Are you monetizing your social media content?
Social media is not only an important form of digital marketing, it’s also a primary source of entertainment these days.
For this reason, it’s important that you not only make an effort to post to social media but also make an effort to monetize your social media presence.
In this post, you will learn exactly how to do that.
What is social media monetization?
Social media monetization is the practice of creating special social media content and using various social media features to increase the amount of revenue you make through monetization strategies that rely on social media.
These mostly include affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, ad revenue and the occasional product promotion.
Many influencers these days only post on social media.
They don’t have blogs, and they aren’t trying to grow their email lists, yet they make quite a bit of revenue simply by posting great content to platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Why should you monetize your social media content?
Because it’s easy.
If you’re already posting social media content, you might as well enable ads, promote someone else’s product in exchange for affiliate commissions and brand deals, and showcase your own products.
It’s never been easier to make money online.
And like we said, if you’re going to go through the trouble of posting social media content, anyway, you might as well make some money off of it.
Plus, the revenue you earn from social media can fund future projects and pay for additional staff.
What do you need to monetize your social media content?
There are two things you need in order to do well with social media monetization:
Fortunately, finding your niche can help you find your audience.
A niche is a subtopic within a much larger broad topic, though sometimes a niche is a micro topic of a subtopic.
Let’s say crafts is the broad topic I want to target. Subtopics within these topics would be crocheting, knitting and woodburning.
However, each of these subtopics are quite competitive on their own. Therefore, I would need to break them down even further into smaller topics, such as crocheting granny squares or crocheting baby clothes.
This would allow me to target a less competitive niche on social media, which would help me find an audience a lot faster than if I had posted random content on social media in hopes that something would stick.
Along with a pretty decent following, you should also work toward increasing your social media engagement overall.
Social media engagement goes a long way in sponsorship negotiations, especially if you don’t have a larger following, yet.
Finally, you need to know the ins and outs of the platform(s) you want to monetize.
Try to focus on a small handful of social media platforms instead of splitting your focus amongst a lot of them. This will allow you to give your undivided attention to a single platform rather than hoping the same techniques will work for all platforms.
Note: I’d still recommend creating accounts for all major platforms and sharing your content to as many as possible. You can do this easily with a social scheduler like SocialBee. You don’t need to be active there, but if you’re already creating the content, you may as well repurpose it to get as much mileage out of it as possible.
How to monetize your social media presence
1. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a monetization strategy in which you promote other business’ products in exchange for commissions of any sales you bring to those businesses.
Commission rates range from 2 to 30%, typically. SaaS (software as a service) products tend to have the best commission rates.
Amazon Associates is a popular affiliate program in which social media influencers can earn revenue by recommending products from the site to their audience by sharing their own unique affiliate links to those products.
Your niche might have more relevant affiliate programs you can join, such as affiliate programs for online stores that relate to your niche or programs for SaaS products.
TikTok Shop is another possibility.
While it’s a marketplace any creator can use to sell their products directly on the social media app itself, it’s also an affiliate program that’s growing at a rapid rate.
You need to be at least 18 years old and have at least 5,000 followers in order to join the program. Once you do, you can recommend products available from TikTok Shop in videos and on livestreams.
A buy button will appear on the screen for each, which your viewers can use to quickly access the product’s designated page in the store.
2. Sponsorships
Sponsorships provide more opportunities for social media influencers to generate revenue by promoting third-party products.
This revenue model tends to bring in higher earnings than affiliate marketing. This is because creators can negotiate deals with brands one-on-one in which brands pay creators to promote their products by making social media posts about them or that feature them.
This revenue model has become quite popular due to a growing marketing strategy called influencer marketing.
Instead of creating ads to promote products, brands pay influencers to promote them in their content.
TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are the best platforms for influencer marketing and sponsorship deals generally.
Note: If you’re active across multiple platforms, you could offer bundle deals for brands. If you have a blog or newsletter, you could include those in your bundle deals as well.
3. Paid memberships
Some social media platforms, such as YouTube and Twitch, have membership features creators can utilize to monetize their channels by creating special content and perks that are locked behind a paywall.
Followers must pay a monthly subscription to the creator’s channel in order to access these perks.
Patreon is another popular avenue for memberships.
Patreon is its own platform. Creators often offer multiple pricing tiers on the platform and lock exclusive posts and content behind those tiers.
4. Sell products
If you have your own products to sell, you can sell them on social media or promote them at the very least.
TikTok, Instagram and Facebook all allow you to sell your products directly through the app.
YouTube has YouTube Shopping, which creators can use to promote their products on video pages.
If you don’t want to sell your products directly on social media or you have digital products to sell, you can create an online store, then use your social media accounts to promote it.
If you don’t have your own products to sell, consider dropshipping or white labeling products.
5. Sell merch
Merch, or merchandise, is branded products you create and sell to your audience. Products include clothing, accessories and drinkware.
