Unveiling Social Media Success: Strategies and Realities of Monetizing Your Influence

Welcome back to this podcast episode of how to make money with social media. And if this is a great career and if you want to become a social media influencer, what to look out for? How are you going to make money from this? And I'm your host Rico today, and I am interviewing Ali from corporate. Actually, it's her podcast, but today we're going to switch it up a little bit.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to this episode. Like Rico said, we are going to be talking about how you can leverage social media to make money. You know, I was messaging with my cousin today on Instagram and she said, wait, you can make money from reels? And I'm like, did not everybody doesn't know this?

Like, well, we have never made money from reels. Just putting that out there. True. But I mean, millions of views and got zero money from reels.

You're absolutely right. But a lot of people make money from reels. And. And I want to pull the covers back and unveil the. I don't want to say secrets behind social media, because they're not secrets, but maybe just things that people aren't really aware of. And now more than ever, you know, it's late 2023. People need to be able to know how they can have a supplement to their income. And for us, social media has been exactly that.

And so, yeah, it's really interesting that you say make money with reels, because a lot of people think that that is the only way to make money. You know, you get like, AdSense. And the biggest misconception people have is that, oh my gosh, you have a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars, two hundred thousand followers on TikTok. So you must make a lot of money. Or on Instagram.

We don't make any money from Instagram.

And that is a hundred percent correct.

Or TikTok.

Or TikTok or YouTube. So it's all, all of it is kind of diluted. When you, when people talk about AdSense, they're mostly 99% of the time talking about YouTube.

Well, let's back up here. So I want to go over five different ways that you can make money with social media. No, six. So a lot of people, you know, since I've transitioned out of my 9 to 5 job and into social media full time, all of my family and friends are like, how are you making money with social media? I think it's a mystery to a lot of people. So here's some ways that you can make money with social media and that we are making money with social Media. So number one is brand deals. I love that one.

That's low hanging fruit. You just got to make sure that these brands are kind of aligned with what you're trying to achieve.

Yep. And you, there's a misconception that you need to have hundreds of thousands of followers to have brands reaching out to you, but that's simply not true. There's something called a nano influencer, a micro influencer, a macro influencer, a mega influencer like Kylie Jenner. You can have 5,000 people that are following you and it's your engagement that matters. Would they buy something from you? If 5,000 people would really buy something from you, brands will do business with you.

You're better off than most people because there's this mega influencer. I'm selling T shirts and I think she has 1.2 million followers overall platform and couldn't sell like 20 hoodies or something. So just because you have a huge following doesn't mean that your audience is actually invested in your success. So you might have an audience that actually wants to see you fall. And more likely than not, in today's world, they don't want you to succeed. So they're actually going to cheer when you trip up and fall. And yeah, that's just something to look out for.

Yeah, yeah. So another way people can make money with social media is Adsense, like Rico mentioned a few minutes ago. So that is a specific term for YouTube, I believe, right?

Right. No, no. You can make ad dollars everywhere.

But I thought adsense was. When people mention adsense, it's about YouTube.

No, it could be about everything.

Okay, so have you ever been watching a YouTube video that's kind of long and then you run into an ad, the original maker of that YouTube video is getting paid because the company putting that ad there has paid YouTube and YouTube pays video creators. It's a little vicious cycle, but it can be very lucrative if you know your brand really resonates with that commercial and then people are watching your video and they buy that thing. It could be great for a company.

And a creator can be. But these are very. So on YouTube is like the only platform that you can actually sustain a living with just making good content. Every other platform you cannot.

I completely agree with you.

And one thing that's hugely that I tell people now that are like all these young kids, I want to be an influencer. Well, if there's a gazillion influencer, that makes it nothing special. So why would a brand reach out to you?

Yep.

Because you're nothing special. If everybody has. It has a huge following, then it's like, why? Why do it? You know, like why?

Yeah. Like if everybody's crazy, then nobody's crazy.

Yeah.

And I looked up the numbers this morning. The money that you can make with reels. For example, on Instagram, if your reel gets a thousand views, you can make up from $0.01 to $0.05. So a 10,000 view video, I think that's $500. So TikTok pays like $0.02.

No, no, that'd be crazy.

Really?

With 10,000 views? No, that math is wrong.

Well, I'm a creator, I'm not a mathematician.

Because YouTube pays like, think like for a million. For a million view video, I think like $8,000.

Wow, that's pretty crazy.

Yeah.

Can you look that up for us?

Yeah.

