How To Make Money As A Creator: Part 4

Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators Podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators build thriving, sustainable businesses they love. We're so glad you're here. Welcome. I'm joined again today by our head of revenue strategy, Natalie Williams. Welcome, Natalie.

Thanks, Amanda.

And today we are continuing our series from episodes 3 through 7, covering all the ways that creators can make money online. Make sure to carve out time to listen or watch each of those so you have the full spectrum of options in mind as you plan kind of like your next strategic moves. And remember, professional creators think like business owners. It's vital to have context and a full data set from which to make a strategic decision. In other words, just know what's on the table before you decide what to do next. And today we're gonna talk about collaborations, affiliate programs, and I'll give a little recap of episode 3 where I interviewed Mike Davis and Michael Belknap about launching your very own merchandise line. So Natalie, kick us off. Let's get into it.

Yeah, so we're gonna go ahead and jump right in with collaborations with other creators. Collabs can come in all shapes and sizes. There's no rule for how a collaboration with a brand or another creator can or should happen. The world is really your oyster, so to speak. There's tons and tons of possibilities here. And importantly, we're going to talk specifically about mutually beneficial collaborations with other creators rather than brand deals, paid sponsorships, which could be considered collaborations, but we're covering those bases in a few weeks on episode 12. So stay tuned for that. So collaborations between creators in the context of our chat today refers to a joint effort between at least 2 creators to create a digital or physical product together. And the first question to start off with is, why should a creator consider collaborating with other creators? And the important note here is you can really leverage each other's audiences of other creators whose experience is similar to yours but is not a direct competitor. So you can kind of think about, you know, what's your umbrella topic and who are all the people that talk about specific details related to that umbrella topic? For example, I have a 3-year-old and another one on the way. So I'm deep into the parenting accounts. For example, 3 creators that I came up with were Big Little Feelings, which works with kind of behavior and helping your children manage their emotions, Feeding Littles, which work with like once your child is old enough to start eating solids up through, you know, toddlerhood, and then Taking Care of Babies, who is a sleep expert. So they all talk about very different subjects but are umbrellaed under the parenting niche. And so that's an example of non-competing, tangentially related creators. Creators that you could collaborate with.

Yeah, that's perfect. They're not competing with each other, but they have the same audience. We're really big on audience sharing here, and so I'm glad you brought that up. All right, well, let's talk through some examples of creator collaborations. And there's 2 big types of collaborations we're going to break down. The first is co-branded bespoke, like a unique product or service where at least 2 creators combine forces to make something new. And the second is bundles, which are a mix of different creators' own products or services sold together as one— you guessed bundle. And the intention there with both of those is increasing the value proposition to prospective customers to like an irresistible level. They have got to have what you're selling with this other creator because it is so cool and it's exclusive. And co-branded course or other one-off digital products like a workbook, t-shirt, ebook, a challenge, a series of workshops are all really good examples of that bespoke product or service collaboration options. And again, there's no rules here. Just like Natalie said a minute ago, you can create collaboration in whatever way that will bring value to both you and your collaborators' audiences.

Yeah. So you co-create something that both of your audiences will love and market that product equitably to each of your respective audiences. And there will likely be some overlap with your audiences, but there are going to be outliers who maybe haven't found your things yet, but will find you and your product and services because they follow somebody that you're aligned with.

Yeah. I like that you use the word equitable there. In case anyone's not familiar with equitable as Uh, well, in juxtaposition to the word fair, equitable means the arrangement is right-sized for those specific circumstances. Fair means that everyone gets the same thing no matter what. Um, when I was, uh, explaining this term to my son years ago, um, I used the analogy of like going to get ice cream with, um, my husband Travis, for instance. It would be equitable for Travis to get a large ice cream and Kyle to get a small ice cream because, you know, at the time he probably weighed 55 pounds soaking wet, whereas Travis is like a 180-pound grown man, right? And, um, sorry for sharing your weight, babe, if that was not cool. He's very fit. Mm-hmm. So, um, it would be equitable for Travis's pancreas to like metabolize, uh, and deal with a large size ice cream, whereas Kyle's little pancreas could not deal with that much sugar, right? So it's equitable for Travis to get a large and Kyle to get a small. It would be fair for them both to get a large because, you know, again, fairness is everybody gets the same thing no matter what. So So in creator world, perhaps you have, you know, 6 different top of funnel channels where you have access points to your audience and the creator that you're collaborating with maybe has 3 channels. And so the equitable split here would be, you know, to drive sales, you promote in all 6 of your channels and they promote in all 3 of their channels, you know, in a right, in the right ratio of like salesy type marketing. Posts or podcast episodes or whatever to just value content, right? We've talked about ratios in the past. I'm not going to get into that. But that's kind of what we're talking about in terms of like equitable. So you can't have like a fair promotional relationship because you don't have the exact same businesses. You don't have the exact same model. You don't have the exact same channels. So that's what we mean there.

