Making Money With Social Media Isn’t Hard. It’s Misunderstood.

If I were starting out on social media again in 2026, this is exactly what I would do. Forbes just named me a top 10 creator in the world, but just a few years ago I had zero followers. Getting here taught me that building an audience is not luck. It comes down to a simple, repeatable framework I call the 6 C's that works in any business or niche. I'm gonna break 'em down for you live today. Let's get into first C. I wanna make something painfully clear for you. So most people start the dumbest way possible. They spray and pray, pumping out 25 average pieces a week across 6 platforms, none of which work and then they wonder why nothing hits. You win on the internet by not being everywhere. You win by being undeniable in one place. Pick one platform, win on it, then expand it. I think about it like we're here at one of the biggest television production agencies in the world. They're really good at TV. They nail it. So they earn a bunch of Emmys. So the question for you is like, where are you going to win your Emmy? Like, which platform should you start on? I've learned each one is like a different version of yourself. And you got to teach them differently. For instance, each platform has a different style, a different way you're going to go viral, and different value to you and your business. So here's the breakdown of my actual strategy on each one in the order of how much money I make from them. Starting on the bottom with X. Twitter X is like the angry middle-aged guy who hasn't become what he wants yet. He's cerebral. He wants to be challenged. You have to be a little smarter and a little ruder than feels comfortable. And it is the fastest platform. So content dies in like a day. Good content looks like this. Contrarian takes, one-liners, predictions that invite a little fight in the comments. Bad content is feel-good aesthetic, trying to be liked instead of right. Here's what good posts look like. My take on how much money people should spend on their weddings. My favorite replies: a $5,000 wedding? Where do you want to have this wedding, in a public toilet? A bad post for this would be something like a cute motivational couple content. That would have done much better on Instagram. What's also really working for us when I look at it is horizontal videos clipped from podcasts like this clip here. Other platforms, they crave vertical videos. X seems to love horizontal. But remember how they pay you? Well, it sort of matches the short shelf life of this content. If you have 100,000 followers, an X sponsorship might be a couple hundred bucks to $1,000 per post. That's the lowest of the bunch. I don't do that kind of content on here, but that is what it is. You can see how much we make right here, actually, for the last month on X. Now, for our last event, just over 1% of the tickets sold through social media came through X, which is basically none. Next, we have TikTok. This is like your 14-year-old cousin. Funny, a little lazy, zero patience. You have 2 seconds or she's gone. The reason is that TikTok reaches cold audiences that don't know you more than it reaches your followers who know and love you. So you actually can't rely on credibility or quick follow-through on your followers. It's kind of like you're starting with a brand new audience every time you post. There's actually this study that found that on Instagram, the medium reach to followers is 68%, while TikTok is 38%. So it's easier to get a ton of views on TikTok, but because your followers aren't seeing your content as much as other platforms, views and followers do less for your business. The high-performing TikToks get right into it like this with a contrarian hook in less than 4 seconds. It presents a problem. Look at this. It shows the solution. So 290,000 views, 441 comments. That's pretty good for me on TikTok. But then look at this low performer here, which has a hook that's just not as strong, not that clear, like what I'm going to get out of it. There isn't a valuable framework in this video. It's just me explaining a problem and like no solution for it. So what does that mean? I only got 9,000 views and 14 comments. That's no bueno for me. What's crushing on TikTok are super stripped down videos. Think like zero-production yapping videos that look like you're talking to a phone, maybe propped up on a water bottle, or you're casually in the car. On the monetization side, you can charge anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000 per sponsored post if you have 100,000 followers. Actually though, selling products depending on what they are works really well on TikTok Shop, but it's hard to get people to, to buy off the platform. To put this in perspective, I have over 2 million followers on the platform and I've sold less than a dozen tickets to my last event. TikTok is great for awareness, terrible for sales unless you have a really viral product that's very easy to see visually. So if you have a CPG product, great. You know, if you're selling a book, great. BookTok's huge, actually. But if you're selling something like an event, much harder. Next is LinkedIn. It's a platform full of professionals trying to get smarter, richer, promoted. Very high signal-to-noise platform. 