So I have gotten paid from TikTok the smallest amount. It's not a huge source of income. I know we said earlier that we don't make money from social media that way, but I've made like 700 total in four years. And I've had over over 20 videos that have had million views or more. So they don't pay that much. I know there's a guy, Vegas Poly C. We love him. Hello, hello, hello. This is Vegas Paulie C. He, I think he showed he made like $7,000.

Yeah. So it's gotta be longer than a minute and you need to have like a captivate of audience that want to watch you for a minute plus. But as of yesterday, I think they just changed that too. So people that were making tens of thousands of dollars each month are now making like hundreds.

Yeah. As more and more people become influencers and social media content creators, it dilutes the pool. And there's just more videos for your eyes to be drawn to. But you only have one pair of eyes and 24 hours in a day, so how many videos could you possibly watch? So anyways, let's keep going with our six ways to earn money on social media. Number three is pay per view, which is what we just talked about. So number four is sponsorships. So we don't have a sponsor for this podcast episode, but we did for the last few. And companies pay us to talk about their brands or products in our podcast or in an ad.

Yeah.

How's that been for us?

So that's been not really because we don't have enough podcast listeners as of today. We have hundreds yet, but we need thousands. And in order for us to make a sustainable living from podcasting, we need you Guys to like subscribe, give us the thumbs up and rate our podcast.

And in exchange, we will keep making these episodes and telling you about different career paths. You can take what it takes to get there. I will keep interviewing guests and we pay out of pocket right now when we fly or drive to a guest and set up our mobile podcast studio, which we do it ourselves. We pay for that ourselves. So our goal is to have the podcast paying for itself. That's like a dream of ours. That would be so cool.

Yeah. But I feel like that is super far away because everybody and their dog now has a podcast. And the more people have a podcast, the more competitive the market, the less special. And so it's the bare of entry. Every day of waiting gets higher and higher because you can only listen to one podcast at a time.

That's so true. And a lot of people have reached out to me and said, hey, like, do you give, you know, video editing lessons or can you teach me how to be an influencer? And you and I have worked with a couple people before and tried to help them, like, learn how to do what we did. But you know what? The number one thing is that I think people struggle with consistency.

You know, I don't know if it's consistency because we are now at a time where there's like a war of attention. So we need to make more provocative videos. And you can see it with Mr. Beast. His videos are getting bigger and crazier each month that goes by. And so everybody is in that constant game. So when you're in the social media realm, you need to be better, bolder, more expensive, more provocative. If you're in the. If you're a woman and you're doing bikini or modeling, you need to be hotter, prettier, more available.

Yep.

Sexier, doing all these crazy things. So it is a, it's going to be a super tough market to get into.

Yeah. But Mr. Beast also says that if you are consistent and you, you improve on at least one little thing each video you make, you will eventually get big, you will eventually be successful and get those views that you want or those followers that you want or go viral or get those brand deals. And that's kind of what we did. I mean, we started out doing really crappy little videos in our garage. The walls were painted purple and yellow and we had this. I think we even did it with our phone at the beginning on a tripod.

But it took us, so people understand. It took us five years working two full time jobs to get here.

Yeah.

Where we are today. And for people that say, oh, you guys are an overnight.

Nobody says we're an overnight success.

Nobody's ever said that before because when they see the videos, like, oh my gosh, you have a million view video yet it's been in the making for five years.

Yeah, true.

And tens of thousands of dollars in equipment, video editing, laptops, software, microphones, microphones. So the startup cost is huge.

Yep. Yeah, it is. But it doesn't have to be. You can start small.

Well, the problem is when you start small and not buy the right equipment, you're going to have a disadvantage with everybody already that is making because there's people. So this is going to be true facts from me to you, the listener. If you're thinking about doing a podcast, I'll bet you a million dollars that somebody else is thinking about that same thing as you are and actually going to probably execute. So you need to get it right, do it and start it and follow.

Through and don't let fear cripple you and prevent you from starting. I remember when we first started posting content, I felt so cringy and I felt embarrassed and ashamed and like almost disgusted with myself with the videos I was making. But I had a strong message to share. And Rico, you were such an amazing partner. You pushed me and you challenged me and you motivated me every day to keep going. And I have this mantra that I always use in my head and it's, ooh, that hurts. But I'm not gonna let it stop me. And I mean, I've gotten hate on so many videos. Do hate comments hurt? Yeah, a little bit. Does it suck when you make a video and you spend a lot of time on it and it gets no views? Yeah, it hurts a little bit, but you gotta keep going.

