

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You know, go check them out at Walmart and

Walmart will pay me a flat fee to do that.

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Generally, every contract

is a little bit different.

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So some pros to this is it

gives you a lot of credibility.

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You work with Nike or something.

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And all of a sudden people are like,

oh, she's someone to pay attention

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to, if a big brand name backs

you, this can be very lucrative.

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People start paying attention.

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You start making more money

because you're dealing with

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better and better brands, right?

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And you can create good

relationships and they come back.

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You've probably seen influencers

online work with the same

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companies over and over and over.

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If you do a good job and the brand

likes what you've done and you send

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lots of traffic their way, they're

probably going to work with you again.

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There's always a few cons though.

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This requires success on a large audience.

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First, you're not going

to team up with Nike.

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When you have five followers, that's

just not going to happen in order to

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catch the attention to the big brands.

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You have to have a

loyal following already.

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And I will say from personal experience,

brand partnerships can be very annoying.

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There's usually a laundry list

of things that you have to check

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off in your video, in your photo.

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Whatever promotional material

you're putting out there.

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There's lots of things you have to do.

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There's specific things that can,

and can't be in your photo or video.

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There's certain things you can and

can't say, so there are very often

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a lot of hoops to jump through.

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And that can be frustrating.

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So those are the first two affiliate

marketing brand partnerships.

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Now let's move on to

being an educator online.

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We've talked about influencers

for a little while.

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Let's talk about being an educator.

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This is someone who uses content on

YouTube, social media podcasts to

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educate about something specific.

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And this is actually

how I categorize myself.

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There was a time when I kind

of felt like I was a little

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bit more of an influencer, but.

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Today and probably forever.

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I will consider myself

more of an educator.

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I personally don't really want

my main job to be, to go convince

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people to buy things they don't need.

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But I do love teaching.

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I love inspiring motivating,

and I love coaching.

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So that's what I've

made my main gig online.

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So to be an educator, you can

have a specific kind of training.

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You're going to share with people.

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You can have a certificate or a

degree, or just experiencing something.

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Or even just a passion, just

something you really, really love.

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Maybe you just love talking about

food and you love recipes and you love

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trying new things that can be enough to

become some sort of an educator online.

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These people are, frankly, one of the

main reasons that YouTube, Google and

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the internet in general is so amazing

because people are willing to hop on

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it and share information for free.

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You just get on YouTube and Google,

how to start a business, how to make

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most of the trolley, how to tie my

laces in a way that won't come on tide.

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I don't know any random stuff you want

to Google or search on YouTube and

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you have all this free content because

an educator has gone out and shared

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something that worked for them or

something that they thought was going

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to make the world a little better place.

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It is pretty dang cool.

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So these people, educators can

also make money with affiliates

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and brand partnerships.

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That's totally legit happens all the time.

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But I would say that most

educators probably make money

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selling more of their knowledge.

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They'll make money selling programs or

courses or other digital products, maybe

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a digital download or a private podcast.

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, they sell one-on-one and group coaching.

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So I sell all of these things.

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I have a program to help

people start their businesses.

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I have a one-on-one and group coaching.

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I teach people how to

launch their podcast.

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So I have lots of products like

that, that they can get online.

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And really anything that's going

to make life easier on my audience.

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Like I said, if you're the food blogger

or the food YouTuber, and you want to

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make life easier for somebody who's

trying to follow your recipes, maybe

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you're going to sell a printable

recipe books so they can have it

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right there instead of on their phone.

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Maybe you're going to collaborate

with another brand that sells

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mixers, and you're going to have a

customizable mixer with your name

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on it that you sell to your audience.

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I don't know.

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There's a million different ways.

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To sell something that is

going to help your audience.

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Get the results easier and quicker.

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So influencer educator, finally,

let's go to entertainer, Mr.

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Beast, anyone

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if you make content whose sole purpose

is to make someone enjoy life better than

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you could be considered an entertainer.

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These are usually what most kids want

to grow up to be when they're like,

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I want to be a YouTuber like Mr.

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Bass.

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Yeah.

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They want to entertain.

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They want people to come and see them do

goofy things, nothing wrong with that.

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Also, if you're familiar with

the color personalities, like the

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red, blue, yellow, white, these

are usually yellow personalities.

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They just love to make the

world a more fun place.

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They want to make life exciting.

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They want to make people laugh.

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And aren't we so glad for entertainers?

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Like, can you imagine how boring

life would be without actors

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and comedians and musicians?

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I'm so glad we live in a world where

these people exist and we can tap into

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entertainment anytime of day or night.

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Granted that sometimes is not

so great for us because it's

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easy to get addicted to it.

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But I think there's definitely

a market for entertainers and I

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hope we have entertainers forever.

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I think they're very, very important.

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Now, if you feel called to do this to be

an entertainer online, then go for it.

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You probably already know if this is the

type of thing that would work for you.

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Maybe people are always telling you how

funny you are or what a great musician

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you are or what a great yodeler you are.

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I don't know.

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You have some talent that, you

know, would entertain people online.

