7 Ways To Make Money With Your Brand

There’s nothing more fulfilling than being able to discover your purpose and align it with your passion. Fireworks explode when you realize there’s a way to monetize doing what you love by serving an audience who needs what you have to offer. Being around creatives for so long, I realize that it’s hard for us (creatives) to grasp the concept of business.

[Tweet “You cannot run a successful business without generating sales.”]

It’s going to be hard to sell, when you don’t see your creativity is valuable. When you do something for so long for free, you get stuck in a mindset that it is of no value. When your craft comes so natural to you, you think it’s almost unfair to charge money for it. Then you end up doing endless of favors for friends and family but get mad when no one offers money.

[Tweet “If you want to make money, you’re going to be brave enough to ask for it.”]

When you finally begin taking your craft seriously enough to take it full time, there’s this overwhelm of fear and excitement of being able to actually do it with a possibility of failing. Being able to diversify my income has been a layer of security for me. If I’m not making money from one thing, I’m making it from another. When we get scared about having enough income to bring, we start trying to make money in completely random ways. We try to be a travel agent, make up artist, copy editor and personal stylist all at once. We try to wear multiple hats thinking that’s the way to bring in multiple streams of income.

It’s not about how many topics you’re well-versed in, it’s about being so well-versed in topic that you can expand it into multiple platforms. Here are 7 ways you can make money as a personal brand (blogger, designer, coach, speaker, author, etc.)

1. Provide a Service

Providing a service should be the most expensive things on your list to sell because it’s the most expensive thing when it comes to your time. Providing a service like web design, photography, styling or anything of doing (rather than teaching) requires direct one-on-one attention with your customer. Providing a service is one of the best ways to start out because the more you do something for someone, the better you will be at teaching others how to do it themselves.

When it comes to providing a service, make sure that you and your client are clear on what they’re purchasing. If you provide 4 hours for a certain fee, don’t allow them to get away with 5 hours. You automatically drop your hourly rate when terms aren’t defined from the beginning.

2. Coaching/Consulting

Coaching and consulting are technically two different things, but they’re usually the same in the eye of the consumer. Consulting is identifying a specific problem that’s causing a business to fail in a particular area and giving a detailed report on how to fix it. Coaching is helping your client build on existing strengths & weaknesses.

Think of a consultant as a doctor for a company. They identify the illness based on the symptoms and provide a prescription to get rid of the problem.

Think of why someone would hire a health and wellness coach. Nothing is wrong per se, but there’s always room for improvement. Even though you’re not sick, they offer ways for you to become your most healthy self and minimize the chances of becoming sick.

Consultations are also a good way to indicate whether or not working with a client is a good fit for your additional services. When I was still a designer, some prospects booked a consultation that allowed me to identify what the issue was in their business and offer a formal proposal on how I could offer a solution.

3. Create an eBook

Create an informational eBook or eGuide based on your expertise. Readers enjoy “How to’s” or “Steps”. For example:
“How To Become A Better Blogger In 30 Days” or “5 Steps To Financial Freedom In 3 Months”. People love knowing that they’re going to get a specific result (better blogger and financial freedom for example) in a specific timeframe (in 30 days and in 30 months for example). A lot of people love instant gratification, so letting your reader know upfront the timeframe in which they will get their result brings them relief.

If you have enough existing content, you can put together old blog posts, elaborate on them and turn it into an eBook. People are willing to pay for a structured solution on reaching their goals. To many people, it’s worth paying $10 – $15 for an eBook rather than searching through endless blog posts and trying to decide which order to execute a list of tips.

4. Become a Contributor / Guest Blogger

Contributing is a great way for you to earn an additional income and/or expand your audience. There are plenty of websites/blogs that look for additional content. Either find companies that are willing to pay you to write on your expertise or companies with a big following that allow you to leave a link back to your website/blog following your article. It’s better to write for companies and other blogs that have a targeted following rather than a large one. If you can find a company that has a targeted following that is large, even better! Quality is always better than quantity.

You should also look for contributing opportunities where companies want videos. Video content usually yields a larger return than written content.

5. Host a Workshop

There’s someone out there who aspires to learn about what you do. Create a curriculum teaching your craft. Decide how long and frequent your workshop will be. One time, 4 hour workshop? Or 2 hour quarterly workshops? I like doing workshops virtually because there’s no overhead on finding a location, you don’t have to worry about feeding people and you can expand your reach digitally.

You can host your workshop in a live stream webinar format but call it a workshop, masterclass or bootcamp. Those terms will always hold more value to the name than “webinar”.

6. Become a Public Speaker

Public speaking is a great way to build confidence. Search for conferences in your field looking for speakers. Sharing your knowledge with a large audience allows you to prove that you’re a master in what you do which ultimately generates more clientele. Even if you’re not necessarily getting paid to speak at an event, being a speaker automatically places you as an authority. Use that leverage to get clients, drive traffic to your site and bring awareness to your products and services.

Being on Periscope and hosting webinars has really helped me become a better speaker for conferences, events and even in my YouTube videos.

7. Create an Online Course

Think of how you run your coaching sessions. The steps you have your client take to reach a specific result can be put into modules. When I create my course content, I like to be extremely specific and think about the exact steps I need them to take to achieve their results.

As far as the platform, I like to provide video and workbooks so they can see me and take notes. I currently use Teachable (previously Fedora), which has an amazing front end AND backend interface.

All of these are excellent ways to generate an income through content alone. I know because I’ve made money from each thing I’ve listed.