Yeah. And you can also work out the money split in whatever way is again equitable to both parties. I'd recommend doing that through marketing attribution, meaning that you have a system in place that accurately tells you where your customers came from. That can get super complicated and a little bit into the weeds. But the easiest thing to do would be to have a way to indicate through a checkbox or maybe a checkout page where you ask where they heard about your product, either through creator B or A or B or neither or both of them.

Yeah, another way would be just to have a coupon code that you provide your audience with and the other creator provides a different one for their audience. Perhaps when a coupon code is used, the creator it came from gets maybe 60% of the purchase price of that particular sale and the other creator it's 40%, whereas maybe on purchases without a coupon code inputted, y'all split it 50/50. Again, no rules here. It's whatever makes the most sense, is most equitable, and makes both parties happy.

Yeah. So now let's talk about bundles, which again are a mix of different creators' own products or services sold together. And these can be a bit simpler to put together because you're simply marketing the bundle, not actually creating a new product together. So the bundle could be one of each of your courses, for instance, that when put together really increase the value proposition for prospective customers, especially if there's an added element of exclusivity, like a bonus item or a module or a workshop, et cetera, et cetera, that won't ever be offered again. And you can only get this extra enticing thing with this specific bundle.

Yeah, that's a really key point of differentiation for a bundle is if it has a one-time only bonus. And if you do offer that extra special bonus and say it'll only be offered that one time, stick to your word. I promise it will cost you in credibility, trust, and brand affinity down the road, which translates dollars if you don't. So stick with your word as with everything else, right?

Mm-hmm.

And the most complicated part of this, collaborations in general, I think is the tech behind the collaboration. So you'll definitely want, you'll each want a jointly branded landing and checkout page associated with your respective websites. The co-branded checkout page should go through probably just one of the creator's payment processors, not as opposed to having 2 separate checkouts, one on their website and one on yours. And then that's the creator that should be responsible for producing an accurate accounting and report of sales and distributing payouts to the other creator according to the money split terms you both agreed to beforehand.

Yeah, and we're not lawyers and we don't give legal advice, but if I were you, I'd get those terms down on paper and get signatures immediately. And much like the co-created products or services we spoke about a few minutes ago, bundles can be in the form of digital or physical products.

And yeah, we've seen a lot of success with bundles going by the calendar, right? So a calendar-based bundle. So think about Black Friday, the holiday season, Valentine's Day, spring break, summertime, vacation-related bundles, and whatever events or holidays or things your audience values and celebrates. And we're going to talk in a second about how to find and reach out to potential collaborators, but the work to be done for a successful bundle or collaboration on a bespoke product is to put together a truly irresistible

Yeah. And I mean, don't be afraid to think outside the box too. You know, you can get really creative here and try and do some kind of fun, fun new things that will, that will really set you apart and be, you know, just especially enticing for your followers, especially when there's that kind of scarcity element to it too. And then you can test things out. You know, not everything might be a home run, but you might surprise yourself with what your audience really, really enjoys and buys into. Yeah. And I think that's a really good point.

Let's talk about scarcity for a second before we move on, because that is a really important element and a great sales tactic that's completely on the up and up. So scarcity simply means perhaps there's only, you know, 50 or 100 or 500 of the bundles or the thing that you collaborated on making with this other creator. And so, um, that's a really great incentive for someone to purchase and purchase quickly if they know that you're going to run out. Both creators are promoting this often This awesome thing, like, oh no, I'm going to miss out. Like you totally leverage FOMO, fear of missing out, when you use scarcity tactics. So that's a, that's a great

point. Okay. Now let's jump into how you find creators to do collaborations with. So a really good starting point here is to start building out your ecosystem. I'm sure there are plenty of people that, you know, just by starting your business who you maybe have worked with or had conversations with that are already in your ecosystem. And then maybe there are folks that you haven't found yet, and you can do things like talking to your audience, seeing who they're talking about, seeing who, you know, they're referring to you, or, you know, other creators that you do know of, who they're following. You also lean on things like social media's algorithms to have, you know, suggested follows, because that's one of my favorite ways to find other, uh, creators who are like the creators I follow, is just clicking, you know, the suggested follows that are, you know, that's a great way to find people that you can collaborate with that maybe you don't know about. You can also use things like if you're in ConvertKit, the Creator Network, they have a whole discover function that you can just Or by topic or industry creator type, what have you, and find a whole list of creators. There are a lot of them out there and you just have to start building that list, figuring out and evaluating who you are well aligned with and choosing your collaborations based off of that.

Yes. Yeah, building out the ecosystem is a really, really helpful exercise. No matter where you are in your creator-first business journey, this is a really good way to kind of like pour gasoline on the fire. So talk about leveraging partner marketing in addition to, well, That typically leads to collaborations. And then when you collaborate on a new product, you're obviously using partner marketing 'cause you're both marketing whatever it is that you made to sell. So we're really big on audience sharing and, you know, just figuring out whatever mutually beneficial relationships could potentially exist and then bringing them to bear so that everyone wins, right?

Mm-hmm.

So reaching out to another creator about a collaboration idea can be a little bit of a daunting task if you haven't done it before or you're very uncomfortable. With like, you know, any kind of selling type situation, or if you're an introvert, and that's totally okay. That totally makes sense. We want you to think kind of in the same way as you think about selling things to your customers, kind of making that right offer to the right person, right time, in the right way. But this is a little bit more casual because the idea here is that you are approaching a peer with an offer or an idea, kind of presenting them with a scenario that would be, again, mutually beneficial. Good for them, good for their audience, good for their revenue, good for kind of establishing what could become a long-term relationship and like many collaborations and bundles that you could do with that other creator. You could bring other creators in for, um, other collabs in the future. Again, like no rule book here whatsoever. Like Natalie said, the world is your oyster and you can come up with the most creative off-the-wall thing. It just has to provide value and solve a problem for your audience and you're good to go. I would definitely recommend engaging kind of with these creators before you maybe cold email them or DM them. So start commenting and sharing their posts, you know, likes, especially with creators who've got many thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, like liking just doesn't do anything. So if you're commenting on and you're sharing their posts in the platforms that they are most active in, especially if they're active on LinkedIn, that is a great place for you to try and interact with them by again, commenting on their posts, sharing their posts. 'Cause that really cuts through a lot of noise. There's less traffic and likes and comments and shares on LinkedIn than there is on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, for instance. So try and kind of drop some little breadcrumbs that like you're here and you're a peer, you're here and you're a peer and you know, you have something important to say so that when you do actually reach out, the creator that you're reaching out to is probably already like somewhat familiar with your name and like, oh, that person. Yeah, of course I wanna hear what they have to say. So it's kind of like a slow, a slow buildup to an ask. And then the ask again, right, right time, right person, right way, right offer. So you're presenting something mutually beneficial, going to make money, going to be a slam dunk. It's going to be super fun and will allow them to build their audience as well because they're getting access to your audience.

Yeah. And make sure that as you're building these relationships and starting to, you know, grow their familiarity with you, that you follow up and you're consistent with that communication, but never in like a sleazy salesperson way. Approach the creator in a way that you would want to be approached. This is important both equally with peer creators and maybe creators in your ecosystem who you aspire to be. Maybe somebody that has, you know, 2 or 3 or 4 times more followers with you. You really just want to make sure that you are creating authentic relationships. You're giving them value. I mean, you're asking for their time. And so it's really important that you are providing that valuable, kind, you know, authentic communication with them and not just trying to say, you know, help me out. I want you to do this for me, like making sure that you're really making

