Revenue Model - How Evan Makes Money

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and in today's video I wanted to answer a question from one of my readers, Mary. I really like this one. So Mary writes in, "Hi Evan, I enjoy your articles, great information and inspiration. However, I don't understand how you actually earn your income. I've never bought anything from you, and you don't seem to be selling anything in your posts." What do you actually do for a living? I would appreciate a reply. Regards, Mary. So, thanks for the question, Mary. I have a hard enough time explaining to friends and people I meet what I do, so I'll do my best here in this video. How I started was I really like helping entrepreneurs. That's why I said on my website I started by profiling famous entrepreneurs and lessons that you can learn from them, because that's what I found inspirational. I found it really helpful for me, and I wanted to share that with other entrepreneurs. I started doing these videos because people had a lot of questions, and I thought other people people could benefit from having some video content as well where I answered it. So it all started around me wanting to help entrepreneurs, that was really my passion. And I really believe if you follow what you're really passionate about and you add a ton of value and you're really helpful, then success will follow you. So for me, how I make money with my site now is mostly advertising and sponsorship. So if you click on any of the articles that I have on the site, you'll probably see an ad somewhere on the site. Uh, also we tend to partner up with organizations who are trying to reach the entrepreneur community, and they might sponsor a section of the website. But I try not to be too blatant about that, and it's not overwhelming, and I don't usually have promos in a newsletter or most places on the website. I experimented a lot with different business models. I looked at the affiliate marketing model for a while, where that's basically where you're selling somebody else's product, and I had a hard time getting the value out of that and putting my name behind it, you know, I could maybe make a lot of money, I could pitch somebody's product and say, "Hey, this is the greatest thing ever, you know, Mary, I think you should buy this product because it's fantastic," but if I haven't used it and I haven't found benefit in it, then I don't want you buying some info product and maybe I make a good commission off of it, but then you find out that it's a junky product and say, "Oh, that Evan's a douchebag for recommending it," and then you're never going to come back and visit my website. and that's not the relationship that I want to build. So I want to try to promote things that I actually use and enjoy and find value in. So I didn't have a lot of success with the affiliate marketing model. I did create my own business planning product. So I had a hard time finding a good business plan product, so I started my own. So that is one product that we do sell, but mostly my revenue comes from advertising and sponsorship, and it all started from me not not trying to go out and make a lot of money doing advertising sponsorship, but trying to help entrepreneurs and answer their questions and help them grow their business and follow my passion, because that's what I really enjoy. So I hope that helps answer the question. If you enjoyed the video, please give it a thumbs up, and I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you want to leave a comment below the video. And stay tuned for the next episode.