Why some creators make way more than others (content niches ranked)

Transcript

So this last week, I was in London speaking at Vervant Pulse to hundreds of brands about how to use creators. It got me thinking about the creator economy and how misunderstood it is. I wanted to make a video to discuss how there are so many creators and how they are all making money. And this is a particularly poignant subject because I met with a lot of brands in the UK, and they're still really focused there on old-school brand strategy. Fewer have come over to the new modern marketing that we see in the US. And it was just a reminder of how early we still are on the bell curve of this. In this video, I'm going to break down all of the ways creators make money: affiliate, influence, UGC, working for brands, info products, payouts. I'm going to talk about the best niches for creators to make money, and I'm going to rank them. Because not all niches are created equal. And then I'm going to go into how brands are leveraging creators and how they can. All those different ways, so both brands can understand how they take advantage of this, and creators can also understand how brands actually want to pay them and how it works. Give me a complete A to Z of the creator economy. If you want to leverage influence online to make money, I'm going to drop an enormous amount of info on you right here. Let's stroll through sunny London and lock it. So first, why do we even care? Who cares about all these creators, all these influencers? Well, 82% of individuals 18 to 44 have posted content online in the last month. 64% of Gen Z consider themselves to be content creators. It is a different world. However many creators you think there are, there are more. And however much money you think they're making, it's more. So let's start with how creators actually make dollars. There are a few different ways. So the first, obviously the most well-known, is brand deals. Brands want to buy advertising and sponsorships on a creator's channel, whether that's YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, for a few reasons. One, to reach their audience. And then two, to leverage how good they are as creators to make better content, better ads about their brand that they can then use to promote. And while this is the most talked about, this is actually one of the least common ways to make money. And we will rank niches for brand deals later. But only some of the best creators are able to do this. It is not a game for everyone. You need a lot of things to fall in your favor for that to work. So I'm going to focus on some of the other ways first. So first, the worst-paying but available to everybody is platform payouts. So Instagram pays out a very small amount occasionally for you posting on its platform. Slightly more if you're posting on Facebook. You get this based on the performance of your videos, but it is a pretty negligible amount. But it's great if you are creating for the fun of it. You're getting started, and you get some money along the way. TikTok has the Creator Fund and does the same thing. But it pays out pretty well. It's specialized in different niches. So there is education, there is automobile, and there is beauty. And actually, if you are putting up videos that get pretty good views, you're getting hundreds of thousands to millions of views every month, you could start getting a couple thousand dollars a month off of this. All the way up to lots of creators who get $7,500 to $10,000 all the time, just off the Creator Fund. And they're doing 10 million views plus in good niches. And with this comes an incentive to post. TikTok only rewards you on content that's longer than one minute. But entire economies are made on this. If you've ever wondered, how do brands send out all this free product? Why do people still post about it on TikTok? Well, because if you make a video about a product over a minute and it gets any level of views, TikTok pays you for it. And if you're sent something good or interesting, that's now a thing for you to make content about. If you already made that content on TikTok and it's done, why wouldn't you post it to the other networks to take advantage of the content you made? There is a massive economy around this. You've probably heard me tell the anecdote before about working with beauty brands last year. I had so radically underestimated how many of those mailers you could send out. Oh, a couple hundred, maybe we can get up to a thousand. No, it's thousands: 5,000, 8,000 a month. That is how many creators are participating in that ecosystem in beauty. Whatever the scale you think it is, it's more. And this is funded in large part by TikTok. And if you look at it as an average person, when you talk about all those Gen Z making that percentage of content, what are they doing? Well, look, if you are a hostess or you work in retail or you're in college or you have an entry-level job, getting an extra $500 a month or $1,000 a month— when I was in college, I worked at Abercrombie & Fitch and Chick-fil-A. Those jobs sucked, and they were fine. I've had worse. But if you're telling me that I could be making videos about fitness or design or whatever I was into at the time, and TikTok would pay me and I could make $1,000, and that's before we even get into affiliate and TikTok Shop and real money, you best believe I would be trying to do that. Platform payouts are another one. YouTube has payouts as well, also pretty low. So again, you're not going to make some amazing living off this, and you should not