We’ve now got our basic components underway: our messaging, content marketing, basic product and service funnel.

These are the core components for growth of our creator business. As we grow we can put into play other revenue streams. We’ll cover the most powerful in this Part to show you where you can take this creator business as you move forward.

Let’s get started:

The pathways to grow your creator business are almost unlimited. Once you’ve built your own platform you can take it in pretty much any direction. Revenue follows attention.

What I’ll focus on is what I know works because it has worked for Prompt Entrepreneur.

I’ll cover our 6+ revenue sources. I’ve tried and tested many (many!) more and find that these are a strong combination that do not require a massive audience.

Newsletter

First up is a newsletter.

The big reason for having a newsletter is to secure your audience.

If you rely on social media platforms your audience is at risk.

Not only to an account ban (unlikely yet possible) but also to general shifts in the algorithm. Building an audience purely on social media is equivalent to building on borrowed land. It’s probably going to be OK. Until it isn’t!

Having a newsletter is a great to get your audience’s direct contact details (email) so that you can keep communicating with them.

I personally use beehiiv. I’ve tried a number of platforms and don’t recommend any others. Here’s my affiliate link if want to sign up - it also gets you a discount if/when you upgrade to paid: beehiiv sign up.

It’s free up to 2500 subs by which point it should easily pay for itself.

You can use your newsletter in a number of ways to generate revenue.

First is continuing to direct people to your funnel. If using only social media you have less chances to point people to your digital products and services. Once you have someone on your newsletter list you have multiple opportunities over a longer period of time. Remember that subscribers are also leads.

Second, you can have a Premium newsletter which is accessible by subscription. Much like this one. It’s a perfect mechanism to deepen your relationship with your best audience members.

Third, beehiiv Boosts. Every time someone signs up to my newsletter they are shown other newsletters I recommend. If they sign up to these newsletters I get paid. Immediate revenue whilst building your newsletter. We generate $50-100/day on autopilot using Boosts. Or when a post goes viral it’s closer to $300-500 a day.

As soon as you start to generate significant attention on social media I highly recommend getting a newsletter set up. Here’s part 1 of my Prompt Playbook on the subject: starting a newsletter.

Sponsorship and promoted posts

Next up once you get traction you can look at taking on sponsorship.

I personally started this at 50,000 subscribers and 10,000 X followers. You can start earlier though depending on your niche and how valuable your audience is.

You can run sponsorship anywhere you have attention: social media or newsletters.

For working out how much to charge I recommend looking at similar creators. Here’s how.

Head to Google and type “site:passionfroot.me” followed by your niche.

Like so:

This is using the AI niche as an example.

This search will bring up passionfroot profiles related to your niche. Go and check them out to see what their rates are.

For example:

This placement is $2000 to ~35,000 newsletter subs (108k x 33% open) and 400k followers.

Go through other people in your niche to see what everyone is charging and use this to work out your rates.

I’d then recommend setting up your own Passionfroot as a basic sponsorship page. They take a cut but honestly it makes the whole process a lot simpler.

They also have a Discover tab that allows you to contact 5 sponsors per week to see if they want to sponsor you. That alone makes Passionfroot worth the % fee.

Monetisation schemes

Most of the large social media platforms have some form of monetisation scheme.

Basically once you get large enough you get paid for posting. This is because the platform will run adverts around your content. The platform gets paid for those adverts - and you get a small cut.

I personally find the Tiktok scheme the most generous. However it’s only available in certain countries so make sure to check requirements.

Unless you are very large these ad revenue share schemes tend not to pay out that much. It’s worth investigating what you are eligible for and turning them on (you’ll need to opt in) though as it’s bonus automatic income.

Speaking

As a creator you are an expert voice in your industry. This opens doors.

Speaking gigs and workshops can be very well paid considering the time they take. They are also a great way to further cement your reputation in the niche and add more social proof to your creator business.

This photo for example is me talking to the entire marketing department of Miro, a company valued at $17bn. Miro flew me out to Amsterdam to host a half day workshop with their 150 strong marketing team.

Sure the money was good (and I got to stay on for a holiday) but the reputation play here is even more valuable. Speaking acts as an accelerant to your online creator business by cementing your value in the industry.

Stacking income sources

The exact revenue drivers you build is not as important as the fact that having a creator business allows you multiple sources.

Each feeds into all the others. The newsletter drives product sales which secures service and coaching contracts which can lead to speaking gigs which in turn boost your sponsorship rates.

Everything feeds into everything else, in all directions.

This may seem like a lack of focus. But you are constantly adding to the value of a single asset.

That asset is you as the creator at the centre of all this.