80% of the users on the platform actually drive business decisions. That's really good because that means they have money and they could spend it. Now, the way you win is combining professional aspiration with tactical education. So think business-related quotes, hiring mistakes, frameworks they can repeat in a meeting later. Bad content gives press release energy and complete aesthetic fluff and corporate jargon nonsense. Let me give you an example of bad. This post was purely inspirational, didn't provide any value or way for the reader to improve themselves. It only pushes a product, which is probably why this didn't get very many views. Now check this post out. It opens with a strong hook and gets into its purpose right away. How to lose good employees. This plays into a contrarian take and it goes to call out companies like Google and its work culture. So it's actually offering a free product. The hiring matrix is a solution for hiring the right people. That's called the lead magnet. Those do really well when you do them right. Now what's crushing for us right now are professional inspirational quotes that look like tweets, just like this example. So LinkedIn is actually trying to increase their short-form video presence to keep up with the other platforms, and we should know because they reach out to me directly and try to get us to be a part of this. I think the best way to get views and grow our posts with a good quote is a picture and a value in the caption. And depending on your niche, LinkedIn can actually be a sleeper. It could be super valuable, like 1,500 to 8,000 per sponsored posts at 100K followers. That's before the deals, clients, hires it brings in, which, you know, you're not going to see the cost of that or the value of that. And that's what I do. LinkedIn doesn't really pay you for doing anything on the platform though. Also, if you sell products, only 2.4% of our tickets were sold through LinkedIn. Again, I don't see a lot of people having a lot of success selling products on LinkedIn unless they're recruiters or something like that. Now, Instagram wants you to be the friend with the aesthetic life. Who lets others sort of peek behind the curtain. It's like relatable, aspirational. And Instagram prioritizes shareable content more than any other platform except maybe X. So the CEO, Adam Mosseri, said they're trying to differentiate themselves from TikTok and YouTube by making Instagram the most social platform. So content that makes you wanna click that little triangle in the bottom right is gold for them. Anything that feels like you're projecting to the audience and is just a huge value dump doesn't really work. That much, which makes it sometimes hard for people like me who I'm not really showing my lifestyle and I don't want to highlight the cars and the planes and the fancy stuff. I mostly just talk about how to make more money and grow your business. For some reasons like that, Instagram could be tougher. Now let's give you examples of what works. This video looks more like a lecture. This is not cute, not aesthetic, and it bombed. However, the second video plays it differently. It's like behind the scenes look that got 341K views. The Reel kind of hits the nail on the head because it shows the peek behind the curtain and presents it in a more casual way. It feels like you and I are hanging out. Little hot tip: carousels are super hot right now. A year ago, the strategy was to use Reels to grow and carousels to engage followers. You still need Reels to grow, but carousels are getting a lot more reach now. I think Instagram's overall organic reach has declined. Lots of studies show like 28% year over year. So it is harder to get views than on TikTok, but the audience is way more engaged and I think valuable. At 100K followers on Instagram, sponsorships run about $2,500 to $7,500 a post. Instagram will also pay you, although not that much, but we've sold lots of tickets on Instagram and I'm focusing just on events because lots of people could do events. In fact, I think we've sold 100x the tickets on Instagram than on TikTok for our last event. Next, we have YouTube, my favorite, obviously, you guys. So this is for the aspirational mid-to-2030s crowd. Tell me in the comments if that's you. Hi! Who basically want the tactical playbook. So this is people who want something to walk all the way through. That's why there's all the recipe YouTube videos, you know, all of the framework videos, or they want to be entertained. Are you not entertained? I think it is the one platform where people will actually sit with you for 10 to 40 minutes and it's the largest search engine for information behind Google. So content lives super long there. Trust builds really fast and good content is actually the story-driven education. So we do case studies, breakdowns, how they built this, documentary-style lessons. Bad content looks like this. It's always tough to go back through and look at your videos. Dang it. It was how to outwork everyone by doing 1% better. It's vague. I would say the value on it isn't as high as we want to be because it doesn't solve an immediate problem. So it's not helping you immediately and it's not like massively entertaining. On the other side, a post like this, do this every time you get paid, provides a tactical frame. It applies to everyone that has a paycheck. It's super signal to noise. It's fast and it's kind of creative. Now I think that's never been a better time to start a YouTube channel as the algorithm is actually favoring smaller channels. And one of the most underused features on any platform right now is YouTube Community Posts. We've been gaining thousands of subscribers and selling our events through posts. Regarding growth, you know, we see a shift happening where it's coming less from long form than it used to and more from short form content. Now, this is mostly for us. It's not the same for every channel. So I'm just showing, telling you what we find. I think like Instagram, the less produced content performing well for smaller channels on the platform actually. YouTube pays the best for sponsorships though, by far. So at 100,000 subscribers, a single YouTube sponsorship runs about $5K to $15K. It's a lot longer though than everything else. Your audience is also gonna buy a lot more on YouTube. And you know, for our recent event, MSM Live, we sold 27% of our tickets through YouTube videos. And I think we sold 11% through YouTube Community. Lastly, a newsletter. So this one might not sound like social media, but it's the highest intent and value audience no one talks about. If you want to steal our homework, you should sign up for the newsletter. You can go to contrarianthinking.co or you can link below to do it. A good newsletter will provide frameworks, business breakdowns, deal analysis in our world, and a lot of here's what I do content or here's what I would do content. Now, if you have a bad newsletter, it's going to give you filler and it trains people to stop opening. So don't do that. Sponsorship can be really high too. It's priced on engagement, like who opens your newsletter and clicks around. Not just subscriber count, which means it's better to have like a small, loyal list than a big checked out one. Let me give you an example of like one of our newsletters. It's called The Trap of Hot Businesses. Businesses that look hot on the outside but optimize for the wrong things. Why I love this and why I think it did so well is it gives you real frameworks on how to counter them, what you could do in business or not do. Here's another one, this time from TurboTax. It does a great job of promoting a product, but it actually gives the reader nothing tactical. So this would be a bad example. It doesn't bridge the gap between customer and brand except to show off the product. It feels a little selfish. If you saw this headline in your inbox, would you even click it? My answer is no, I wouldn't. The sponsorship number for newsletter looks small. It's like $1,500 to $5K per send to 100,000 subs. But don't be fooled, you actually own this audience. So It's the channel you sell the most through. We sold 30% of our tickets through newsletter. And a little trick to grow fast on any of these platforms, follow high-level employees working for the platform you're trying to grow on who are active on social. Almost everyone is trying to build a personal brand. So a lot of these executives are posting free sauce about what the company is doing and what the content they are looking for is. All right, let's talk credibility. Please, please, please, first, for the love of God, this does not mean renting a studio, putting a podcast mic in front of yourself with the fake wood paneling and the uplighting, you know, the what I'm talking about. That can actually hurt you across the board. We found the more produced we try to make content, the worse it performs. So just take a look at some of my own videos. There was this one video that was really polished, like a trending topic, super well edited. However, I think this one got 47,000 views. Like, it had some good insights, but it would have benefited from way less produced look. The other video I wanted to highlight is this one, which is me in my kitchen. It got about 100x the views as the first one. A short about business breakdowns, gave the viewers a framework, sure, but the opening hook looks like it was filmed natively, kind of like we're here meeting with a bunch of people in Hollywood talking about TV shows and content and agents, and it's raw and authentic, like with airplanes flying over simultaneously. So if it's not the studio or the sound effects, what makes people trust you? I found it comes down to things that actually don't cost you any money at all. Platform native. So look like you belong there. Every platform has its own font, pacing, kind of editing feel. And you know when you scroll past something and it just, it feels like it was meant for that platform? That's it speaking what we call the local language. So spend time consuming content from that platform so you know how to tell if it's a native speaker or not. That's how you get credibility without even saying a word. Okay, the second one I wanna talk about is history. So make content about what you've actually done. You don't need to be Warren Buffett, just, Are you a few steps ahead of the next person? Like, I'm not here in front of this place getting an Emmy, but I actually have made content about finance and business and creating content because I was at Goldman Sachs. We have tens of millions of followers. I buy a bunch of companies. So don't ask, what should I put— post? Ask, what have I earned the right to explain? I think the way to think about this is like a dinner test. You know, if friends grill you on a topic, could you talk 30 minutes with zero prep about it? I milked a cat once. You want to hear a story? Then make content about it. And the last one, in action. Show yourself doing the thing. Like, the fastest credibility is walking into the building where we're talking about the biggest media in the world. There's a construction crew I love who built a huge following just filming themselves at real projects on the job site. You believe them instantly. Like, there's nothing to fake. Point at the camera, talk about the work, do it on the site, have some fun. Bottom line, skip the studio and show what you've done. Do it on camera, make it look native. Now let's go see if we can do something with these guys. Category. You can't be everything to everyone. The people who win get known for one thing and shouted over and over again. Dave Ramsey, the debt guy. Ali Abdaal, the productivity guy. Codie Sanchez, the small business expert. But before you choose, realize that not all niches pay the same. So YouTube