- Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
You're probably on all of 'em. And you know what? Why not monetize and make money? But people are probably telling you that you need a product to make money. That's a bunch of bullshit. Hey, everyone, I'm Neil Patel, and today I'm gonna share with you five ways you can monetize your social media audience without a product. (mellow synthesizer music) The first tip and the first strategy, and this one's really simple, is just go and promote someone else's product. Whether it's from the affiliate rake, or they're paying you a specific cost per promotion, or whatever it may be, why not just promote someone else's product? For example, I have a huge social media following, or at least I think it's a decent size, for anything marketing related. So if I go out there and I say, hey, you should go use Ahrefs or BuzzSumo, or SEMrush. I've mentioned all those tools so many times on my videos. Now, I don't have a deal with them, and I don't have a affiliate rake or anything like that with these guys, but if I wanted to, I probably could get one. I'm driving 'em signups, I'm driving 'em revenue, and it's really easy to hit 'em up and be like, hey, I want a commission. Most of these guys already have affiliate programs on the bottom of their website. All you have to do is sign up, and use that link whenever you're talking about them on the social web. Here's what's cool about it. You can even go to sites like Amazon, Best Buy. They all have affiliate offerings and pages. Even the largest companies that you can think of are doing affiliate marketing, so it's really easy for you to go pick any type of product out there that's related to your audience and sell it. The second strategy I have for you is partner with someone who has a product but doesn't have a audience. Here's what I mean by that. These days, influencer marketing is huge. When you put a brand, a personal brand, behind a product, you can crush it. Just look at the Kardashians. I don't know all of their names, but I think one of the youngest ones, the daughter, right, I think that technically almost all of 'em are daughters, but Kylie, or Kim, or Khloe, or whatever her name is, I'm sorry for not knowing it, one of 'em is known for selling hair extensions, makeup, and lipstick. Alright? When she sells it, what happens when she puts it on Instagram or social media? It sells out instantly. Now, these days, she's probably creating her own product. But when she first started, you could see that they were doing deals with other companies, and they'd be like, oh wait, you have a product, I have a brand, let's partner up and I'll be the face of your product and let's make this thing big. Remember Beats by Dre? Dr. Dre made a killing with Jimmy Iovine. And I could be getting his last name wrong, but I know his first name's Jimmy. And they ended up selling to Apple for over a billion dollars. It was a really simple model. Use Dre's brand, Jimmy's connections, and they blew that thing up. So much so that any time you watch a basketball game or NFL game, everyone's like walking to the games sporting their Beats by Dre headphones. And it really blew up. Even the celebrities like the Kardashians were wearing 'em. So if you find someone with an amazing product, but no personal brand behind it, you could be that personal brand. Think about how cool that is. You can promote it, do really well for 'em, and you can take a cut of the business. Not just a cut of whatever sales you drive, but you can get a fraction of that business. Could be 2, 3%, 5%, 10%, whatever it may be. The third strategy I have for you is just place ads within your videos. If you're on social media, create videos and put 'em on sites like YouTube. They'll automatically put ads for you, if you wanna monetize it. Yes, you're not gonna be the richest person, but you can easily make 2, 3 grand a month. That may not seem like a lot, but it could give you enough flexibility and freedom where you don't have to work for someone else. It's kinda awesome and amazing. Money isn't everything in this world. Making enough to be happy and having that financial freedom, in many cases, is better than making 10, 20, 50, 100 grand a month. So don't always shoot for making the most amount of money, also aim for financial freedom. And by just putting ads on your videos, or if you have a WordPress site you can allow them to monetize and you can let them make you money in promoting those articles via social media. It's an amazing way to end up making free money or little, or easy money, from ads. The fourth strategy I have for you is influencer marketing. And not the same influencer marketing that I talked about a few strategies ago. Why not go and say, hey, you sell teeth whitening. I'll pay per post to promote you on Instagram. Oh, your Fit Tea, yeah I'll talk about Fit Tea. I'm a celebrity or a fitness Instagram page and I can be breaking down and taking photos of how I'm using Fit Tea to get more fit and building these muscles. As you can see by my body, probably not drinking much Fit Tea and I'm not workin' out much. I'm more so a runner. You get the point. You see it on Instagram all the time. People promoting other people's products, taking pictures. And they're not getting paid by per sale. They're usually not getting paid on a "ad basis", they're getting paid to be like a influencer, and they're getting paid for, let's say, three months, six months, or a year. They have a contract. And they post typically one picture a month or one a week, and they get paid a monthly salary. That's an amazing, easy, awesome way to make money if you have a social following. Number five, last but not least. Premium content. Here's what I mean by this. On Instagram you see a lot of these models taking pictures of themselves. And then, they use something called Patreon where they're like, hey, you can subscribe on Patreon, give me money each and every single month, and I'll show you premium content. You can do the same thing. You don't have to take half-naked pictures, and I'm not recommending that, but more so, what you can do is, you can create exclusive, more detailed, thorough articles or exclusive videos. For example, I'm shooting videos here. You're watching 'em. Why can't I shoot 30-minute videos or one-hour videos that break down step-by-step how to do everything from A to Z and charge for that? I could, I don't really care for the money, so I'm not. But that's a good idea of creating premium content and charging for it. And you know what? I know I said this video's gonna be five, but because you stayed to the end, I'm gonna give you one extra, bonus tip. And the bonus tip for you is, you don't need a product to generate income. You could just go find someone else's product, white label it, in essence you're creating your own business. They can drop ship it for you. And they'll do a deal where every time you sell a product, you send 'em the information, they'll ship it out, and you give 'em the money, and you keep the difference. What I mean by that is, let's say you're saying hey, you know what, I'm into fitness, I wanna sell protein powder but I don't know how to create it. I'm gonna go sell Muscle for Life's protein powder. I'm gonna white label it. And what I'm gonna do is every time I have an order I'll send it to 'em. Charge people $50 for protein powder, I'll pay 'em $25, because I got a special deal, and I just keep the difference. And you can do that all day long. Again, you're not gonna make a killing from doing this versus buying your own product, but it's easier, you don't have to worry about inventory, holding costs, or any of that. I hope these tips help you monetize your social profile. It's not that hard. You just gotta put in the time and effort and be patient, keep tweaking. One model may be better for you versus a other one. But you won't know unless you test them all. So just try 'em out. Think of it as spaghetti, throw it against the wall, see what works and sticks, and then just move forward with that. Thank you for watching. Make sure you like, share, comment. If you have any questions, you're not sure how to monetize your social profile, leave a comment. I'll answer it, and I'll give you advice. Thank you.