Yeah, that's the name of the game. The thing is, as an influencer, you're only as relevant as your last few videos. So if your last few videos were not relevant, most likely you're gonna fade out. And I just watched a TikTok video two days ago about touching emu. You know that guy who did that crazy viral dance? The touchy Mimo guy that did.

Oh yeah, with the drone.

With the drone, yeah, and had Dr. Phil on and everything. He just said that he made a follow up post because somebody wrote a thing and said you fell off the face of the planet.

He's a one hit wonder.

And the problem is with social media, everybody at one point is gonna fall off. You need to stay relevant, like, and constantly gossip, drama, do Provocative things to stay relevant.

I don't think we do that.

We're in a different. So we are in a space of career advice.

Yeah, that's what I, that's what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about, you know.

Yeah, but we're, we're like a salt. A small sub nich and it's. And even us, if we're not going to innovate at one point, we're going to be obsolete and there's somebody else is going to come along and be more provocative. Yeah.

You and I have brainstorming sessions all the time. Not formal ones. We'll go on a walk with the dog and we'll be like, what is a new cool thing we could do on our podcast? What is a new cool hook that we could use for our TikTok that nobody else is doing? We talk about crazy ideas we have, like, what if we did this? And we're like, whoa, that'd be crazy. Sometimes we try it and it works. Sometimes we try it and we're like, oh, that was a terrible idea.

Yeah, just trying to. And it's a huge mind. Mind game because you got us in the, in the realm of 10 second videos of being famous for a week. You need to then leverage that. And so it's a constant, like mind torture of trying to stay relevant and get good views. So monies keep coming in.

Yeah, so you bring up a really good point. You also have to kind of like doing it because if you're going to turn it into a job, you don't want it to feel like work. Like, you and I, this is our. It started out as our hobby, like a fun, cool thing we were doing on the side that nobody really knew about. But now it's turned into a money making entity and it's fun too. We do this Saturdays and Sundays. We do this nights and weekends. It's become like a second skin for us. So it's.

So it's way easier when you have a business and then add social media to that business that you already like than it is starting a random social media account trying to sell something that you don't know much about. So when you already have a product that you're trying to sell, it's way easier to then just make content about that product than it is to become a social media influencer and then start selling in your niche because you might not, you might not like what that audience likes. And so then you got to push stuff that you're not really passionate about.

Yeah. And actually that is the fifth way to earn money with social media. So let's keep going on our list. The fifth way is to sell your own thing, just like what you're talking about.

But that is to sell your own thing on social media is like, it's also getting so saturated right now because you can watch one video. So somebody's like, right now, oh, I wanna, I want to market my, my little cross stitching or my little, you know, I do embroidery. Embroidery. Or I'm. Or I sell dog food or some, or something else like that. And then I got to do a social media account. Yeah, you should.

Mm.

But it's gonna, if you can't do it in house, it's gonna cost you a lot. And so you need to have the sales to support it to even grow bigger.

Yeah.

And it's. And it's. And it's difficult. It is, it's mind draining. It's. It's hard to film, it's hard to edit.

It's an everyday grind.

It's an everyday grind.

And it's always something. You're always like, oh, shoot, we didn't plug in the mic, we gotta re record it. Or like, oh, that video, there's background noise, we gotta reshoot it. It's like a constant, a constant thing. So let me ask you this. Do you think it's easier? I'm gonna give you two scenarios. Tell me which one would be easier. You already have a social media account and then you want to start selling a product or you want to start selling a product and you have the product and then you have to grow your social media account.

Number two.

Number two, easier or harder?

Way easier. Number two is way easier because if you can already pull sales with your website and something and you add social media to it, you can basically make money day one. And then you can slowly ramp up social media as you're going to, because social media is a huge, huge upfront investment. And I'm not talking about. You make a highlight story while you sitting in the Caribbean or on a yacht and try to, oh, look at this, look at this bikini. And look at this what I'm drinking.

And look at my Louis Vuitton.

Yeah, look at my Louis Vuitton. And here's, here's. And you should buy my, my milkshake smoothie supplement or my, or my mug tea, you know, my mud water tea or something like that. It's way harder to actually start social media and then sell a product. But when you already have the product and you're making sales, you can use some of that revenue as, say, 10% and just drop it into social media and that should then boost your sales and you can see it over time.

So I see your point, but I actually think it's the opposite. I think it's easier to grow your social media first when you don't even have a product in mind and then start selling something. Because if you're starting to sell something at the very beginning of creating your social media, people want to have free value. They don't want to be sold.

