In the recent few years, earning money as a content creator and building an influencer career has become more accessible and popular. Creators on platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are now earning six figures through multiple income streams.
Content creation has almost become a mainstream profession with many aspiring and talented creators taking it as a full-time activity.
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How to become a content creator?
Content creation is about connecting with audiences through content that inspires, entertains and transforms.
Whether you write blogs, take photos, produce videos, or record podcasts, with consistency and a sound social media strategy, you can become a professional content creator.
By creating content around your core values and what you care about you can attract people who believe in your cause or audiences with similar interests. This is the first step to start with content creation on social media and building a community.
You need a community that trusts you and that will be interested in knowing more about whatever you have to offer. However, success lies in the consistency of releasing videos and the uniqueness of the content you create.
Once you build a community, you can start monetising your content. If you can offer brands a large and/or engaged audience and your content is relevant to a brand’s target market, they will probably want to collaborate with you.
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Here’s how to make money on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook as a content creator
1. Become an Influencer and go for brand collaborations
On Instagram, once you grow your account to a certain number of followers and reach, brands will approach you or you can approach brands for product promotions.
On Facebook, you can generate revenue by publishing content that features or is influenced by a business partner. You can use Brand Collabs Manager, which enables you to find and connect with brands.
On YouTube, you can negotiate directly with brands, and they will sign contracts and pay you directly.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is like sponsored posts but here you only get paid if people buy the product or service you’re promoting, rather than receive payment for your promotional post.
3. Instagram Shop and YouTube Merchandise
Through the Instagram Shop, you can integrate your e-commerce store with your profile and promote/sell your products directly to your followers through your posts.
On YouTube, you can create a merchandise shelf to sell your own merchandise. For this, you must be at least 18 years old and your channel must have at least 10,000 subscribers.
4. Ad revenue and content monetisation
On Instagram, you can earn advertisement revenue from long-format videos.
On YouTube, ad revenue is the most obvious way to make money. However, you will need to have a certain number of subscribers and watch hours to start monetising your videos.
On Facebook, you can earn money through in-stream ads that appear during or after your videos.
5. Live Badges on Instagram and YouTube Superchat
If you broadcast live on Instagram, you can offer Badges to your viewers which they can buy as tips to show their support. This service is currently only available to creators in the US, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, Australia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico.
YouTube Super Chat payments give your loyal viewers the ability to pay and have their messages highlighted in your live chats during your live streams on YouTube. For this, you must be at least 18 and live in a country where the feature is offered.
6. Premium Subscriptions
On Facebook, you can earn through subscriptions, which lets your followers subscribe to your page directly through monthly recurring payments that you set. Another way is through Subscription Groups that allow group admins to charge a subscription fee from the members to further invest in their communities.
On YouTube Channel, memberships can be sold to subscribers. Your fans can opt-in to pay you an extra amount for exclusive content access or perks. For this, you need to be at least 18 and have more than 30,000 subscribers. Also, if a YouTube Premium member watches your video, you will automatically get a portion of their subscription fee.
