Why Monetize Your Personal Brand
How do you make money from a personal brand?
You can spend a lot of time and energy doing social media marketing, podcasting, writing books, and speaking, but how do you turn all of this into money?
There are a lot of different components to building a personal brand, but there really are only five ways to turn a pile of followers into a pile of profits.
We come across a lot of people who have quite a lot of followers but don’t have as much money as you might think.
They are what we would refer to as “Twitter rich” and “dollar broke”.
How to Turn Followers into Revenue
The 5 methods to turn followers into cash can be summarized in the acronym “P.A.I.D.S.”
First of all, is the “P”, which stands for a physical product.
It could be: a shoe, a piece of clothing, equipment, a shake or a vitamin.
ask yourself what physical product could I make, or do I have, and how can I position myself so my audience buys it?
The second way to monetize your personal brand is the “A” in the P.A.I.D.S acronym, which stands for ads and affiliates.
The interesting thing with this method is that you’re not actually “selling” your audience anything.
What you’re doing is you’re selling other people access to your audience.
Our very first client at Brand Builders Group was Lewis Howes.
He has millions of subscribers and followers on YouTube and social media platforms, and his primary business model is ads and affiliates.
What does that mean?
It means that Louis makes most of his money not from selling something to his audience, but from selling other people ACCESS to his audience.
This is a good business model if you’re super likable and you’re good at getting a lot of followers.
What’s the difference between ads and affiliates?
Advertisers pay you a fixed fee for a timeslot on your show or a post on your account.
Affiliates, however, pay for performance.
They pay you if your audience actually clicks on the link, you give them and buys/engages with the company.
These are both incredible options for those not looking to sell a physical product
The third way to monetize a personal brand is the I in P.A.I.D.S which stands for informational products.
What are informational products?
Informational products can be:
- courses.
- memberships.
- sites.
- certifications.
- assessments.
First, they don’t require manufacturing, so you don’t have to deal with finding suppliers and vendors.
They also don’t require the logistics of shipping, storing, and warehouses.
The downside is that the market is flooded with informational products.
When created correctly, however, they can generate millions of dollars per month.
The D in P.A.I.D.S stands for deals.
What are deals?
Deals are third-party arrangements, where someone is paying someone else for the creation of a piece of art.
For example, um, my first book, Take the Stairs, was a book deal where the publisher paid us in advance to write the book.
Deals can include everything from book deals to an actual painting.
Finally, the fifth and most popular way to monetize your personal brand is the “S” in P.A.I.D.S, which stands for services.
There are all types of services you could sell.
Maybe you’re a chef and you’re going to come cook for people.
You’re a house cleaner or a home organizer.
Maybe you’re a chiropractor or a dentist.
All these are services you can sell.
All right. A lot of the clients we work with are professional service providers.
In my case, one of the services that I provide is that I am a hall of fame speaker, so companies and organizations pay me to come speak at their annual event.
The fastest path to cash is selling a service because all you’re doing is exchanging your time for their money.
The problem with services is that they are the least scalable in the long term because you’re trading time for money.
While it’s the fastest way to make a lot of money relatively quickly, it’s the least scalable.
You can start with services, but then you’re going to have to start developing other revenue streams.
Those are the five ways to monetize your personal brand.
Always remember P.A.I.D.S, and remember that a pile of followers is useless without turning it into a pile of cash.