Yes, indeed. Definitely. And, um, I like what you said about like, if you're gonna go for a creator who has like a multiplier of the number of followers that you have, I'd recommend you sort of demonstrate success with a couple of collaborations with peers who have similar follower counts. And then once you have sales numbers, just cuz that's gonna be easier for the creator to say yes to because it's gonna be truly mutually beneficial. But if you're kind of like reaching up, um, that's a little bit harder. Yeah. That's great and that's awesome and that takes a lot of courage to do, so right on. But if you have that track record of success with a couple of other peer collaborations and this creator who is a couple steps ahead of you can see that your collaborations have been successful, they have generated sales, they're going to be far more likely to do a deal with you and you should definitely be willing to give them more favorable terms. Again, talking about equity, They're likely to bring in more sales than you are, depending on the product, which we're hoping again, right person, right time, right offer, right way. And so the equitable thing might be to give them a larger split, or maybe they get 70% of the sales that come from their community or something like that. So think in those terms and what would be a good deal for them. Having empathy is absolutely key and central and inextricably tied to successful selling in whatever quote selling environment you are in. You know, when you're trying to get someone kind of on your side of the table and see your way of things, you want to make sure that you are also in their shoes and in their chair and seeing things from their POV so that you can kind of like clarify and crystallize the way that you're asking to get a favorable answer. Okay. Yeah. Never be sleazy. Nobody likes that. Please don't do that. So many people do that. We just really, really, really Kind of disgusted by it. Okay. Oh, I was going to throw in an extra potential money-making opportunity here that's not talked about too much, and that is licensing your work. Think photos, fonts, artwork, design bundles, things like that. So obviously this model really works well with creators who are artists and photographers in particular, in case that wasn't already abundantly clear. And fair warning, I'm not an expert on licensing, but I can give you kind of like the quick and dirty, you know, enough to get get you to a next step and to at least be thinking about this. So there's 3 common types of licensing agreements you should be aware of if this seems like a good path for you. So the first of those would be a personal use license. So your purchaser cannot make a profit from the thing that they sold. They're using it again for personal use, obviously, or giving it as a gift to someone who is also only allowed to use it for personal use, not to resell. The second type of licensing agreement is a limited commercial, commercial use license. So people can purchase and then resell what they purchased from you for a profit. But as the term limited use implies, there are a specific number of times this can be resold by that purchaser before the limited use license expires. And then the third type is an unlimited commercial license, which I bet you can guess, the purchaser can make or resell as many as they want. And this would be, of course, like the most expensive license type for you to sell as a licensor. So just a little bit of food for thought.

Yeah, and white labeling is sort of in a similar camp to that. So I'm gonna touch on that as well. White labeling is simply when one company buys a product from another person or company and rebrands it as their own. This is very common in the software world, but we're starting to see this a little bit more and talked about more in creator-first businesses. And we're gonna talk about obviously the creator-first businesses application here. White labeling can work for creators who are subject matter experts. Some specific applications of white labeling could be in the healthcare space, If you've created a course or an appreciable amount of content on subjects like sales trainings or a wide variety of HR topics like sexual harassment, discrimination, and proper workplace behavior. So if you think businesses might be interested in your content and you've only been selling directly to individual consumers, you can put a significant premium on your content and offer it to businesses to use with their own branding.

Yeah, definitely. I know a number of HR professionals. And content like this is sometimes just like a total goldmine because they don't have to create it themselves. They don't have to work very hard and they can put their own company's name on it. So a B2B business-to-business application for white labeling your content as a subject matter expert. If you can sell things like this to businesses, I'm telling you, I mean, there's not just like a 10x multiplier on what you can sell them, but more like 50 to 100x on what you could sell these to businesses for. So certainly consider that if your subject matter expertise area aligns with B2B. I'm sorry, I'm like totally losing my voice here. I hope that is not completely apparent, but you know, that's— I'm talking too much. I think that's my sign. Oh, one thing to mention about white labeling as a creator, you actually could even consider white labeling another creator's content. We've never actually recommended that route at Level Up Creators, but there are certain applications where This is totally legitimate and viable. So you can consider that too. And okay, let's talk about affiliate referral income. This is actually a pretty big category and we encourage all the creators that we work with to leverage affiliate referral income. And of course that's a two-way street. So for anyone who's not familiar, affiliate referral income is basically a commission. It's a percentage of sales. that you make as a creator by referring your customers to someone else's product. So if Natalie makes this awesome course, I've got an audience, I want to make some affiliate income, I might sign up for Natalie's affiliate program and say her course is $1,000 because Natalie's brilliant and I'm sure it would cost at least $1,000. She might offer a commission of like an affiliate commission of like 30%. So I could potentially make $300 just for referring my community of followers to buy Natalie's awesome course. So it makes me look good to recommend other experts. It's a legitimate income stream that I can kind of insert promotions for as it makes sense with my audience. And so that's how you can— that's both sides of the coin actually. If you're the creator, you can have affiliate programs to help other creators and brands sell what you already made. And then you can also use it on the flip side as an income stream for other products that you want to recommend.