You can work one-on-one with a company that makes branded items, then purchase them in bulk, sell them, and package and ship orders for them on your own. However, most creators use an ecommerce model called print on demand (POD).
In the print on demand ecommerce model, merchandise is only created, or “printed,” when an order is placed. In other words, if you sell a t-shirt with your logo on it, the POD company you work with only print your logo on it after an order is placed for it.
The POD company will then package the shirt and ship it out to your customer on your behalf. They’ll even handle returns for you.
Selling merch with your logo and common phrases you say on it is a simple way to generate revenue on social media, but you can also get a little creative with it.
If you’re not artistic yourself, hire a graphic designer to create merch that doesn’t directly promote your brand but instead references it with stylistic phrases and imagery.
This may increase sales if your viewers don’t want to wear clothing or use products that simply have your logo on them and nothing else.
Note: You can get started by launching a POD store using Sellfy or use a platform like Gelato that makes it possible to sell POD merch through third-party marketplaces like Etsy or eBay. Using Sellfy will allow you to keep more of the profit and give you more control over your store. You can also sell other types of products if you like.
6. Sell courses
If you have a niche you can teach, you can create online courses for it.
Use a course platform like Thinkific to host your course, then promote it on social media.
Making the jump from social media to your online course will be easy for a lot of your viewers due to the limitations that exist within social media content.
Videos on social media must be short, so you’re really not able to get too in depth or too technical about some of the things you teach.
Online courses allow you to expand on a topic by breaking it down into different lessons, offering downloadable resources for it and answering direct questions about it.
7. Sell tickets to an exclusive event
Social media influencers earn massive followings.
Thousands and even millions of people from around the world eagerly open their social media apps in hopes of finding new content from their favorite creators.
Because of this, creators can increase revenue by organizing exclusive events and selling tickets to it.
These events can be in person or hosted live.
You know your audience best, so try to get creative with your event.
Whatever you plan on doing at it, it should be something your audience won’t get from your regular content. This makes it unique, which is a high selling point on social media and should drive ticket sales.
8. Ad revenue
Ad revenue is one of the best and worst revenue models social media can offer.
It’s one of the best because once you’re eligible to start earning ad revenue from platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Instagram, you earn revenue passively simply by uploading content.
YouTubers have been earning millions in ad revenue every year ever since the ad program went live.
On the flip side, ad revenue is an unpredictable revenue model that’s dependent on too many different factors you’re not in control of.
Those factors include social media algorithms that may promote your content more or less depending on the week and ad revenue split that may change with little to no notice.
Still, if you’re able to join an ad revenue program, do it as soon as possible so you can start earning a passive income from your content.
Just don’t rely on it too much. Always use a few different revenue models to ensure you always have at least one income stream if one or more dry out.
9. TikTok programs
TikTok offers two ways for creators to make money on its platform outside of TikTok Shop: the TikTok Creator Fund and the TikTok Creator Rewards Program.
The TikTok Creator Rewards Program offers high earnings but is much more strict than the TikTok Creator Fund.
While you can earn revenue from unoriginal content in the TikTok Creator Fund, all content posted under the Creator Rewards Program must be original.
Unfortunately, TikTok uses AI to review videos, and many creators say they receive violations for unoriginal content for reposting their own content as well as safety restrictions that seem to come out of nowhere.
The revenue is also unpredictable from both programs.
Some months creators will earn over $1,000 or more while others they’ll earn a few hundred.
The Creator Fund is reportedly more consistent than the Creator Rewards Program, but it offers lower RPMs (revenue per thousand impressions).
You can only be part of one program or the other, and you can’t go back to the Creator Fund once you join the Creator Rewards Program.
The RPMs and payouts creators reportedly earn are also extremely low for the number of views TikTok receives.
This is why it’s recommended that you cross-post your content to other platforms as well, including YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels.
10. Offer coaching
If you have a niche you can teach, coaching and consultations are another way you can make money.
These are one-on-one sessions you have with your followers, which they pay to receive.
Coaching is a great way for creators to share their knowledge with others, especially for creators who find social media and online courses impersonal.
By working one-on-one with clients, you oversee their journey and can pretty much guarantee their success, a lot better than you can by creating content for your niche and hoping they learn something from it.
11. License your content
If you produce video content other businesses might want to use, you can license it and make it available for a fee.
Place a watermark or your logo on your content, either all over it or in a place that can’t be cut out if someone tries to use your video.
Then, make sure you use a text overlay or a caption that says “license this video” to promote it.
You can license videos and photos. Content that makes for good licensing includes wildlife content and travel content.
Final thoughts
Earning a living as a content creator isn’t easy. It takes time and effort.
But there aren’t too many barriers to entry and there are lots of different revenue streams you can leverage.
The key is building an audience of engaged followers that want to hear what you have to say.
Then, incorporate the tactics we’ve discussed above naturally and logically.
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