10 Monetization Strategies for Creators (Untapped Ones Too)
Before I talk about monetization strategies, look at this income report. It includes the Forbes top 10 listed creators who made millions in 2023.
| Creator | Earnings Report by Forbes (2023) |
|---|---|
| MrBeast | $82M |
| KSI | $24M |
| Jake Paul | $34M |
| Rhett & Link | $35M |
| Charli D'Amelio | $23M |
| Logan Paul | $21M |
| F*ckJerry | $30M |
| EMMA Chamberlain | $20M |
| Matt Rife | $25M |
| Brent Rivera | $17.5M |
What if I tell you that my monetization strategies can help you earn at least 0.10% of these figures?
Sounds like a plan? Great!
Let’s just go through each monetization strategy one by one.
#1 - Sponsored Posts
New brands often lack budget and technical expertise for online advertisements.
In times like this, they turn to small creators to build awareness for their brand.
This is why selling sponsored posts is the fastest way to make money as a creator. Even with only 500 or 1000 high-quality followers, you can get paid.
To have sponsored posts as a part of your monetization strategy, you can do two things:
#1 - Write ‘DM for Promotions’ in your bio. Doing this will let relevant brands know that you’re up for a collab.
#2 - DM to relevant brands with a personalized pitch. Your message must look short and sweet, just like this one:
#2 - Affiliate Products
Whenever your fan buys a product through your link and you get a commission for the sale, that’s called affiliate marketing.
According to Authority Hacker, an average affiliate marketer earns $8K per month.
To have a better idea, Google this formula:
👉🏻 Niche + income report or case study
Something like this:
You’ll see many creators talking about their journey on websites or social media handles.
That’s not it, scroll through your Instagram and YouTube feed. I’m sure you’ll see many creators promoting their affiliate links in bio.
As you can see here, she has an Amazon affiliate link in her Instagram bio.
Similarly, this creator makes good use of his YouTube video descriptions to share affiliate links.
You know the best thing about affiliate marketing? You don’t have to deal with shipment, complaints, and product creation.
The more you sell, the more you can make. Just find good affiliate networks.
Right now Amazon associates is the most popular and it’s quite overrated, but there are many others including:
The list goes on..
There are so many, you can’t even count!
#3 - Dropshipping
Dropshipping is like being a middleman. When someone buys from your store, you order the product from a supplier at a lower price and list it with a margin.
The supplier then ships it directly to the customer and the difference in price is your profit.
So basically, you don’t need to worry about inventory or warehousing.
How’s this different from affiliate marketing?
Unlike affiliate, here you have to deal with customers, replacement, or returns for the damaged products.
That’s why many reports suggest that 90% of the dropshippers fail within a year.
As per Dropshipper, beginners either make $1000 or nothing. While it’s true to some extent, it can be influenced by niche, product, suppliers, and other factors.
I’d say it’s different for everyone. There’s Alex who made $1000 from a single high-ticket sale. And then there we have Kate making $70K in 30 days.
Guess what? They both were at the beginning stage of their journey.
I must say - the real winners are the ones that are hitting 6-7 figures monthly.
Look at Steve and Evan brothers, they claim they make 6 six figures every month.
Dropshipping can be lucrative for creators but this isn’t something you can take on as a side project. It requires your proper involvement.
Just in case you want to play sidelines and step up later, go ahead with affiliate marketing.
#4 - CPA Marketing
CPA marketing refers to cost per action. You can get paid for making people take action. It could be:
- Collecting emails or phone numbers
- Convincing visitors to sign up for a free trial
- Getting them to download and install an app
- Persuading for a survey
Compared to affiliate marketing and dropshipping, it’s a lot easier because you don’t even have to bring sales.
While it’s true you can’t make millions as a CPA marketer, it’s a perfect monetization strategy for new creators.
Just remember, never promote low value offers. Otherwise, that will spoil your image in the long run.
When I was experimenting with CPA marketing in 2019, I learned that Offervault is a great invention for CPA marketers.
Let me show you how Offervault works:
Just imagine that I’m a creator in the dating niche. To find a suitable offer, I’ll simply go to ‘categories’ and select ‘dating.’
Out of all the offers, this one caught my attention:
With this offer, all I have to do is get people to fill the form. For every fill up, I’ll make $2.50.
So technically if I’m able to get 100 people to sign up through my link on a daily basis, I’ll make $250 a day which equals $7500 per month.
Now before you think CPA marketing is fraud, just know that these companies pay for their customer’s contact details.
It’s a win-win situation!
#5 - Live Streaming
Live streaming can bring creators thousands of dollars within a few hours.
You must have noticed famous streamers like PewDiePie, iShowSpeed, Pokimane, xQc, and many others.
