TJ Walker asks whether a local Columbus influencer could make $80,000 a year posting daily and streaming live. The answer: probably not without selling affiliate products, ebooks, or sponsored posts. Local creators struggle to monetize because their audience is too small, and as traditional media dies, communities lose coverage of local government.
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So do you see a possibility for local reporters slash journalists slash talk show host to be their own thing and making it independent of traditional media?
No, I see more of it on like the influencer side, not necessarily connected to a media company. People starting their own channels and getting their own followers that way and then monetizing it.
Well, I guess that's, I mean that's really what I'm asking. Is it going to be possible to be an influence? Let's say you're your old town, Columbus, Ohio, I forgot where they are in the media market. 53rd or something like that. Is it going to be possible for someone to just say I'm going to be a Columbus community influencer and I'm going to post on Instagram what's going on in our community and I'm going to do a live show on YouTube and social media every day and interview mayors and city council people of what's going on and I'm going to cover the parade and frankly do a lot of things that local TV and newspapers used to do. And I'm going to review the biggest show, live show, Broadway style show, coming to town. Will it be possible for someone to do that and make let's say $80,000 a year? Because from what I see, unless they really specialize in some narrow niche and even then it's got to be international. I mean makeup is an international niche if someone focus on local News and make $80,000 a year in most communities in America.
So I mean they would need to have a revenue stream whether they're making money through Amazon or selling products or selling ebooks or those things. So they would need to be able to sell something to make money.
But can they do it with an audience as small as most local audiences tend to be? That, that's bigger issue. You can monetize audiences if you got a certain enough size. But if you, if you're in Columbus, Ohio, no offense to Columbus, if you. There's plenty of authors who probably have some book on gardening who live in Columbus.
Right.
But you do a whole show. Maybe you sell one book on Amazon, you get 89 cents. That's not going to pay the bills. Is there a sustainable way for them to do that?
So they need to have a separate business where they're selling a product on Etsy or they're selling an ebook or they're promoting products on Amazon. They're, they're bringing in affiliate money, but they need to have physically another infrastructure in place to bring in revenue.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the solution is. I'm not in favor of turning back the clock and saying Craigslist can't exist, but I do think it's. It's very difficult if for communities for people to know what's going on and whether their local school board is ripping them off or doing a good job. It's harder to find out about that because there's no local media.
