how i make money as an influencer (pt 1)

hiiii friend,

it’s the thing everyone wants to know but no one talks about….. how are influencers making money???

ya we see people doing brand deals, selling pdfs, or whatever. and i feel like most of us fall into two groups.

we either think being a content creator is super easy. you just go viral and you’ll have brands beating down your door to work with you.

or we think it’s so saturated and only a tiny percentage of people make any money and the rest are just wasting their time.

neither extreme is 100% right. but since it’s something that doesn’t get talked about much, i’m going to lay it all out there for you.

i can only speak from my experience, though. so while there are a million ways creators monetise their platforms, i am going to just talk about what i’ve actually done.

there is way too much to put into one newsletter so this is going to be a series across the next 4 weeks so i can properly break down each method i use:

a lot of my followers just know me as someone who makes funny videos with alistair. and that’s because up until starting this newsletter, my platforms were built off entertainment, not education.

but there’s so much i've learned in my career, both from making content for myself and doing it as a job for clients, that i wanted to share about. i needed a place where it would make sense to explore those topics and talk more about the actual strategy side.

especially because there’s so much noise out there about what you should be doing on socials. everyone is trying to sell you hacks or promise you an easy way to go viral. but from doing this for as long as i have, i genuinely don't think there are any silver bullets.

there's a crazy amount of nuance behind making content that doesn't get talked about.

there are fundamental things you have to understand about the work and about yourself to get where you want to go, and at the core of all of it is psychology, behaviour and understanding people.

that's the stuff i find so interesting, and it's how i look at both my work and my life. it just so happens to show up through a content creation lens for me, but i think the principles apply way outside of social media.

i've found there's good reception when i share this kind of thing, which is how i've ended up on podcasts, panels and speaking gigs. so this newsletter is a space to share what’s on my mind.

pros:

i love doing things just because i like doing them, and i think choosing things i genuinely enjoy has been a strength of mine.

so for me, the benefit of having a newsletter isn't actually some crazy benefit at all. it's really that i get to share what i've learned, explore ideas, stay curious and have you engage in that conversation with me.

the cons:

i genuinely can't name many drawbacks right now.

i'm really lucky to have a team, and by team i mean one person, charlotte, my email strategist and editor, who is freaking awesome. ((( seriously, if you are looking for help with anything related to newsletters or email, hit her up )))

when your vision is this long term, it's hard to get nit picky about drawbacks, especially when you've found a structure that actually works for getting what's in your brain out to people.

once you just accept that newsletters are a long game, you stop looking for shortcuts, you don't get disappointed, and you can actually enjoy the growth in smaller chunks and analyse it way better than if you'd expected a short-term win.

you'll read the articles about newsletters selling for millions (like morning brew that got aquired for $75 million in 2020), but those took years of consistent value for their audience.

unlike social media, there's no newsletter algorithm where new audiences can discover you organically. for you that might be a con.

for me, that's probably why i'm enjoying it. i love seeing how those two worlds can come together and support each other.