This how it’s like on most popular social media streaming platforms:
👉🏻 Twitch lets viewers use Bits to "cheer" for creators, which makes you about $0.01 per Bit. This feature is available to Twitch affiliates and partners only. On the right-hand side, you’ll see a bunch of Bits coming to this creator.
👉🏻 Facebook features a tipping service called Stars, where viewers buy and send Stars to creators, each worth $0.01. For this, creators need to be part of Facebook’s Level Up program. See, this is how fans give stars on Facebook:
👉🏻 YouTube offers Super Chat and Super Stickers, allowing viewers to tip creators and purchase animated graphics. In this scenario, creators earn a portion of each transaction. For instance, this guy is good at playing piano and someone who loved his tune tipped him $5.
#6 - Services
Creating content makes you skilled at many things. You start as a video creator and end up fixing your vocals in a Digital Audio Workstation software.
Why not leverage these skills to make some money?
When I started writing, I came across Elna Cain and Jorden Makelle. They both offer freelance writing services and sell courses to make money as a creator.
They publish engaging blogs, YouTube videos, and Linkedin Posts. Apart from this, I’ve noticed they engage in Facebook groups too.
Take a look at how Elna promotes her skills on the website:
The best thing about being a freelancer and creator at the same time is the authority you gain.
Once you've established trust, built a strong reputation, and demonstrated a proven track record online, you can always charge more with confidence.
#7 - Exclusive Content
When creators have die hard fans, they make a lot of money with exclusive content.
One of the greatest examples of this is Chapo Trap House. It’s a political comedy podcast, earning over $174,500 per month from their Patreon subscribers.
Platforms like Patreon let creators set up a membership service where fans pay a monthly fee to access exclusive content, participate in community events, and receive merchandise or other perks.
In addition to this, you can set up a paywall like Wall Street Journal on your website.
As far as I know, setting up a Paywall on a personal blog is technical and might cost you a bit.
If that’s not your cup of cake, you can try Medium.
Top writers on Medium can earn upwards of $10,000 per month.
Doesn’t sound realistic? Take a look at Jenn Leach’s story. She literally made $10K from a single story on Medium.
And if you research, you’ll find a lot of similar stories.
#8 - Print on Demand
Print on Demand (POD) companies make it possible for creators to design and sell merchandise without managing inventory or shipping.
In other words, you design t-shirts, mugs, posters, and other similar items.
And when an order comes in, the POD company produces, delivers, and collects payments on your behalf.
Here are many Print on Demand success stories that can help you get inspired. Also, you can get started with these Print on Demand sites:
- Teespring
- Printful
- Redbubble
- Printify
- Merch by Amazon
- Gelato
#9 - Digital Products
Digital products are a great way for creators to earn big.
Once you’re done building your next great eBook, video course, template, or software, you don’t have to spend over and over again.
Just copy and paste…
On Udemy too, some creators are making six to seven figures.
Rob Percival, a web development instructor, is a great example of this. So far he has made $5 million on this platform.
Apart from Udemy, we have self-published authors on Amazon who are making thousands every month.
Mark Dawson, a thriller writer, earns about $450K annually from his novels.
If you’re selling digital products, sky's the limit. Literally, you can sell anything you want - it all comes down to your marketing skills.
#10 - Ads
Have you ever come across such ads on a blog?
Or YouTube?
Most probably, you already know about this monetization strategy. But without talking about ads, this list can’t be completed.
So let me tell you this: Ads can’t make you as rich as you can get by doing other things I’ve mentioned.
But I’m not saying you can’t make $1K-$10K a month from Ads.
For example, there are numerous Google AdSense success stories where top bloggers are earning between $1K to $10K per month.
And that's just scratching the surface—networks like Mediavine and Adthrive take it even further.
On the video side of things, YouTube's ad revenue system is a treasure for creators. MrBeast raked in over $54 million in 2022 alone.
Generating income from ads requires a lot of traffic, but finding the niche and building an audience, we can reap substantial rewards.
But even if you make money with ads, you’ll end up like Mario:
Getting 100K visitors and relying on ads only, not affiliates or other strategies, is a crime. You’re missing out on easy money.
This income report from iliketodabble explains very well.
Without affiliate or sponsored partnerships, we can -$19,340.15 from the total earnings.
Final Advice!
Before you start your journey as a creator, think about your monetization strategies first. Don’t just jump in hoping you’ll make money for sure.
Plan how you’ll make money from the get-go, whether it’s through ads, merch, or those sweet, sweet sponsorships.
This way you’re not just making content - you’re making content that pays!
Now that you’ve got a solid monetization plan, here are a few extra resources to take things up a notch:
