Codie SanchezFounder @ Contrarian Thinking

Ranking Social Platforms

13 Oct 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:15

In this solo monologue, Codie Sanchez ranks major social media platforms based on how much money creators can realistically earn from them. She assigns each platform a tier (F‑to‑A) and provides specific sponsorship revenue ranges and contextual reasons. X (formerly Twitter) is rated F because content quickly dies. TikTok gets a D, offering high view counts but low payouts and limited product fit. LinkedIn earns a B, with sponsored posts paying $1,500‑$8,000 plus client/hire opportunities. Instagram receives an A, with sponsorships of $2,500‑$7,500 and a strong ticket‑sale conversion advantage (100× more tickets sold than TikTok). YouTube also lands an A, delivering longer engagement (30‑minute sessions) and sponsorships of $5,000‑$15,000. The top‑ranked channel, however, is the newsletter, which provides an owned, high‑intent audience directly in the inbox. Sanchez emphasizes the overarching strategy: own your audience’s attention rather than renting it, and promises a live walkthrough of building a funnel that leverages these platforms.

Chapters

Someone asked me which social media platform actually makes you rich. So I thought I'd rank them by how much money you can actually make from each of them. And the last one is the one that most people aren't talking about. So I want to start with X, and it's actually where your content goes to die the quickest, which is why I think this is really F tier, bottom. Then there's TikTok. You may rack up a bunch of views on one-off videos, but it pays really low, hard to sell. I think we've sold like a dozen of our last product to my last event with 2 million followers. D tier unless you have a visual product. Now we get into the money tiers. LinkedIn, if you do sponsored posts, that could be like $1,500 to $8,000 a post, plus the clients and hires it brings in, like solid B tier. Then we've got Instagram. So sponsorships, dollars, $2,500 to $7,500 a post. But the real edge is the audience it buys. We sold 100x more tickets on Instagram than TikTok. So that's A tier. But the final one, YouTube. This is where people will sit with you for 30 minutes. Super fast trust builder. Sponsorships for a lower tier are $5,000 to $15,000, A tier. But the winner I don't think anybody talks about is the newsletter. They hand you their inbox. This is the highest intent audience you have and the one you actually own. So the secret behind all of these is not actually to get sponsorships. It's trying to figure out where is your audience? How can you own the attention instead of rent it? And I'll break down exactly how to build this funnel live.