How are you going to provide free value if you're. If you're selling a scarf?

So I'll give you an example. You make funny video.

Let's make the video about the scarf.

What?

I'm selling a scarf. Tell me how I'm going to make videos about selling a scarf.

I'm going to tell you how to grow your social media quickly and then sell a scarf.

But I already have the scarf, so let's.

Yeah, okay. So here's what you do. You start making funny videos about being cold. You do cold plunges. You go outside in a T shirt when it's negative 20 outside, make funny videos about how cold you are. Then other people are like, yeah, man, I live in Chicago. February is hella cold. Then you introduce your scarf. Once you've gone viral, once you have a social media and you're known as that cold girl, then it makes sense. Oh, my God, she's selling a scarf. You're solving the problem you initially presented to people the cold. That'd be an idea that I have. Crickets. Let's move on to number six.

Yeah, we leave that for another day. Because I don't think that that's any way of doing it. Because when you do it that way, the thing is that when you build an audience first without the product and you're gonna be that cold girl, why not just have two boots and just go into a heated room and just be like, hey, I'm just not gonna be outside. But when you have the product, you can build your audience around that specific product and you can see exactly who you target. Rather than targeting all floor, all southern people like from Florida telling you how great cold plunging is. And people are gonna be like, that lady's crazy. Now she's selling a scarf. But all her audience lives in Florida or in the Bahamas. And they're saying, we don't need any of that. We're just watch out of entertainment. And so this is not going to result into any sales Maybe so. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe. Alright, let's move on to number six. So the last way that we know that we can think of that you can make money with social media is managing somebody else's account for them and getting paid.

That's probably one of the best and easiest way for you to get residual income.

And we've been doing that. Now we have a couple clients and it's okay money. Some clients are easier to work with than others. Some are very high maintenance clients and want you to do a lot of work for them and they're very picky or they're perfectionist. Some clients are just happy that somebody else is doing it.

That's when the price goes up.

Yeah, that's true.

The harder the client, the more you charge.

How do you know how to, how do you know how difficult the client's going to be before you start charging them?

Well, you kind of weigh it out. If they have a gazillion questions and they have their own ideas of doing things, then you kind of know that you got a up charge, 30% time wasting.

You got to get to know your client before you agree to work with them.

Well, yeah, you got to know their vision, what they're trying to do because you can't sell them something that you don't know what, what their vision is.

Yeah, that's true. Also. You could offer to do the first three weeks free or first three weeks at a flat rate and then reassess the cost.

Yeah. You do like two months or so and then reevaluate if this is working out for both parties.

Yeah. So let me ask you this. What is the biggest lesson you've learned with social media over the past three years that you want to share with people who haven't started yet but want to start?

The hardest lesson is it is a grind. Whatever you think it's easy to make these videos, it is an absolute grind. It is 10 hour days, working Saturdays and Sundays while our cousin was barbecuing.

I wish football, I wish we could.

Have gone to that. I was working editing stuff. So it's an absolute grind for everybody that's trying to get into it.

Yeah.

Make a commitment and it's like having a sport that you're really dedicated to. As soon as you're off normal job, you start doing that.

Yeah, that's a good one. The biggest lesson that I think I've learned for myself is leave emotion out of it. Treat it like a business from day one and don't get emotional with low views or no Progress or hate comments, just keep going. And it's that lesson of delay to gratification. You know, you always used to say live like nobody else, so you can live like nobody else.

But you know when you start, but when you're like, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm, I don't have a job, so let me start a social media. That's kind of too late. You had to start that three to four years in advance.

Yeah.

So you can then drop out and have already a few clients that can float your bills. In order for you to do that, you can't just be one day like, I'm gonna quit my job and do social media full time. That had to be few years in the making.

Yep.

In order for you to make that switch. Because everything with social media is subscription based. Adobe, Adobe Cloud Cap Cut. Cap Cut.

Yeah.

Photoshop editing, Photoshop subscription to Canva, Epidemic.

Sound for Royal Music. Yeah, everything. It's, it takes, it's expensive to get all the noises and all the lights and all the editing and all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

And the more you grow, the less you can do yourself and the more you need other people. So the faster you grow, the more views you get, the more, the faster your audience builds, the less you can do yourself. So then your time is better spent actually just filming and let somebody else edit. But nobody's gonna edit your video for a dollar or two. So that's gonna be in the hundreds of dollars. Right. And then it just builds up because one month you're gonna have the Adobe cloud Service, that's like $360. Then you have two YouTube videos to cost another four or five hundred bucks for the year. You're talking for the year. No, no YouTube videos. That's what, that's what we pay for one video. If we get a professionally edit, that's a few hundred bucks right there. So if you have two YouTube videos at $200 a pop, plus Adobe comes in at subscription, you know, the subscription model renews, you're basically out $850.

