My quick guide to building a content creator business
Starting from scratch with no audience and no platform
We are living in the creator economy and I love it!
I’ve been building my platform online for the past several years now. I have hundreds of thousands of followers in my network across various platforms not including the 500K+ I have across my faceless businesses.
If you’re a creator, there’s so much opportunity but, what if you don’t have a platform?
What if you’re just starting out?
Do you have to wait months or years to grow a sizable audience to start making money as a creator?
Heck no.
If I were starting fresh as a new creator with zero following, here’s exactly how I’d build a content creator business from scratch…
My quick guide to building a business as a creator
Here’s how I’d do it…
Pick a niche
Pick a platform
Start contributing to the platform
Create a portfolio
Get clients
Pick a niche
You’re going to start with choosing a niche.
You can decide to hone in on a topic or passion of yours. You can also decide to attack all niches. Either route can bring success.
Examples of niches:
Cryptocurrency
Gardening
Fashion
Home decor
Travel
Personal finance
Once you’ve got this down, next it’s time to choose a platform.
Choose a platform
Pick a platform to contribute to like Medium, Twitter, Tik Tok, etc.
You can go for more than one platform if you wish but, I would recommend starting with one and then creating content on that platform like crazy.
This whole thing I’m talking about in this newsletter is building a content creation business. Specifically in UGC (user-generated content).
With UGC, you can create content for brands with no social following or audience required.
Well, then why do you need to join a platform?
While joining a platform is not required to be successful in UGC, it’s a super simple way to enlarge your digital footprint.
It’s an opportunity to capture leads, learn from other UGC creators in the space, share what you’ve learned, and more.
It’s awesome for community and I think it brings a wealth of benefits (shared above) compared to starting this journey without a platform.
For UGC creators, I see Tik Tok and Twitter as big platforms in the space.
Many UGC creators on Twitter get leads pouring into their inbox without even trying!
Post on that platform
In this step, it’s time to get active and post on the platform.
I’m not going to give you a schedule to go by. Just post consistently, when you want but, the more the better.
Build your portfolio
Building a portfolio is going to be essential in showing leads examples of your work.
This is as easy as whipping out your smartphone and filming shower products in your bathroom or modeling some clothes you bought from Amazon, making a mixed drink in your kitchen, whatever.
You can house your portfolio on your blog, in a Google drive, a content portfolio site, on social media, whatever you want.
If you need examples, there are tons on Twitter and Tik Tok.
Just search for “UGC portfolio” to see examples.
Get clients
Lastly, it’s time to get clients.
You can get clients a lot easier than you might think.
Many creators are literally cold emailing 100 brands a day to get their first clients in UGC. Others are just being active on social media and keeping an eye on their inbox for when prospects reach out to them.
You can go either direction or both.
There are also tools you can use to help you get clients.
For example, UGC websites like Creator X and others exist where the company is trying to find creators to work with their clients.
I’m personally in talks with a company that wants 10 pieces of content per month, every single month.
That could be a cool $2,000 to $4,000 extra in my bank account every month.
Land 2 or 3 of these deals and be on your way to making $10K per month!
To find companies that work with brands and UGC creators for partnerships, get on Tik Tok. There are many creators that run companies like this where they partner brands and creators.
Mike Rama on Tik Tok is an example.
That’s how I’d do it!
Do I have experience with UGC?
Yes.
I’ve been paid up to $750 per piece of UGC content, for brands. I have also worked with dozens of companies as an influencer, making money, getting free products, free travel, and more.
Here are some of my favorite Medium articles on content creation:
This creator makes $3,000+ from micro-brand deals
$92,000/year from blogging - proof that blogging is not dead
3 Content Creators, Their Pay, and What They Do
Is this something you would do?
Questions? Comment below.
Cheers,
Jenn