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When it comes to success and earning money, the hardest thing for people to understand is that there is no secret formula, and you cannot monetize your personal brand right away. You have to take it step by step.
Personal branding is an exciting opportunity to put your name out there, gain exposure, and potentially earn money. What I love about personal branding is that anyone can do it-whether you are an artist, a finance expert , an author or a software developer. Every person is unique, and if you know what your uniqueness is, then you know how to show your personal brand to the world.
To apply these ways of monetization, you first have to establish your brand. You will need a website and social media presence to start with. You could also add a video channel and podcast.
Here are the top 16 ways with which you can earn extra money with your Personal Brand.
1. Help Others Reach New Heights
You can start monetization by offering coaching or consulting. As your brand becomes stronger, and people begin to see you as a go-to person in your area, you can start charging more for your services. Thereâs a need for consultants in almost every niche. People often prefer to learn things step-by-step from someone who has already been through the same process.
People always need advice. Even if youâre a middle-level professional, you can still help a complete beginner, and they will value your mentorship. I know people who consult on dog training, mind mapping, and shopping. It is proof that you can become a coach or a consultant in almost every niche.
2. Share Your Knowledge in an E-book or Audiobook
People always want to learn and improve. The fact that youâre reading this right now is proof of that. E-learning is the way of the future. And nowadays, itâs insanely easy to create and offer your digital products. A lot of readers enjoy guides and âHow-to' s.â If you already have a blog, you can mix and rewrite your existing blog posts into a short book. For a lot of people, itâs worth paying 5 to 15 dollars for an e-book with instructions than to pay for coaching or try to figure everything out themselves. You can self-publish eBooks and paperbacks with Kindle Direct Publishing. Listing your book on Amazon will help you reach an audience of millions of people.
3. Create Products
Just like celebrities create perfumes, you can develop your products. They donât have to be perfumes, but you can think of different physical products that would fit your niche and personal brand. If you created a brand in the world of dog training, you could start manufacturing toys or collars. Of course, I have to warn you â selling physical products can be a massive headache. You have to consider that youâll have to deal with manufacturing, inventory, and shipping. You have to know your margins. Creating digital products is much easier; there, you wonât have to go through all these steps. However, I see a significant upside of physical products that digital cannot offer. Itâs the fact that your followers will have a real product created by you in their homes, in their everyday lives.
4. Offer Your Services : Providing a service always takes most of your time. It requires a lot of attention to your clients. But itâs also one of the best ways to start earning money with your personal brand. You should always charge an hourly rate or discuss the number of revisions with your clients beforehand. Of course, platforms like Fiverr or Upwork handle that for you. However, these platforms are more mass market, and I found that when youâre working on your own and not using a platform, you can charge a more premium price. When youâre providing a service, itâs vital to establish strong relationships with your clients. You need them to come back to you in the future and reorder. Itâs always better to keep working with clients and products you already know than to start with a new client from scratch. Your main goal with every client is to provide a service so excellent that they will come back to you for future projects. You need to establish a great relationship and understanding between you.
5. Help Others Cheat
Yes, yes⌠I want to talk to you about cheat-sheets, checklists, and templates or basically anything that can provide your followers with a âstep-by-step,â âcopy-pasteâ or a âfill in the gaps.â People are lazy. Everyone wants a shortcut, and people are willing to pay good money to find it and achieve more results by doing less. Thatâs where you come in. No matter what you do, there is a cheat sheet you can provide for your customers. For example, a fully developed one-month dog training plan from a dog trainer, checklist for a compelling article from a writer, or an email newsletter template from a marketer. For your customers, this is half the job done, which saves them time and money. For you, itâs a task you have to complete once, but you can sell it for a very long time.
6. Pack Your Knowledge in an Online Course
Developing an online course takes a lot of time and effort, but it is worth it. The online course industry is thriving right now. You can find courses ranging from a few hundred dollars to ten thousand dollars. And imagine this: you can easily create one of those courses. Platforms like Thinkific and Teachable allow you to create your online course, develop your curriculum, and set up quizzes and landing pages. These platforms will enable you to create your course as a separate personal site. But if you want to reach a built-in audience of an online learning platform, you should consider services like Udemy or Skillshare. But keep in mind that courses on these platforms are priced lower.
If you have a website, I recommend using Thinkific or Teachable. They allow you to connect your courses to your domain and choose a design that will fit your brand so that users will have a seamless transition.
I believe that anyone can create a course. Like with personal branding in general, no matter what you do, thereâs a place for you. Thereâs a niche for you. There are people who want to learn from you. You have to discover for yourself what it is you want to offer the world.
Having an online course is the ultimate step in personal branding â no matter when, now or later, but every personal brand gets there.
7. Become a Master of Your Masterclass
If youâre not yet ready to fully dive into developing an online course, you can start with smaller steps like masterclasses or workshops. These fancy words seem to work better with an audience than just âlessonsâ or âclasses.â Unlike an online course, your masterclass should be one topic-oriented.
For example, if your online course is about creative writing, then your workshop or masterclass can be on headlines. Because you cannot possibly fit all the information in this short period. Bigger topics need a bigger learning process. Decide on the length and frequency of your workshops. Is it a one-time thing, or is it a weekly workshop? You can host it live as a webinar for a small group of people so that you will be able to answer everyoneâs questions and give your attention to each member of the group. You need to ensure people that attend your masterclass and pay money for it get the value they came for and learn something new. Because in the future, when you create an online course, people who already participated in the workshops will convert into your online course students. If your masterclass was this good, then your online course should be even better. This is the logic that people should follow.