Yeah. So some of the ways that you can use and earn affiliate referral income is by building your own program and by joining others. So an example we have here is ConvertKit. So we've talked about this in some previous episodes, but ConvertKit's creator network has an affiliate referral portion of it. They acquired SparkLoop. And so their affiliate program is powered by SparkLoop's affiliate program where they can recommend other creator newsletters and earn a referral commission off of those recommendations.

Yeah, that's a great example. And some creators, I'm sure we've all run across this doing research on like, what tools should I use for marketing automation? Or what tools should I use for my membership platform or whatever? There are writers who are basically professional reviewers and they will write up extraordinarily in-depth reviews with the most granular level of detail on like this, this tool versus this tool versus this tool. And so, They're making their money by you clicking the button that says, okay, I want to buy ConvertKit, right? And so I want to sign up for ConvertKit. And so then you click that link and it is tagged. I won't go into like how all that works, but that lets ConvertKit know that they owe this reviewer money if that results in a sale. And so this is, again, really, really legitimate source of revenue. And I also want you to think about if you do go down this route of offering affiliate program for the things that you sell, I'm gonna go into a new term. I don't think I've used this one yet on the show, sales enablement. So a sales enablement asset is a B2B term for basically like cheat sheets and helpful tidbits that help salespeople sell stuff more easily, right? It's enabling sales. And so what you want to do when you roll out your affiliate program is when someone applies to be an affiliate, you make sure that they're legit because you only want good people repping your awesome stuff, and you approve them, you want to make sure that you are supplying them with sales enablement assets. So the way that you do this again is through empathy because sales is all about empathy and problem solving. If you were in their shoes, your affiliate's shoes, and you didn't know a whole lot about this, the nitty-gritty details of the product that you are now like repping basically to your audience, you want to think through what are the most important selling points that my affiliates need to know in order to have the best shot at converting their customers to become my customers. And so you could think about like the most common objections that you get with before someone purchases your product or common questions that you get, what's included on your FAQ section of your landing page, anything that would help an affiliate it, sell what you are selling is, is very, very helpful. So again, put yourself in their shoes and put together like a one-page PDF or have like a private landing page where your affiliates can visit and see like all the nitty-gritty details and they can answer— that enables them to answer questions from their audience. And again, the point is to make sales.

