Evan Carmichael explains how he shifted from ad-supported content to sponsorships, speaking fees, and his Zuga Guides product. He ditched one-on-one coaching and advises new coaches to pick a niche, build a content channel, and guest on established platforms to reach audiences and unlock speaking gigs and other revenue streams.
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How do I make money? So I got a great question from one of my newsletter readers, Antoinette. She wrote in to say, Evan, how did you get started with your business? Was it with free newsletters, your website, and how do you make money? Is it from the worksheets, affiliates? How is it that you make money? She's starting up a coaching practice and wanted my advice on how to get started, what's the best way to get started. So Let me tell you my story. I, uh, when I sold my software company, I owned my domain name and I, I was just using it as a way to tell my story. I was invited to do a lot of speaking. EvanCarmichael.com was just a place to share where I was speaking. And I also loved modeling famous entrepreneurs. This is what saved me in my business. This is what got me over the hump from, from struggling up $300 a month to actually make a successful company. Modeling other successful entrepreneurs. And so I just started sharing the stories on my site. I wish I could say I had this whole thing planned out and say I knew from the start what I was doing, where I was going, but I had no idea. There was no huge plan. I was just going, going off of what I was excited by, what I was passionate about. And from there, people started sharing articles. They asked me if they could contribute to my site as well. And I hooked up with a venture capital company and I used my website just as a way to be a lead generation for the venture capital site. I later discovered that, hey, this could be a source of advertising, and I built my website up to be an article portal with my own articles, with other people contributing, and I sold advertising against that. And for a number of years, that was my model, and I had a newsletter and all this stuff, and I was selling advertising. I, uh, I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the advertising business. One, because you end up creating content just to get a lot of eyeballs, not necessarily what's going to help people. I don't know, you do that long enough, like, I want to help people. I want to create stuff that helps people. If I make this video and it helps just you, I'm happy with that. And a lot of the websites, that's the game. Like, you have to create content and use the keywords and put up stuff that's going to generate tons of traffic because that's how you sell advertising. I just grew increasingly dissatisfied, so I, I kind of split my business up where I gave the content part of my business to somebody on my team and the advertising and all that, and I started focusing on things that I love doing— the speaking, the videos, the helping entrepreneurs one-on-one, groups, whatever— just stuff that I was passionate about. And as the two businesses grew, kind of grew, it started going on different paths. And recently, maybe 6 months ago, I thought, you know what, like, I want to stand for something good. I want people to have a great experience with my website. I don't want to just be in the advertising game. I want to really help people. And so I merged my website to Come Back and Meet Me. And so Now there's no advertising on my website, and it just shut off that business model. As a result, we've gotten a lot better traction, a lot better results, a lot— we've helped a lot more people. How I make money now with my site, I don't do coaching. People want me to coach them a lot, it's just, it's not the business I want to be in, so I don't do coaching. I make money from sponsorships, so I'll work with companies and help create content for them. So only companies where I'm adding value. I don't want to work with a company and say, "Hey, go buy this phone because it's the greatest thing ever," right? Because that kills my credibility and it doesn't feel good. I feel gross doing that. But I may work with a company like Microsoft or Dell or American Express and create content for their website that is helping entrepreneurs. It's not just promotional. I have my own guides. Zuga Guides, and these guides help entrepreneurs go through all the struggles. It's like getting me in a room for 2 hours to help you through whatever problem you're facing. And then I do speaking, and the speaking is, you know, around the world. I get paid to go deliver various speeches on different topics and help entrepreneurs, and it's all come out of my passion and love helping entrepreneurs. If I were you, how I would get started if I was trying to build up a coaching practice, What I would do is first of all figure out who your market is, right? Like, who are you trying to help? So a coach, tons of coaches, who specifically do you want to help? And be known as the person who does this. And then start providing really great, amazing information. And I would do a two-pronged approach, one where I have my own channel. So create your own channel. I love YouTube, I get a lot of business deals from YouTube, but you could start on Twitter or a blog if you're not comfortable in front of the camera. And share your best stuff. You know, people, if they watch your video, if they read your tweet, if they read your blog, they should feel like, wow, Antoinette really knows what she's talking about. That, that was great. That made me think about what I'm doing. And at the same time, so this is helping you build your own audience. At the same time, start reaching out to people who have an audience that is exactly like yours. And offer to do an interview with them, a guest post from them, a guest video, whatever it is. Get involved in their community, have them introduce you to their community. And what it's gonna lead to is them, you know, you do some kind of interview, right? I do this all the time, do interviews with other people who reach out to entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs love the interview, they listen in, I get introduced to this whole new audience that I didn't reach before. And they say, "Well, to learn more, go check out evancarmichael.com." So they'll come and check out my website, right? After the interview, they're gonna go check out your website. You have to have stuff on there that engages people. Video, blog posts, tweets, whatever it is. So you have to run those paths in parallel. You start creating your own community with your best stuff, stuff that moves people, stuff that matters, stuff that when you read, you get excited about, and combine that with reaching out to people who already serve your target audience and showcase yourself as an expert. You're just adding value, you're not selling anything. You're just adding value, and the opportunities will come, right? People see all this great stuff you're creating. You may not just be a coach anymore, right? You may get speaking gigs, you may get media gigs, you may get a book deal, you may get a clothing line, you know, who knows? All this stuff can come, but you have to pour your heart into creating amazing content for your audience to make them feel something and say, "I need more Antoinette." You make that happen and you're on your way to creating a successful practice. Belief. For those of you watching, like the video, give it a thumbs up below. Let me know what you think, leave a comment, ask me a question below, I'll make a video response like this one. And subscribe to the channel by clicking on my face. Thank you guys so much, I'll see you soon.