base this as an income source for you as a creator. This should always be looked at as something extra. It is not a primary monetization model for anybody and should not be. But it exists and is worth understanding. So then we have the more common way to actually work with brands than brand deals, and that is affiliate marketing. So what do we mean by this? TikTok Shop, as well as platforms like ShopMy and LTK, and just direct affiliate programs. So affiliate is when you make content about a brand or a thing, and you give somebody a link, they buy from it, and you get paid. So TikTok Shop has made this super easy. This should always be looked at as some extra. It is not a primary monetization model for anybody and should not be. But it exists and is worth understanding. So then we have the more common way to work with brands than brand deals, and that is affiliate marketing. So what do we mean by this? TikTok Shop, as well as platforms like ShopMy and LTK, and direct affiliate programs. So affiliates: when you make content about a brand or a thing, and you give somebody a link, and they buy from it, and you get paid. So TikTok Shop has made this super easy. You tag a product on TikTok Shop, and you get paid pretty high percentages, higher percentages than anywhere else. It's why it's so dominant. And you will make money off those sales. And there are endless creators making 10K-plus and way more creators than you would ever expect making 100K-plus. If you doubt this and want to validate this, you can go into Kalo data—not an ad, just a platform that sources this. We used it to find creators at a previous position I worked at because it will show you every brand. You can go and look up Maybelline. Who is Maybelline's top creator this month? Who are their other 10 top creators? How much are they making in revenue from just Maybelline? You can go to the creator themselves and see what that is. All those numbers are aggregated out there. And it's not completely right because sometimes there are separate retainer systems, whatever, but it'll give you a rough idea, and the numbers are staggering. But affiliate isn't just TikTok Shop. That's a very particular world to live in. You have to be a great TikTok Shop creator. There are a lot of other creators—and we'll dive into this in the niches when I rank them— who just make content and link it. So ShopMy and LTK let you put together a catalog of products: things that you recommend, your picks, the things you like in your home. If I wanted this microphone, this candle, my MacBook, whatever it is, I can put that in my ShopMy or my LTK. And when someone asks me, “Where'd you get that sweater?” I go, “Hey, it's in my ShopMy.” And then they would click through, and you get a small percentage, right? It's 3%, 10%, 12%. Pretty minor, but it adds up if people take your recommendations and if you make content specifically around it. Tons of creators do this. It is a real revenue source. You can do it on Instagram. You can do it on YouTube. You can do it directly with a brand. I'll talk about how brands run programs for this later. And so much stuff gets sold on the internet through pretty direct content about it or through indirect content. Yeah, I'm just going to put up the things you see in my house or my filming setup, whatever it is. So it just feels much like an ad. It's just a way to help monetize. This is a huge program for our creators to make money. And I could not recommend highly enough, if you are doing that, that you set it up, run it, and learn to be good at it, whether you're just casually recommending it or making dedicated videos about stuff you get a percentage on. Because you don't have to wait for a brand deal. You're rewarded for it. And you might be surprised at how it performs. And we have UGC. This is when you make content for brands. It doesn't even go on your feed. So there are a lot of platforms out there. Endless ones. Super Affiliate. Trend.io. Hundreds. You can just search “UGC videos,” “UGC platform.” They offer the ability for you to make videos for brands for the low hundreds of dollars: $50, $100, $200, $300. Brands use them to run ads inside their various networks. This is a common ad type that most brands use. And if you're not, you really should be testing. It is an affordable way for them to get creative. And creators who are good at this can begin to command more and more money. But this is another very common option. It doesn't even have to go on your feed, or it can be a combo. But you are leveraging your talents and making content for brands. And the best way to begin working in this is to get listed on those platforms and have some examples. Then you can get work as a creator. You may have seen that I've done multiple videos on Cash App's page where I am functioning as a creator on their social media feed, a recurring voice. And I'm doing that because I can discuss nuanced topics in an interesting way. And that's a skill that's helpful on that page. And there are brands in all types of industries that do this. And sometimes it's in a collab with your actual creator account. Sometimes it's purely separate. But everything from marketing to HR to individual products to technology to government to news media pays creators to do this. And it becomes great because it's like having a recurring client where you can work out a deal and begin to get a predictable amount of revenue for X videos a month. And the last way we'll talk about is info products, where you're selling PDFs, courses, guides, direct calls, etc., which, if you have something useful to say, you're an expert, and you have something not available elsewhere, is a great way to monetize and how you see a lot of people scale. Because if you have knowledge and it's worth $30, charge for it. And you'll see I have done all of these personally. Many of you have seen Cut30. That is an info product. I remember two other creators. I get payouts on YouTube from the platform. I've done affiliate content. I was one of Erwan's first TikTok Shop affiliates. I've done UGC for Roku. It wasn't on my feed, but they've run it as an ad. Brand deals with Anthropic, Google, CarGurus, Claude. It's endless. And so I've learned a lot about what makes these good and bad. And you'll see I have done all of these personally. Many of you have seen Cut30. That is an info product. I remember two other creators. I get payouts on YouTube from the platform. I've done affiliate content. I was one of Erwan's first TikTok Shop affiliates. I've done UGC for Roku. It wasn't on my feed, but they've run it as an ad. Brand deals with Anthropic, Google, CarGurus, Claude. It's endless. And so I've learned a lot about what makes these good and bad. So quickly, we're going to talk about how you get started doing this. And I'm going to rank all the niches. So the first thing is, if you want to get this— If you want people reaching out to you about affiliate deals— You can hunt them down yourself, obviously, or just put up a ShopMy or LTK. If you want brands to reach out to you about influencer stuff or to hire you for UGC— And you want them to come to you directly— They have to be able to find you on platforms. You've got to realize that they are using search platforms. Later, all this stuff. That will allow you to find creators. Meta has a creator search. TikTok has a creator search. Yuka. All these platforms search. And so you have to be able to show up when they search. So if they're searching for skincare products or their competitors' products— You need to have made videos about those things. Or you won't show up inside the system. And then, if those videos are good— You will obviously be weighted higher in it. They'll see the engagement. They'll see the views. So that is your number one responsibility— If you want to actually get those types of inquiries— Is to make content about the niche. They're not just going to come to you if you've never made it before. You have to be currently making it. And it has to be good. And we will get a lot of creators who wonder, "Why don't brands ever reach out?" Well, have you made content in that niche about those products? No. Well, then they're not going to reach out until you've done that. And then they'll say, "Well, I've made that content." Well, is it good? Do people like it? Do they respond to it? There has to be some level of natural attraction. Achieve those. And those will come. And if you don't want to wait for that, you can go outbound. There's a great book called Sponsor Magnet— That a Cut30 grad wrote— That you should check out if you want to learn how to go outbound and pitch your own deals. And there are a lot of people. But there are so many people hiring creators at Darkroom, the agency I work with. They're always hiring creators. I'll link their stuff. Their form down here below, too, if you're a creator and you need it. There are so many opportunities. You have to hunt them. Now let's break into the best niches for creators to make money. I am going to tier these out. A, B, C— And D. I'm going to go from the lowest money to the highest money. And I'm going to base that money primarily on brand deals. But we're going to talk about all this other stuff. All those other programs within it. But it's easier to tier them based on one thing. So, will brands pay you money for stuff? We're going to start there. So first is the lowest tier. The bad tier. If you do the news— You talk about news— Politics— You do media— Sports— You talk about art— Mindset— And inspirational content— Carousel accounts— An aggregation of stuff that's happening— Automotive and cars— Music— Gaming— Comedy— Any faceless content— AI content— Not content about AI— But content made using AI— This is the worst niche. This is the bottom of the barrel. [SPEAKER_00] Almost no one wants this content. And when they do— They pay the least amount of money for it. If you become the biggest— If you become the top 1%— As you are in sports— You can get these deals. But they're going to be— Words I can't say— Or this video will get you listed. This is common-denominator stuff. You're competing with news media. Stuff that's commodified. It's pretty much useless. If you're doing this for brand deals— It's not great. You'd be doing that for the love of the game. If you're doing it for payouts— Maybe you'll get a little bit of money. There's also no UGC stuff in here. There is some creator stuff. Because there are companies in gaming— In music— Etc.— That are hiring creators. One of your best bets— If you're in any of these niches— Is to try to get companies— That are working in that— To retain you— To make content on their main feed. Become a recurring voice on their feed. It's one of the only good options— You have for monetization. And even with affiliate— There are just not a ton of options here. And toward the top of this— I would put them in this bad niche. But there's still something there. It's travel and food— Where there are a lot of good creators. There are more opportunities to make money. There is some level of brand. But it's so commoditized. To make content on their main feed. Become a recurring voice on their feed. It's one of the only good options you have for monetization and even affiliate marketing. There's just not a ton of options here. And towards the top of this, I would put them in this bad niche. But there's still something there. It's travel and food, where there are a lot of good creators. There are more opportunities to make money. There is some level of brand, but it's so commoditized. It's so competitive that it's at that lowest tier here. So if you're making content in that, I have to tell you, you've got to be making content for the love of the game or be in the top 1%, or it's just probably not going to work out. Your audience, I hate to be the person to break it to you, is probably not worth a lot. And however much it's worth now, it's going to be worth less every single day, given how easy these niches are to operate in. Then we go up a tier, to what I call the lifestyle niches. Travel and food are at the top of the last one and the bottom of this one. And we go into fashion and fitness on the bottom here. In the middle: motherhood and pets. And at the top, we'll get into local content and interior design content. There are brand deals out here. You can get brand deals in fashion and fitness. They're going to suck. They're going to be low-paid. You can get UGC jobs in this too. They're going to be mediocrely paid. You can pursue your passion here, but there are a ton of creators. It's the easiest stuff to do. If you're mildly good-looking or mildly in shape, you can do fashion and fitness content. And even if you are great in those, you're still competing with a lot of people. It gets slightly better in the motherhood and pet niches. It gets up to its best in interior design and local content. Local content is better than travel content for monetization because there are a lot of local places. If you are making content about Orange County, LA, New York, or wherever, there are a lot of businesses that want to reach out locally when they have an event or if there's a local business that wants to promote. You have a lot of interesting monetization opportunities there if you specialize in an area. And this is all okay. You can begin to make actual money here. You get a few brand deals. You get a little bit of UGC. Your best bet in these is to go the info products route. People are developing an affinity with you. You need to sell them something directly. That'll be your best chance to make the most money. And it's the hardest because lifestyle people in general, people who make this content, are the ones who tend to feel the worst about this or be the weirdest about it. Just monetize. Just make money. Sell the PDF. Sell the courses. Whatever it is, if you want to actually get something off this. And as opposed to the niche below, where the top 1% can get some real deals, here, the top 10% can get some real deals. Then we go up into the great tier. This is what I call business-adjacent. So you're providing value that those who market to businesses could sell into. This is when you start to get into real-money niches. I highly recommend this for people. This is the design niche. The design niche is great. And for us, I forgot about photography and stuff. I put that in the lowest niche. Terrible. Terrible niche to be in. Videography. Content creation. Content creation: you're selling courses at best. Hard niche. But in this niche, design is the lower tier of it. And design is great. You have a lot of these brands. You have Photoshop, all the Adobe products, Canva, and a bunch of these that do good brand deals. All the Creative Markets of the world and different types of gear. So if you create really compelling content around design, the use of design, how-tos, and whatnot, there are a bunch of brands that do stuff in there. But there's not a ton. And there's a lot of really high talent. Now, if you're willing to do that and you are able to talk competently about using AI to do that and do that without some huge backlash, which has some nuance to it, then you can make a lot of money. But now, anything else business-adjacent: you can talk about marketing, email marketing, and paid ads. A lot of what I talk about, the core of my content, falls inside this niche. Then you can get a lot of marketing software that wants to offer deals. The same thing goes for HR. If you're running HR inside of a company, there are a lot of those: the Gustos of the world. And do that without some huge backlash. Which has some nuance to it. Then you can make a lot of money. But now, anything else business-adjacent. You can talk about marketing. Email marketing. Paid ads. A lot of what I talk about. The core of my content falls inside this niche. Then you can get a lot of marketing software that wants to offer deals. Same thing goes for HR. If you're running HR inside of a company. There's a lot of those. The Gustos of the world. All the different HR software. And hiring software. And recruiting platforms. Ultra education that will do that. AI in business is a huge one. You can talk to business decision-makers. How to incorporate. ChatGPT. And Claude. And Lovable. And all that. Amazing. Highly monetized niche. So anything that has that business layer. That's not just selling it to wannabe entrepreneurs. But selling it to established business people. Who need to make a choice. Usually about software. This is real bread and butter. This is where all the good creators are making half a million. A million dollars plus. At entry level. And new creators can get to those 10K a month. On brand deals. And when you're doing UGC. You're doing it for stuff with some nuance. Where it doesn't even have. There's a lot of money there to do that. If you have info products in those niches. That's also more of a business decision. You can offer those at higher price points. Affiliate matters a lot less here. Affiliate's for the niches down below. There. Here you can really focus on. Are you creating for other brands? Are you doing influence? Etc. And then payouts are going to be the least. Because this content does not get a ton of views. Right? It's more focused on who those views are for. And then the highest tier. The best tiers. Finance. Personal finance, especially. You help people with credit card points. Making decisions about where they invest. And you do that authentically. Medical. Another one. Medical devices. Specific problems. Pharmaceuticals. Really nuanced niche. That is the highest end of this. When people are making banking and health and money decisions. And you need the least amount of views to be able to get the most amount of money. As I go through these and rank these. One thing to bear in mind. Just because you make content in one of those niches doesn't mean you get money. It doesn't mean that money is there for you. It has to be good. It has to be resonant. You have to have fans. I would ask yourself. Are there recurring people who comment on a lot of my content all the time? Those are fans. Do you have more DMs than you can keep up with reasonably? You have a fan base. Is your content always getting roughly above 20,000 views on TikTok and Instagram? At least above 10. Okay. Now you're in the game. If none of those things are true, you've still got work to do to get to those places. Now I'd be sharpening your toolkit with affiliate stuff to make money while you're doing it. If you absolutely have to make money, but more often, be focused on just crushing out your content. So how do I know all this, right? So, as many of you know, we've run Cut30 now. We just finished our 22nd session. We're in the middle of the 22nd. Almost 3,000 people have graduated from it in all of these niches. We follow all their arcs. They are all tracked in videobased.org. We've run Cut30 Legends, which is the program we do for people who are going really well. They want to learn more about it. We talk about monetization. People workshop their brand deals. And I work with Darkrooms, who I mentioned here before, on their creator programs. Helped brands hire from this and then did that on the PE side. And when I was working as a marketing leader, I did this in the toy category, did this in surf, did this in consumer electronics. I have been on both sides. I've done this as an influencer. I have worked with the influencers and creators on it and have done it as a brand. And I'm extremely tapped in on this. And there will always be exceptions. Some person is amazing at whatever, who makes more or less. But this is the average for the majority of these. And if I didn't name your niche and you're curious about your niche, drop it in the comments. I will answer as many of those as I can about how you should think about it from a monetization standpoint. So in a moment, we are going to talk about how brands leverage this. How do brands even think about having these conversations? What do they do? What are the platforms they use? How do they make money off this entire creator economy? But first, I want to talk to you about Framer. So if you are a creator or an influencer and you want to make a website for yourself or a portfolio, and I would highly recommend it, you should have a domain, an email at your own domain, and a website where you put up the brands that you've worked with and key examples of your content. People can quickly browse and be, "Those are the couple best videos." It's an awesome thing for you to have in your bio. If you want to do this, you should be using Framer to do it. Framer has amazing templates that you can pull from. You've seen my websites for Framer templates forever before I actually got a Framer pro to So if you are a creator or an influencer and you want to make a website for yourself or a portfolio, I would highly recommend having a domain, an email at your own domain, and a website where you put up the brands that you've worked with and key examples of your content. People can quickly browse and say, “Those are the couple best videos.” It's an awesome thing for you to have in your bio. If you want to do this, you should be using Framer to do it. Framer has amazing templates that you can pull from. You've seen my websites use Framer templates forever, before I actually got a Framer pro to design nicer stuff with me for all the websites I have now. So you can see that on creativedirector.net, our Cut30 website, etc. They have templates that are editable and responsive out of the box. You can search for things such as landing pages, get beautiful designs, and you do not have to be a developer to use this. They have extremely thorough tutorials, and you can build good-looking sites fast that actually have some sauce to them. It's not just your average template you've seen a thousand times before. Two of the free templates I like are this DraftLine template and this Julian template. I also like this Creator Cut template. It's $29. If you really want to dive in, this Kim template is sick. Challenge yourself. Pick one of these templates and say, “I am going to spend one of my evenings.” Kick off at 6:30 and say, “I'm not going to go to sleep until I finish getting this website up.” Break your