6 Ways to Monetize as an Influencer or Creator

Content creation and social media influencing can be full-time jobs, but not all creators are paid for their work. So if you find yourself wondering, “How can I make money as an influencer?” SamCart is here to help. Let’s unpack six ways to monetize as a creator.  

Making Money from Ad Revenue

Allowing ads to run on your content, website, social media pages can be an easy way to make money in the background. While this is perhaps the easiest and most common source of monetization, there are a few caveats to this method:  - Instability: In 2020, YouTube stopped running targeted ads for all “made for kids” channels—resulting in a 95% revenue decrease for thousands of affected content creators. As just one example of how unstable ad revenue can be, this helps highlight the problems with depending on income regulated by media platforms rather than creators owning their own income sources.  - Less Control: Creators have limited (if any) control over the ads displayed on their content. Limited regulation can inadvertently leave influencers supporting businesses, products, and services not aligned with their brand.  - Hefty Fees: When it comes to ad revenue, most content creators see a small fraction of their value. At the time of publication, YouTube and Instagram both take a 45% cut of creator ad revenue. Meanwhile, platforms like TikTok do not offer any ad revenue to creators at all.   Let’s take a closer look at some of the lesser-known ways to monetize as an influencer or creator.  

Sell Digital Products as a Creator

Perhaps your time, thoughts, and advice are your best way to monetize as a social media influencer. These non-material goods are often called “digital products” in the online marketplace. What is the difference? Let’s say you are famous for your knitting work:  - Listing fully-knit socks, scarfs, and other finished items that you have created would be an example of selling your physical products.  - Meanwhile, selling online copies of the knitting patterns you have created would be a way to monetize with digital products.  Content creators and influencers thrive in the production of digital products. Digital products are suitable for a wide range of industries, and they include things like:  - Coaching or consulting services  - Memberships   - Online subscriptions  - Ready-to-print PDFs  - Ebooks  To help your business thrive, partner with a platform like SamCart that specializes in the sales of digital products with features.  

Create and Sell an Online Course

Many content creators and influencers give information, advice, and knowledge away for free on their social media platforms. How can you transform this into sales? Create an online course. eCourses are easy to build, maintain, and deliver when you have the right tools on your side (like SamCart’s all-in-one online course app).  

Promote Affiliate Products

You can begin making money while promoting products or services you enjoy. To get started, you simply need to reach out to the affiliate company and offer advertising services on your platform. Some affiliates may offer products in exchange for advertisements. Others may provide monetary compensation or a mixture of both. Once you build your brand enough, affiliate companies will begin reaching out to you.

Sell Physical Products

Many social media creators attract a following because of their talents. Naturally, this can be easy to monetize when selling physical products:  - If you are famous for your photography, consider selling prints in an online marketplace.  - Perhaps you have a following for your paintings? You might consider opening up an online shop.   - Many famous beauty influencers now make a living selling their own makeup lines.   You can make the most of your work when partnering with an online marketplace that won’t take a cut for each sale you make.  

Your Brand, Your Swag

Influencers and creators often have a brand that their followers love. You can make money by selling tee shirts, tote bags, stickers, and other “swag” that reflects your brand. If you have an online store, these are easy items to add on for more sales and profits.  

SamCart: Your All-in-One Monetizing Platform

SamCart makes it simple for creators and influencers to make money. Our e-commerce platform lets you create your website, sell products, and manage your sales with ease. Your success is our success here at SamCart. We offer unlimited products & pages, easy-to-use templates and tools, transparent pricing, robust dashboards to track your sales, and so much more—no contracts or hidden fees necessary. You can click here to try us for free today, and get ready to grow your business online.