Are you ready to map out your income goals? Income planning as a content creator can certainly be stressful, but planning your strategy for execution is the key to ensuring you meet your goals. To help you get a jump start (and see just how much money you could bring in this year) we have outlined a game plan for driving $350K in annual revenue as a content creator.
Are you ready to map out your income goals for 2022? Income planning as a content creator can certainly be stressful, but planning your strategy for execution is the key to ensuring you meet your goals for 2022. To help you get a jump start (and see just how much money you could bring in this year) we have outlined a game plan for driving $350K in annual revenue as a content creator.
According to HypeAuditor’s 2021 Influencer income survey, the following categories are the biggest revenue drivers for creators: Brand partnerships, product sales from a personal business, affiliate programs, subscription services, and selling courses.
Brand Partnerships are by far the most lucrative area for content creators to drive revenue, with 40% of respondents reporting that they had earned money through sponsorships. Based on our own partnerships data, we use the baseline of an average invoice amount of $5,000 per partnership. Aiming for 5 partnerships a month, this puts baseline revenue at $300,000/year. This of course does not account for expenses incurred in creating content.
Not sure how you’ll land 5 partnerships a month? We spill all the tea on outreach here, and are always answering questions over on our community platform.
Product sales are another potential area for revenue growth in 2022, however, we acknowledge that product sales often take significant time to get up and running as this will require product development, testing sales platforms, etc. Creators can launch merchandise lines or consider digital products like presets as well. Depending on your audience however, this may be a strong option to consider if you are looking to add a revenue stream in 2022.
Next is affiliate marketing, which is often overlooked as a profitable revenue stream. However, depending on your niche, affiliate marketing can be a major revenue driver. Check out our article here on getting started with affiliate marketing if you aren’t yet familiar with it. Vanessa Ferraiolo is a creator with just 40K TikTok followers and 20K Instagram followers and makes $1,000/week on the LTK app. Learn more about her strategy in the video below!
Her key tips include posting daily in the LTK app and sharing her LTK on both Instagram and TikTok. For our income planning, we set a goal of $2,000/month in affiliate commissions. This averages to about $500/week or just under $72/day.
Next we pivot to advertising revenue. While this goes unmentioned in the HypeAuditor report, most social platforms are rolling out monetization features for creators via ad revenue. There is the TikTok Creator fund, YouTube Partner program, monetization for your blog through sites like MediaVine, and new features rolling out through Instagram and Pinterest as well. YouTube and MediaVine are likely the most lucrative forms for advertising revenue, although all of the above have minimum requirements to be met. MediaVine requires 50,000 monthly pageviews while the YouTube Partner Program requires 1,000 followers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the last year. To drive $2,000 in YouTube ad revenue, you’d need about 50K views/day or 1.5 million per month, while ad revenue through MediaVine averages between $800-$1,200 for 50K monthly views. Combining multiple ad revenue options, we set a goal of $2,170/month in ad revenue across platforms.
If these revenue streams aren’t for you, don’t worry. Make a similar list of revenue streams, intended partnerships or sales, and go from there!
Interview
In this week’s Creator Spotlight, Anthony of @saint_travels shares the details of how he got his start in the business, his best advice for creators just starting out, and how to get comfortable charging what you’re worth. Thanks for chatting with Willa, Anthony!
Planning
While having a media kit is not necessarily required for securing partnerships, it does provide a handy way to share relevant statistics with your potential partners!
Tips & Tricks
TikTok is where all the major growth seems to be happening these days. Here's how you can capitalize on it.
Management
To help you seal the deal on your holiday pitch, we spoke to two creators in the Willa community about calculating your holiday campaign rate, knowing how (and when) to share pricing, and how to successfully negotiate the perfect partnership that lasts into the new year. Part 2 of our Holiday series.