Yeah. And another thing that's really, really important to be mindful of is always being transparent when you're using affiliate links. A, it builds trust and B, most cases, I think you're legally obligated to disclose that information. I remember a few years ago when affiliate marketing and— sorry, influencer marketing really started to be more prevalent on social media. Some influencers and creators got in trouble for not disclosing that the links that they were sharing were earning them affiliate commissions. And so it's not going to turn off your audience by saying that this is a commissionable link. It's as long as you've established that trust with your audience and that credibility and they know that you are a source of good information, then they can value what you are are telling them to purchase or recommending them to purchase, they're going to do it. And especially if you have a really solid audience that wants to support you, they're likely going to use your affiliate links because they know that that helps you earn income as well. So don't ever shy away from disclosing those affiliate links, um, thinking that it's going to give you this, you know, discredit, um, your brand with your audience. That's not gonna happen.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Just like you have to disclose brand deals and make sure that that's all on the up and up, make sure that you're disclosing your affiliate relationships as Again, you don't ever want to invoke any sort of like reputational risk potential by, you know, omitting just like a, what may seem like a little detail to the, to you might be a big deal to a customer. So yes, thank you, Natalie. Definitely make sure you're disclosing. Okay. And then there are 3 specific tools that we most frequently recommend for affiliate relationships. And those are Rewardful. R-E-W-A-R-D-F-U-L. We'll link these up in the show notes as well. UpPromote and TrackDesk. So again, TrackDesk, UpPromote, and Rewardful all have— they're very easy to use. They're intuitive, simple, affordable. Again, obviously, we've done a boatload of research and only recommend tools that we have used and that are extraordinarily well vetted. So if you are looking for an affiliate tool, limit your search to those 3. And if you happen to use Lemon Squeezy as your payment processor, so it's sort of like you probably use Stripe potentially as a creator for your payment processor. Lemon Squeezy is another payment processor. They actually have a native referral program built into their platform. So that's great and already there if you happen to use Lemon Squeezy. All right, let's talk about one other way to make money as a creator today. And actually, episode 3 covered this in detail. I mentioned this at the beginning of the episode, but I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike Davis and Michael Belknap of Brand Origin to cover what it looks like as a creator to set up your own merchandise line, which is really, really, really cool. And if this is potentially of interest to you, definitely go listen to that full episode. Brand Origin has a pretty phenomenal Offering where they sort of take on the entire process from design and marketing, like having a Shopify store. But you obviously need to market your own merchandise to your audience. But they take everything from design to sourcing to international taxes and all those things and import fees, and they know exactly who to source the best products from. They have some really, really unique offerings, and they are willing to go the distance and come up with like the most unique. Unique bespoke products that are just for your audience. They will source anything. And some of the examples that they cite in that episode 3 might surprise you. So go take a look at that. And I'm sure you'll get some ideas for your community as well. But, you know, to sort of like summarize that episode, you should consider having your own product and merch line. If this leads back to affiliate stuff, if you're successfully selling other people's stuff, right? So you should consider selling your own stuff if you're already selling other people's stuff successfully, because then you could keep a much larger percentage of the revenue share than you do in an affiliate relationship, right? To the tune of, you know, many thousands of dollars a month even if you're selling your own stuff. And so again, like, if you're successfully selling other people, if you're successfully running collaborations with bespoke products and bundles and things like that for other people, you need to think about bringing that own house in, in-house and creating a brand from your likeness and from your subject matter as expertise. So that's kind of like the next level for a creator-first business. And so you've got your subject matter expertise, your community is, um, kind of around the campfire for those kinds of conversations about that, but you can level up by creating a brand out of your subject matter expertise, your likeness, and your community, and then sell physical products as a result. Think like hoodies, sweatshirts, mugs, stickers, posters, journals, t-shirts, zip-up hoodies, conversation cards, hats, beanies. I mean, like, those are pretty basic too. I mean, they do some really, really interesting stuff over there. So if you're making money in affiliate fees, think about how you can flip the script and have your own stuff. Um, it's a fun— it's actually a really, really, really fun process. We've worked with a number of creators who have their own product line and has really, really leveled up their brand and made, it's increased their brand affinity with their customers. It increases LTV, again, the amount of money on average you make from each customer. So yeah, if any of that kind of like rings true for you, and you think that might be an appealing option for you, and you're looking for a partner to kind of take care of that process A to Z, and actually finance your merchandise line for you, I would go to brandorigin.com and check them out and also listen to episodes Okay. Whew.

That was

a lot. All right. Our next episode, we're gonna talk about recurring revenue products, and that is going to round out this series on all the ways that creators can make money online. So we hope you are learning a lot along with us here. Thank you again, Natalie, for joining me. Appreciate all your input and expertise. And we know that your time is precious. Thank you for sharing yours with us. Level Up Creators exists to amplify the voice, reach, and impact of creators making a positive impact in the world. With your expertise, is our focus. Our team of strategists, marketers, sales pros, product developers, administrators, and tech gurus handle the heavy lifting of building and optimizing a profitable business that will transform your life for good. Subscribe to the show and check out welevelupcreators.com to sign up for our newsletter where we share weekly actionable business tips for creators just like you. See you next time on the Level Up Creators Podcast.