HOW I MAKE MONEY AS A CONTENT CREATOR IN 2024 💸
CHA-CHING
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CHA-CHING 💸
FOR A LONG TIME, I WAS EMBARRASSED TO SAY I’M AN INFLUENCER.
Ironically, I’ve never worked harder or felt more proud of the success I have been able to achieve. I am convinced being self employed is one of the most demanding, taxing jobs on the market. Content creation exercises every muscle: creativity, copywriting, photography, videography, editing, communicating.. the list goes on and on. All that being said, being your own boss can be STRESSFUL.
I have spent the past 4 years finding (and maximizing) as many revenue streams as possible for myself as a content creator. My journey dates back to 2012 when I started a fashion blog and let’s just say, I’ve been figuring it out since.
Currently, I am a professional girly girl and Swiftie sharing my life and the latest on all things fashion, products and trends. I’m extremely passionate about normalizing the human experience and empowering others to lead a life they feel proud of. My career started at the age of 20, shortly after graduating college a year early. I have a degree in Business Management and Communications with a PR concentration (which in hindsight, fits the bill perfectly).
I spent my first few months out of college job searching in Los Angeles while working as a manager for LUSH Cosmetics. My first “real job” was in sales where I was a Medical Sales Rep for a private laboratory. I liked the grind, hated the industry. One year later, I switch to technology sales. I thought it was the industry. Turns out, I hated working for others people and the competitive nature of sales wasn’t doing any good for my mental health.
In March of 2019, I quit my job cold turkey. I had no real plan, about $7K in savings and decided I would rather be poor (and figure it all out) than be miserable working a 9-5 that did nothing but stress me out. From there, I worked a plethora of jobs - nannying for high profile + celebrity families, sitting as an audience member on TV show tapings, ice cream catering, delivering for Postmates.. you name it. What I learned during that time was that there are a LOT of successful and wealthy people who have no clue how to market themselves online. I have always felt this was a strong suit of mine and started offering social media management services to people I met over the remaining months of 2019.
In January of 2020, I had two clients and I decided to go all in. The pandemic hit 3 months later and thankfully, worked in my favor. My business tripled overnight and before I knew it, I had a full blown marketing agency. Months prior I had begun posting on TikTok (didn’t we all) and started to grow a small following. I transitioned my previous fashion blog Instagram to @reagan.baylee and later pivoted to share about my life/things that bring me joy.
Fast forward to 500K+ followers and that brings us to today and the REAL question which is: how do I make money? Keep reading for all the ways that I bring in money as a full time content creator and digital marketing expert. ⬇️
💸 AFFILIATE LINKS
We know them, we love them.. or do we? I use LTKit to generate affiliate links to items I share on socials. Full transparency, this brings in pennies. Just last year, I sold 25+ units of something and made a whopping $6. It’s important to do because you never know but this is not a reliable form of income for creators.
💻 AMAZON STOREFRONT
I prefer Amazon Storefront for linking items I purchase for a number of reasons: mostly because it’s Amazon.. everyone shops there. But most importantly, the payout is much better. Amazon credits affiliates with ANY purchase someone makes within a certain window of time after clicking on your link. That being said, if someone clicks my lipstick link, doesn’t buy it but purchases a $2000 couch an hour later… I make commission! Yay! All things considered, I don’t like to bombard my audience with affiliate links - so I only make $2-$4K/year off of Amazon Storefront as a content creator.
💰 CREATOR FUNDS
This is hit or miss but nonetheless, important. Every social platform has different methods for rewarding creators. Historically, YouTube has the best program for paying out long form creators. More recently, TikTok has launched a Beta Creator Fund for videos longer than 1 minute and the payouts vary but far exceed any other platform incentive currently available. For example, I think I made over $6.5K off the TikTok Creator Fund in 2023. This is obviously not something you can live off of, but great side money!
🙋🏼♀️ CONSULTING
Offering your own services is a great way to make extra money as a creator. I offer one hour consulting sessions starting at $200/hr where I leverage my knowledge and time spent as a creator. I believe anyone who is an expert on a topic should charge for their knowledge!
📲 SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
While I have scaled back how many clients I take on as my socials have grown, I keep 3-4 clients per month so I have reliable money coming in every month on the 1st. Social Media Management can be fun, but time consuming and may require a team depending on the breadth of your services. That being said, I enjoy the challenge and like being on the brand side of content creation. I charge clients anywhere from $500 - $5000+ a month depending on their needs. This is my second largest driver of income per month.
👕 MERCH SALES
Selling merch or apparel related to your content is a great way to build community and further engage your audience. I keep my margins low so admittedly, my profits are not extremely high. But when coupled with the other income sources mentioned, it can be fruitful!
🤝 BRAND COLLABORATIONS
Working with brands is one of the most obvious and well known ways to make money as a creator. I work with anywhere from 5-12 brands/month to partner on sponsored content for my socials. The price per collaboration varies and depends on the deliverables, turnaround time, exclusivity and usage. This is my largest driver of income every month.
👩🏼💻 USAGE RIGHTS
One of my favorite ways to make passive income is charging brands for usage rights to my content. I share an average of 2-3 videos/day across my socials and am often approached by brands to repost my content or use my videos in advertisements. The longer a brand wants usage, the higher the rate. While this is a great driver of income, I can’t rely on it since it is not something I seek out myself.
🎥 USER GENERATED CONTENT
Making content for brands is one of the most underrated ways to monetize as a creator. It leverages your skillset and knowledge of content creation/trends without posting it to your own socials. It’s a win, win! The downside is that because you are not posting to your socials, your rates are typically lower than they would be for a sponsored post collaboration. Nonetheless, I have made a substantial amount of money creating content for other brands. When I have a slow month for sponsored collaborations, I seek out UGC opportunities!
➡️ WHAT I’M ADDING IN 2024
If you thought that was enough, think again! Transparently, it costs me a LOT to make the money I am currently making. At the end of 2022 I realized I MUST outsource (not only for my sanity, but in order to grow). I have 3 contractors who help me keep afloat and I’m spending the bulk of Q1 building out new processes to hopefully generate even more income in Q2. Here are some of the ways we plan to do that:
join ad networks to monetize this blog and website (first need to reach 15K mo pageviews/unique visitor)
add bonus content behind a pay wall to my podcast
get podcast sponsors
provide influencers with affiliate codes for my merch to drive more sales/grow my customer base/increase visibility
sell a course
add digital downloads to my website
Stay tuned for updates on the progress I make and what I learn along the way. 😉
Whew, that was a lot! I hope you learned something new about how to make money as a content creator in 2024. On my radar currently is monetizing my podcast and blog in Q2. I am currently researching and taking the necessary steps to build my traffic for both platforms and can’t wait to share my findings as I continue to expand!
As always, thanks for being here!
XOXOX Reagan Baylee