has a metric called RPM, and we pulled a bunch of data for you, which is how they pay you. Per 1,000 views to run ads, and it swings super hard by topic. So finance and investing sit at the top. You get like $5 to $17 per 1,000 views. Education and career get about $4 to $10, and entertainment $4 to $6. Yes, even MrBeast money lives down here. He just does it at an insane scale. This is the video I made about how to invest your paycheck. So it sits in the personal finance and investing space. The RPM was $12.52 and it got about 800K views generating just over $10K of revenue. So choose your thing partly by how much you want to make, then repeat it so that it gets benefited by the algorithm. On Instagram, a normal post reaches about 3.5% of your followers, meaning that if you have 100,000 followers, less than 4,000 are likely to see it. One post isn't annoying anyone. Ehh! But The playbook on YouTube is that you have to be careful if you keep doing the exact same thing. You need to own a category. So if it's an idea, use that exact word or phrase in a ton of content. If I had a dollar for every time I've said boring business, I'd have topped that Forbes list on revenue alone. So inside each category, you want to build content pillars, repeatable formats. Look at MrBeast. He does like $1 versus a million everything. I survived 7 days in Same formats run again and again and again. Mine is I break down how do businesses work, celebrity business frameworks, money frameworks, interviewing Main Street millionaires. You can also own a visual. So School of Hard Knocks, every video opens with the same guy walking up to somebody rich. Kevin O'Leary never appears without his black suit up top. At least it's kind of funny though, when I met him, he did have pants on at Shark Tank, so that was weird for me. Visual repetition makes you way more recognizable without you having to say a word. You do need to pick your word. So pick your formats, repeat past the point of boredom. That's how you own a category. Now, I did not get on the Forbes list because of my AdSense, and that's how you get paid on YouTube, right? So for me, it's a tiny slice of what my content actually earns. The real money isn't on the platform at all, and I'll show you how to make way more off of YouTube or whatever platform you're posting on in this video. Now we're going to Warner Brothers, and I want to talk to you about What not to do. I want you to stop pulling content out of thin air like some sort of tortured poet. Like, your audience is already telling you what they want. Go where they are and listen. This is also how you sell TV shows and movies and anything else you want to do. New people will find you through what they're already watching because your video gets served next to the others in your niche. So like, go and study that ecosystem before you add to it. If you think that I don't know what every other business content expert does, you'd be wrong. If you think that I wouldn't know what all of our service businesses do, you'd be wrong. I think there is actually a 4-step system to never run out of content ideas, and you can steal it. Step 1, you're gonna build a swipe file. So I want you to go to your search bar, type your niche, filter to video, and save the top 100 posts over a million views. Then you screenshot the thumbnail, transcribe the first 30 seconds, and log the top comments. And who's sponsoring them. That's your future revenue list. After you've done that, steal the hook, not the content. You don't want to be a copycat. We basically take the proven hooks and topics from those viral videos and pour your expertise into them. Then you're going to fill it with the stuff you can say only. Write 30 scripts before you film anything. Step 3, I want you to mine the comments. So the lazy person copies the video on top, but I think the smart one actually reads the unanswered questions underneath. Comment sections, subreddits, Discords. If a video on buying a business has a million views and the comments scream, but how do I do this with no money? Bam! Next video. Step 4, build a problem bank. So I like to do this in other people's words. Save what people say in their exact wording. You'd say capital constraints. Okay, but they would probably say, I don't have the money and I'm scared I'll look stupid asking the seller. Use the listener's version. Speak it back and they think you read their mind. And if you want the exact log that my team uses, click the link in the description. I'll send it to you. And I think the fifth C is the most important. This is calibration. This is where you stop posting and praying and start reading what people actually did. And remember, the data isn't a judgment of your worth. It's a map. So it's going to show you where the audience actually leans in, just like ratings do or number of tickets sold in the box office. So at YouTube, you look at something called CTR, which means click-through rate, and watch time. Watch time is YouTube's love language. More watch time, more ads, more money for you and YouTube. CTR is who sees your thumbnail and clicks. This should be like 4 to 7%. It's highest at post when it hits your subs, then kind of settles down as it gets colder. Now, Instagram is totally different. You should look at the share rate plus the watch time percentage. Watch time is the top signal. But shares multiply you. Like, a DM share is worth 3 to 5x a like for reaching non-followers. An excellent share rate is like 4%. Viral watch time percentage is over 50% and over 60% on a 15-second clip. Sneaky little tip though, hide your likes. Nobody wants to watch a video with 15 likes. So if a video hasn't taken off, it doesn't get