8. Provide Deeper Insights With a Paid Newsletter
Paid newsletters are great for people that would like to dive further into learning from you. It is a solution when you donât want to spend much time reading an e-book or pay a lot for consultancy or spend a lot of time on an online course. It is very convenient because your readers will receive âno fluffâ useful bits of information every week. It is a way to subscribe to constant learning. A lot of people start online courses but never finish. They need a reminder, a push. With a paid newsletter, all they need to do is open and read their email.
9. Offer Premium Content With a Membership
Another great way to offer exclusive content is a membership program. You can put certain materials on your website behind a paywall. For example, you can provide tutorials, e-books, and podcasts separately with a membership. What is important to remember with a membership, is that you have to plan the paid content thoroughly. You want your content to add value worth paying for every month. It is crucial not only to get a member but also to keep a member. Your goal should be to create an engaged community. Your members will feel like theyâre a part of something bigger, and they will turn into the best brand advocates you can find.
10. Become an Affiliate for Products You Believe In
Affiliate marketing had a market value of $17 billion as of 2022.. And it does sound appealing for you to get a piece of that. So how do you do it? Letâs say you blog about books. To every book review you write, you can include a link to Amazon with the Amazon Associates program. So whenever your readers click your link and buy it, you will get a commission. If you blog about traveling, you can become an affiliate for Airbnb, Booking, hotels, airlines, or all kinds of travel apps. A lot of brands offer affiliate programs. You can include links in your blog posts or your email newsletter. To get started, think of the brands you usually talk about that fit your personal brand. Then google if they have an affiliate program. If they do, join it and start developing content in which you can feature your links.
When I say become an affiliate for products you believe in, I say it for a reason. Reputation is everything in personal branding. And your followersâ trust is something you never want to lose. So before promoting to your readers, think if itâs the right product for your brand. The best way to promote is to promote things you actually like.
11. Turn Your Time on Social Media Into Money
If you have an engaged audience on social media, you can start your journey to influencer marketing. Endorse businesses with a post on Facebook or a story on Instagram or a mention on any other platform you use. Depending on your audienceâs size, you can charge from $30 to $1,000+ per mention. You can register on influencer marketing platforms like Social Spark or Viral Nation. They act as a middleman and help connect influencers to brands.
Remember: the most important thing is to work with brands that align with your brand. Your brand is a priority. Be authentic with your followers. Only promote the products that you would use yourself.
12. Sell Ad Space on Your Blog
If you have a website, you absolutely should get started with Adsense. With their automated algorithm, Google chooses which ads would be best suited for your content. When visitors click on the ads on your blog, you get paid. Itâs as easy as that. Sign up for Google Analytics. There you will be able to see how the ads perform.
13. Become a Guest Blogger
It is a fantastic solution that will help you build up your brand even more and get authority in your niche. There are a lot of websites, publications, and companies that look for additional content. Find those websites in your niche and reach out to them, asking to become a contributor. With your email, youâll have to send out a media kit. You can read all about it and how to create it in the guide I wrote. But basically, a media kit is a document that contains all about you as a personal brand: information about your niche, target audience, reach, expertise, etc.
Writing for other blogs is an opportunity to earn money, expand your audience, and reach more people.
14. Talk About Your Brand in an Interview
After becoming a guest blogger, the next logical step is getting interviewed. The procedure is the same as with contributing. Find the media in your industry that does interviews and apply with your media kit. Having a media kit is a must-have for a personal brand that wants to scale and get featured in the media.
15. Start a Podcast!
If you want to take your brand a step forward, you can start a podcast.
Podcasts are getting trendier every day. On most popular podcasts, advertising costs $25-$40 per thousand listeners. So podcasts have fantastic monetizing potential.
As a personal brand, you can explore different topics in your niche, hold interviews, discuss news from your field.
16. Start a YouTube Channel
More than 500 million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day. Can you imagine that?
You can turn your existing blog posts into video format. Video content is much more engaging for the audience. The average viewer remembers 95% of the message from watching a video compared to only 10% from reading.
You can include your affiliate links in the description or earn money from ads with the YouTube Partner Program.
Monetizing your personal brand can be a confusing process. Is it ethical? Which way is the best? How do I do it? So many questions start popping in your head. But you have to remember to stay true to yourself and your followers. People come to you for your free content, but once they get interested, theyâll want to learn from you further and see what else you have to offer.
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đ About Vandana Nanda
đ My Story : The Journey Thus Far
Vandana Nanda, is the Founder and CEO of Winbrand Academy, an Online Personal Branding and Digital Marketing School.
After working in the corporate world with IT and Education companies for over two and a half decades, Vandana decided to venture online in 2020 on a full time basis.
Working online with Time Freedom and Financial freedom has been a long cherished goal for her. Vandana has travelled the world and experienced both extremes of life , going from being a successful corporate executive and a homemaker to being a single parent and bringing up two young children while also focussing on a full time corporate job.
She has been able to bounce back, learn new skills and continue on her path to achieving Financial and Time Freedom. She has made it her mission to achieve financial freedom herself and also help thousands of people across the globe to find financial freedom by doing what they love. Through Winbrand Academy ,she is helping Entrepreneurs, Small Business Owners, Real Estate Agents, Insurance Brokers, Authors, Actors, Musicians, Lawyers, Teachers, Industry-Specific Professionals, and of course, people with a specific Passion from around the globe brand themselves.
Vandanaâs purpose is to help people brand themselves as Leaders and Authorities in either their specific niche or in whatever their passion is while creating an income doing what they love.