So why would you have Adobe for video editing if you were paying to get your videos edited?

Because you still need to do some final touches. So a video editor is only gonna be as good as you give them instructions to enter own vision. For me, when I hire a video editor, it's like an art form. It's like when people draw art or make music. I feel like video editing is the same art.

And we used to edit our own videos, but we don't anymore. And our video editor right now is Chef's Kiss. He is the best I've ever seen.

Yeah, but he also charges prices like it. So it's, it all comes at a price. And you have a few videos that flop and you have a few subscriptions that renew and you don't have a brand deal. All of a sudden you're at zero. You're back to where you started and it's not that easy. It's not. Yeah, well, you got on your list.

That's really it. We talked about the six ways to earn social media, turn money with social media. They were brand deals, adsense, pay per view sponsorships, sell your own thing and manage someone else's account. We also talked about the mantra when you're starting out making social media, you know, sometimes it's a little cringeworthy, but don't let that stop you. It hurts, but I won't let it stop me. Just keep going. Consistency is everything. Leave emotion out of it and look at it like a business. You know what? We didn't talk about virality hacks, how.

To go viral, but see that changes by as, as it goes on. So as platforms get older, it's harder to go viral. I remember when we first started off with TikTok when Gary, we first talked about it. Yeah, it was so, so easy to get a viral view video because, because people didn't really make content and three years into it or four years now everybody's a content creator and everybody's trying to try to do, try to like make money and become an overnight millionaire with it.

Yeah, well, let's talk about it. Anyways, so here's some things that we've learned if you want to go viral with, let's say TikTok, for example. So the first thing is if you get a comment, respond to it with a question because then they'll answer the question and comment again. So that drives engagement up. That tells the algorithm, oh, people are commenting on the video, let's boost it. So that's one tip I have. Another tip I have is start your video with a hook. People's attention span is like 5 seconds. Nowadays you have a few seconds, a few fleeting moments to capture somebody's attention and make them want to stick around for another five seconds. So use hooks like you're never going to believe this or I can't believe I didn't know this until now or I hope you're not making this mistake with your blah, blah, blah. So hooks like that make people go, oh, what am I. I hope I'm not doing that. Let me see what she's talking about. Obviously, lighting, audio and video resolution make a big difference. If you're watching this podcast episode on YouTube, you know, we film these and we are using an insane camera right now. That's why the video looks so 4K and, you know, high quality.

That was also a few thousand dollars.

That was also $5,000 for this camera. This is a Sony A74 with a. I think it's a 35 millimeter Sigma lens.

Yeah. So after taxes and that, I think the camera now you can buy for like 2500, but you need a lens to it. That's another thousand. So you're at about 35.

Yep.

And then you add taxes to it. So it's about almost $4,000 as of today.

Yeah. Another way to get your videos to go viral is to cross promote them on different platforms. So, like I'm going to tell you right now, if you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple Music or Google anywhere, or if you're watching it on YouTube, I'm going to tell all of you that if you want to see how we set up our podcast studio, go follow me on Instagram and go look at my Instagram stories. Because we show how we're filming this in our bedroom right now. So if you want to see what the setup looks like, the behind the scenes. So see how what I'm doing there, I'm cross promoting different platforms on different platforms. So that's another way you can boost your videos yourself and go viral. What do you think about hashtags? Very controversial.

They're nice, but I wouldn't say that it's a must. I've seen videos go viral without them.

Me too.

But just because they did or didn't, that's just something that you need to split test.

So tell me what split testing is.

So you just test. You can upload the same video twice and see which one does better. One with hashtag and one without. So you can try that out. But don't get into it. Just start making content. Yeah. And it's. It's an interesting journey.

It has been really interesting. I'm glad we did it. I wouldn't change a thing though. And I love doing it with you.

Thanks. Well, I think we're going to wrap it up for this podcast episode and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. Shoot us an email@contactalisonpeck.com if you have any questions and follow subscribe, give us some feedback, and if you do not agree, click the dislike button. Engage. Interact. Just do something. Do something and I will see you in the next one. Bye.