punished by low social proof. For X, I want you to look at replies. Comments are a signal, but a 1 to 3% reply rate is excellent. So it's not going to be that many people replying. Virality goes to takes that make people talk, not just likes. You do want them engaging in the comments. Now LinkedIn, you want to look at engagement rate. So comments, they weigh the heaviest. Aim for 4% plus, hit 6% and you're in the top 5% of content, which is pretty wild. And newsletter is open rate. Meaning how many people open your email? Baseline, 30%. Anything above 40%, you're crushing it. Let's break down how to go viral with videos. On any platform, I'm basically watching 3 things: the start, the stay, the signal. The 3 S's. No one stops? That means your hook's weak. They start and bail? It didn't pay off fast enough. They watch it all but do nothing? Entertaining, not memorable. And growth is all about having them come back, right? So let me show you how I read this so you can see why a video went viral or not. Basically what you're looking at here is a YouTube video of this video with my retention graph that shows the first big drop-off as at this point. This is actually one of our more viral videos, breaking down Ryan Reynolds' business. The hook works twice. It's Ryan. Everybody knows him. He's all over the news. The hook, this is great. Super counterintuitive. It opens a loop. And you need to figure out how to close it. Like, what happened? Then comes a beautiful flat retention line. Like, see how it sort of stabilizes? I explain fastfertizing. I made up that word. I tell a story where it played out. The only dip is the summary at the end. I didn't need it. I really never need to summarize, but 80% stayed for it, so I'm happy with that. Next one, let's look at a bad version. So same style, 1% of the views. The hook, way looser, 4 extra seconds to reach sort of the main part. And I don't name a framework until 22 seconds in, which in YouTube years is like 4 years. So fewer people get grabbed and the retention line slopes down instead of staying flat. Can't you see that? What I want you to do is basically the hook should be counterintuitive, promise value. You got to deliver that value right away and don't repeat yourself. Keep it tight. I think one of the more important things is for you to review the scripts like I am with you right now, because you want to look through all these and see if you can find the issues. And once you get bigger, you want to have your team do the exact same thing. Because if you study your winners and your flops, you'll actually figure out why something hits and be able to name topic, specificity, first line, hook. If you can't name it, you can't repeat it. And luck is like a very stupid strategy. We're not stupid here, are we? After posts, just 3 notes: why did they start watching? Where did they leave? What line got a reaction? Do that across 50 posts. And you'll probably have my millions of subscribers soon. This last C is the most important C because it actually puts food on the table. You need to collect. I really can't say this loud enough. Do not rely solely on platform ad revenue. Too many people make content and do brand deals and think that's it. This is why I built mine differently, and some could say it's going pretty well. So let me show you how important organic content is for business. These are the actual numbers from a recent campaign we ran from one of my events. We promoted both paid ads and organic. 38% of tickets sold came from paid advertising, which means 62% came from organic. We were paying for impressions on one side and the other side was converting for free. Paid ads are just renting your audience and organic lets you own it by building the relationships that actually close the sale. So besides sponsorships and ad revenue, this is my organic content funnel. First, I make content about buying and growing small businesses. And I provide free value around it that pulls people into my newsletter and my entry-level products like my book. A few people who are really right for what we are offering go from these to our Academy and Boardroom where we advise people directly. And then now we have ultra-select programs called Private Client where we actually source businesses for individuals. On top of that, we also have a few virtual and in-person events and different other products, and we have a capital and investment firm. Both in venture and for a holding company. And if you want any more information on this, the link is in the description. So here's how you apply this to your own content. You build a ladder that solves people's problems at different depths. It's not random, like this video did well, let's sell them a hoodie with a dog on it. Here's the product ladder. First rung is free content that earns you trust, basically. Second is $0 to $50 in value. This is the easy yes, like a guide, a template, a book. The third rung is $50 to $500, and it's like a playbook. This could be a course. This could be a low-level product. This could be a community. This could be an event. The fourth rung is $500 to $5,000. This is access and speed, which could be a cohort. It could be a year-long membership. And the fifth, anything above that is hyper-personalized or big ticket, which might be an investment in the fund. It might be you sell your business to us. So you don't build all 5 on day 1. I like starting with free content and adding one paid step, a free newsletter that captures the relationship, plus a single low-ticket guide as your first rung. Then you only add the other once the one below is full. Ship before you feel it's perfect at 85%, and the last 15% takes weeks and no one notices it but you.