https://nasacademy.com/blog/article/how-to-monetize-your-social-media-following-in-2022
Knowing how to monetize your social media following is something that each creator is going to need to understand for the future. After all, there are many different ways for creators to make money with their content and the following that they’ve built on social media.
But even though there are many different ways to do this, some are more effective than others and can help you achieve a more sustainable revenue stream. Not only this, but it can help you build a deeper emotional connection between you and your audience as a whole – making for a more loyal audience base. One of the best ways to do this: building an online community.
Check out our communities at Nas.io.
But even though communities can be optimal, there are also other basic ways to monetize your social media following:
Many creators monetize their content through partnering with brands who reach out to them to endorse their products.
Every time you see a #ad on a creators Instagram post, this is usually evidence that there’s a brand deal associated with the video. While this is one of the basic ways to monetize your content as a creator, it can also be a great way for micro-influencers to start growing and earning money for their content.
In fact, many brands are actually looking out for micro-influencers from their content because their rates tend to be cheaper.
Affiliate marketing is another way of monetizing your social media following. Becoming an affiliate of a brand simply means that you have a personalized link that you can put on your platforms, and direct your audience to purchase the product or brand. This way, whenever your followers or viewers click on that link and purchase something, you get a percentage of that sale.
Affiliate marketing is a great way of earning some extra money, but it usually isn’t a large or reliable source of income for most creators unless you have a lot of traffic and conversions through the products you refer people to.
Ads are another basic way of earning revenue rom your content online. There’s Google Ads that you can run on your website to earn a percentage of any sale that goes through using the ad that appears on your platform. However, most creators don’t usually earn that much from Google ads – especially if you’re a new creator.
There are also YouTube ads that help creators monetize their following. The amount that YouTubers will make through YouTube ads on average is $18 per 1,000 views.
These are a few of the basic ways you can generate income with your social media following online, but there’s a clear winner when it comes to build not only more revenue – but recurring revenue. It also helps you build a lasting, loyal user-base who can help you turn your social media into a full-time career, and that’ through building an online community.
Community is one instinctual driver that has lasted throughout human history, and that will continue to last for as long as we live. Community is ingrained in us – we want to fit in, we want to be liked, and we want to be a part of something.
That’s why doing brand deals and affiliate marketing works well, because if followers see their favorite influencer buying a certain product or brand, they not only trust that the product must be good, but they also want to be part of that persons community.
Building a platform for an online community that is catered specifically to you and your brand is something that can help you connect with your followers on a much deeper level. It lets followers interact and feel more connected to you as an influencer, rather than just owning your merch line or sharing a mutual interest in a specific perfume or clothing brand.
If you create a community, it’s basically allowing your audience to be on the “inside”. It encourages engagement, it allows you to talk to them more directly and in your own way – not restricted to the comments section – and allows people to get exclusive access to interests, content, knowledge, entertainment and more.
In 2022, we believe community to be the #1 thing to do if you want to really learn how to monetize your social media following. In fact, communities can actually help increase a brands revenue by 20%.
But how exactly do you do this, and what does it mean to actually build a community?
The first way to monetize your social media followers through community is to build a space online where you charge a monthly subscription fee for anybody who wants to join the community. This will be an online space where you share exclusive content, experiences and opportunities for your followers.
Many people will do this through private groups, on platforms such as Mighty Networks or Discord and now we will be offering a similar feature here at Nas.io. Using a private platform to build your own curated community means you can call the shots and hold exclusive experiences that are going to help build out your brand story and increase your relationship with your closest, most contributing followers.
Within your community, you can create exclusive content, offers or opportunities that are only available with your membership subscription as a way to incentivize people to join. Patreon is an example of how creators can monetize their content by asking for a small subscription fee in order to access exclusive, add-on videos that normal subscribers can’t see. Some extra incentives you could include in your community are:
Wherever your audience is and whatever kind of content you are known for creating, you can personalize your community to fit it all. You can offer exclusive BTS content for entertainment, PDF resources that help your followers learn or improve their craft, or you can simply build a place for people to network and interact. The possibilities are endless with communities, and you can cater whatever you offer in the community space to fit your audiences needs.
Selling your knowledge in the form of a course – especially an online courses that has an interactive component – is bound to get you results if done right. For example, well-known YouTuber, Ali Abdaal, created and hosts his own class on how to start a YouTube channel. He has hosted just 5 cohorts and has already made over $3 million in revenue.
This is the power of learning, and the power of community. Creating a class and putting a price on your knowledge, and then sharing it with your social media following to bring people together as a bonus is a perfect way to start making money as a content creator.
Keep in mind – creating an online course and community versus a live, in-person course is also more cost-effective as it takes less resources to operate. Not to mention, you can get classmates together from different countries around the world.
NFTs are growing in popularity especially within the creator economy – because of how much opportunity there is to monetize your social media followers.
If you have a coveted piece of content, or even just a series of content pieces that your followers love, you can mint them as an NFT and earn double the dollars on one single piece of content. You can mint a YouTube short, an image, or a post – like the Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey did with the first Tweet he ever posted – and then sell it to super-fans for profit.
Soon enough, big platforms like YouTube are actually going to be implementing an NFT minting feature built into the platform itself as a monetization tool for content creators.
There’s plenty of opportunities from minting your original pieces of content that are available online for people to own, all the way to building and launching a brand new NFT project.
The NFT and Metaverse spaces are incredible for building community around your creations. They have helped creators build tight-knit communities, and monetize their content in a completely new way that wasn’t possible a few years ago.
There are so many stories out there of people, like this rapper, Spottie Wifi, who have proven that if you have just 1000 true fans in an NFT community, that’s all you really need to make a living from it, and monetize your content online.
Communities are popping up left right and centre on all different kinds of social platforms, and ones that are more community-based are the ones that are thriving in 2022. Just look at Meta – they are taking the messenger app and reintegrating it within the Facebook platform to be mixed with their Facebook groups feature.
This is because the big players in the online space are recognizing something: community is a huge monetization opportunity. Community features is something we will always pay for in order to get access t0, and it’s what can help creators like you monetize your content online, and build a living doing what you love – all while changing people’s lives in the meantime.
Nas.io is a platform we are building to bring creators and followers together through interactive, online communities. Check out our selection of communities here, and our selection of online classes here.
By Admin Nas Academy
By Admin Nas Academy
WE EMPOWER CREATORS.