phone. Just get what you specialize in, some of your top content, easy ways to contact you, and what you're looking for on a single page. You can do all that in Framer. More info inside the description. All right, so we are going to end with: How do brands utilize the creator economy? If you're a brand, how can you make money from creators? If you're a creator, how can you understand how they work? So the ways that we're going to run through this: first is creators on staff. If your social media sucks, get a creator. Get them on four videos or eight videos a month, once or twice a week, to make content for your brand. You will see this as a constant focus. If you watch a bunch of my other videos, I have tons of examples of this. Brands will eventually have multiple creators, especially if there's any nuance to your brand. One of the ones I'd love to call out is Rarify. I believe they have either a creator or their employees making content. We're just describing the chairs and the things that they sell. If you have any brand that has design or nuance or a wide product catalog, get someone to just explain those things, the decisions behind them, and the history around them. I have whole videos on the topics and all the things to do there. I won't get into that. But getting someone on a recurring retainer to make content for you is going to be better than the content you have already. It's the easiest layup for brands to help solve their social media. The second thing is UGC for ads. Super common. You are running Meta ads. You are running TikTok ads. Get creators to contribute content. Same thing. You can buy one-off videos. You can use any of the sites I mentioned prior to this. Mini Social is a great one to start. Get some ads. Get some briefs out there. Get those back. Put them in your ad account. You'll be able to see the power of having different voices work through that. And you'll see a lot of brands begin building armies of these. Oh, I have an ASMR creator. I have a vlog creator. I have old creators, young creators, men, women, backgrounds, skin types. You begin to build out a wide swath to help create ads. This is how people really scale their ad spend up significantly. And they begin sharing briefs and tips within that. Now, how do you find those? How do you get those? Again, there are all those UGC platforms. And you can just search “UGC platform.” And a reminder: if you want to show up on those as a creator, you have to be making content about these brands and categories with those keywords that people can recognize. Those are usually the two biggest layups. Get some UGC into your ad account. It's usually only a couple hundred bucks a video, if even. And you can test and see if those assets work. And then get a creator on your main feed. And get the creator doing some of those UGC assets too. It's another little cheat code. Then there is affiliate. Using creators to help sell your product. Social Snowball is a platform for this. It'll let you search through databases and databases of creators to begin bringing affiliates on, get them their own links, get them their own landing pages, monitor that data, and go through an onboarding process. You can integrate it into your checkout on your Shopify store so people can get their own affiliate codes and post on their own more casually. You want to be in a constant recruitment cycle for this. Because what you'll notice is that big programs doing this don't just have 20 affiliates or 50 affiliates. You look at Comfort, Dad Gang, Cowboy Colostrum, Grunz. These brands have thousands of affiliates. So it's a constant recruitment cycle, pedal to the metal on it. And the sales all add up. And then, for a lot of those good assets those affiliates are making, you have a dollar value you're willing to pay for an ad asset, just as you do with UGC. The ones that are winning on that, get those in your ad account. Pay extra for that. Then we have anchor influencers, big influencers. If you're doing a campaign and you want to get affiliates excited, you want to get the word out there. That is what big influencers are for. You will see me doing anchor influencer work for a lot of big marketing launches. And good influencer campaigns usually have a handful of anchor influencers up top. You have a dollar value you're willing to pay for that for an ad asset, just like you do UGC. The ones that are winning on that, get those in your ad account. Pay extra for that. Then we have anchor influencers, big influencers. If you're doing a campaign and you want to get affiliates excited, you want to get the word out there, that is what big influencers are for. You will see me doing anchor influencer work for a lot of big marketing launches. And how good influencer campaigns run is that they usually have a handful of anchor influencers up top, big people they know are going to perform. They will help put up the views, put up the results, and get other people excited to be a part of the campaign. And they have ripple effects from associations, the power of your larger influencers. And you supplement that with a bunch of micro-influencers. The sub-100k, sub-50k people inside that niche, you get a bunch of them. Those are shots on goal to complement the anchor. All right, it's not about having every one of them hit. You pay a relatively low amount. You're throwing a lot of influencer content out there and seeing who the stars are and getting those into recurring programs with you. It's a great way to think about influence. Begin building a team. You have your big athletes on the team,