Niches Matter: Expand Into Software and Applications

When creators run out of days in the week, they have two options: increase audience size or stop trading money for time.

The solution is to expand by pivoting into scalable products and services such as Affiliate programs, Focusing on platforms with additional incentives, or Joinin...

• Look for business ideas that don't require your presence to create the product.
• Find the “embedded flywheels” in your audience to scale yourself, through collaborations, affiliate marketing agreements, referrals, and brand ambassador programs.

Opportunity cost is notoriously difficult to nail down.

You don't see what you're missing until you've set up systems to tap it.

Some great ways to monetize beyond your bread and butter role:

• Consulting
• Workshops
• Platform incentives

• Have a large audience with obvious merchandise tie-ins.
• Quality control over your products
• On-message, brand-specific targeting
• Building a company with an exclusive customer base already in mind
• You don't have to launch your own brand at first.

Seek out communities and create new content for them.

Twitter's Ticketed Spaces are another potential source of revenue for creators with high-leverage social media accounts who aren't sure how to monetize the small communities they've built (e.g., Facebook’s managed groups).

Go real-world: expand into real estate.

You don’t have to stick to digital real estate. Use your popularity with an audience to lend some buzz to an entirely new venture.

• Some companies will be more than happy to trade equity for a creator who believes in their brand.
• By vesting an influencer into a new product line, they capture the influencer's interest in making the product line a success.
• Taking on equity deals also helps creators leverage...

• You can still have a personal presence as long as you leverage specific events in the digital world.
• Live events, Workshops, Online courses that feature you talking, as though one-on-one.
• You don’t have to sacrifice your friendly persona.

• Leverage the existing structures of brands by negotiating exclusive tie-ins.
• Find the best partners for your audience
• Find the win-win scenarios for your own target market and reach out to the brands offering a complementary fit.

• When you add scaling and monetization to your business, be honest about what you’re doing and why you are doing it.
• Some platforms: sponsored posts, giveaways, ads, affiliate relationships, etc.

Smaller influencers-more "niche" celebrities than the silver screen stars of the past-are gaining new traction by niching down and finding more targeted sponsors.

The problem is, everyone else knows it's a huge market too. The strategy is to "niche" down and find sponsors in your unique spa...