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These entertainers can also

make money the same way that the

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influencers and the educators do.

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Basically, if you have an audience

online, you can make money with affiliate

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marketing, with brand partnerships, with

digital products, with physical products.

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They also have lots of subscriptions,

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like if you're listening

to music or you want to.

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I access the private video

feed of the comedian.

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You love, you might sign

up for something like that.

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They also sell a lot of merch, right?

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We want a t-shirt that has our

favorite comedians name on it, or

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our favorite actors name on it.

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So that's pretty common to

those physical products.

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. So, so far we've talked about affiliates,

brand partnerships, digital products,

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physical products, like I said, you can

actually create them yourself, have them

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created or partner up with another brand.

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That's already creating the physical

products and they get your take on it.

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Maybe you customize it

in one way or another.

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There's coaching or consulting.

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That's the fifth.

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And then we're gonna talk about

the last two in just a second.

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So one.

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Way that I haven't mentioned

yet are platform specific

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programs that pay creators.

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So influencers, educators,

entertainers can put content online.

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And specific platforms will

pay them for their content.

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And this is usually based on

the ad revenue that's coming in.

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So for example, YouTube.

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When you hear someone saying

they're making money on YouTube

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nav, a large audience is

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generally because they're part

of YouTube partner platform

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where YouTube pays the creator, a portion

of the ad revenue that YouTube has based

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on the ads played on the creators videos.

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If I put a video on YouTube and they show

an ad on my video and I'm part of that

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partner program, then YouTube is going

to give me a tiny fraction of that ad

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revenue for the video that I uploaded.

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Tik, TOK, and Twitch also do this and

it can be pretty lucrative as well.

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Facebook has kind of a lame version right

now, but things are changing all the time.

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So you just never know.

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, and other platforms may follow as well.

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But right now, YouTube

is probably the big one.

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And like I said, Tik TOK and

Twitter are doing it as well.

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So this, platform specific, the pay

per view type of thing, and ad revenue

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really are kind of linked, but they're

not always exactly the same thing.

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So ad revenue is another way that

bloggers make a lot of money.

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So they'll install ads on their

website and get paid a small

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percentage for every ad that is viewed.

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So someone goes to my blog post,

they scroll, maybe click on an ad.

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Maybe don't maybe just look at

it depending on the platform

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and the way the ad is set up.

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That blogger is going to get some money.

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Some pros to this is that they're super

easy to set up and basically passive

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income once it's all ready to go.

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But the cons, one of the cons is

that you don't always get full

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control over what kind of ads are

shown on your website or on your

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video, which can be kind of annoying.

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If it's something that's not

in alignment with your message.

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The revenue is also really tiny preview.

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So again, you need lots and lots of

traffic to make any money on this.

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And as annoyed people were

always annoyed to ads.

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So sometimes it can drive traffic away.

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If you have ads on your sites or videos.

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. So summary.

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Affiliates brand partnerships,

digital products, physical products.

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Coaching or consulting.

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The pay per view type platforms

and ad revenue, which again

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are kind of linked together.

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, if you want to make money as a

content creator, you're going to

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want to diversify your income.

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Like I said, if you start posting

on YouTube and the only thing

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you're planning on is making

money on that partner platform.

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It's going to take you a long time

and thousands and thousands and

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thousands of views and followers

before you ever get there.

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But if you create a digital product and

you start promoting that right away, it's

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going to be a lot faster because you need

a smaller audience to make decent money.

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Full transparency.

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There are now millions of people making

full-time income on line as content

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creators on YouTube, on Twitch, on

tech doc, all these places, millions

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of people making six figures or more,

and there will be more and more.

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All of the numbers show that

content creation businesses

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are going up, up, up, up, up.

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But if you expect you to, to replace

your income just by putting videos out

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there, It's going to take a long time.

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So diversify that income create

multiple revenue streams.

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So you're getting paid in different

ways and then you don't need such a huge

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audience before you start getting paid.

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Selling a product.

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Like I said, even though it might

require a little bit more work than

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just putting the videos out there,

it requires a smaller audience.

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And if you really nail down

your marketing, you can

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make money a lot sooner.

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That was a lot of information.

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Thanks for sticking in here with me.

417

If you want more help, I

actually created a mini course

418

that I would love to gift you.

419

I normally sell it for 49 bucks, but it is

all about creating a business from home.

420

It will teach you the basics of

content businesses, service-based

421

businesses and product based businesses.

422

And it will tell you how to get started.

423

So if you want access to that,

424

go ahead and click the link

in the description and just

425

use the code to create free.

426

All one word, create free to get

that mini course for free and

427

then make your way through it.

428

Let me know if you have any

questions, shoot me an email.

429

I'd love to help you.

430

Alright fence, I'll talk to you next week.

431

Are you ready to start or

grow your dream business?

432

Click the link in the show notes to

download the free starter guide to

433

building a business or to schedule

a free coaching call And if you

434

loved this episode, Don't forget

to leave a review and share it with

435

a friend who might be feeling the

call to burn a little brighter.