Day 1: Universal Camera Settings (Part 1)
5 Keys to Success
Steps to Succeed in Becoming a Content Creator
I'm going to show you what I would do if I was starting over from nothing...
Become a Content Creator
World's Best Online Course & Apprenticeships
I'm going to show you what I would do if I was starting over from nothing and wanted to join the rapidly growing billion dollar creator economy. By the end of this course, just like Liam Neeson in the movie Taken, you will have acquired a very particular set of skills. Skills that you can leverage to make an incredible income for yourself and your family.
The problem most skilled creators face is they don't actually understand all of the incredible opportunities that they have to make money doing what they love. That, my friends, is exactly why I'm going to show you the top three ways thousands of content creators are ditching the 9 to 5, becoming their own boss, and making money by pursuing their own passions.
Full Transparency: I'm going to reveal very personal and sensitive information about my finances and talk about my biggest business mistakes and wins for the sake of transparency with you. My goal is to show you the insane number of opportunities that exist for us as content creators. By no means is any of this for the purposes of showing off.
The truth is my dream was never to make millions of dollars, buy fancy cars, or be quote rich. Instead, my dream was to simply follow my passion for content creation and have a safe amount of money coming in that would allow me to spend more time traveling, fishing, and doing what I love knowing that I don't have to work to just pay the bills each month. With that being said, I have been fortunate enough over the past four years to generate over $10 million for my business. As a content creator, my goal with this video is for you to see a crystal clear path that you can follow to join this amazing creator economy for yourself and for your family.
Now, with that being said, if you have no desire to make money as a content creator, you are more than welcome to just skip right over this video and dive into the specific shooting and editing trainings. But for those of you who do care about aligning your passion and your career, let's dive into the three smartest paths to building consistent monthly cash flow as a content creator.
I'm not a big fan of this word, but I'll say it. This path is becoming an influencer. Whether you identify as an influencer or not, here's the way that you should really look at it: It all comes down to building an audience and consistently being able to capture people's attention through video content.
When you're able to do these two things, you can make a lot of money using three different strategies:
Revenue Streams:
AdSense: Getting paid by content platforms like YouTube for the views that you generate on their platform. Right now, averaging around 600,000 views per month, our channel generates about $4,500 per month in AdSense revenue. The amount that you make per view will vary a lot depending on the topics of your content.
Affiliate Revenue: You recommend a product or other thing that your viewers can buy, and if they do buy, you end up getting a small commission on the sale. On our YouTube channel, we regularly recommend camera gear and other products. Right now, with those recommendations, we generate around $4,000 to $5,000 per month in affiliate revenue. It takes maybe an hour per month of our time to manage, so it's extremely passive, all things considered.
Brand Deals and Sponsorships: Here, you work directly with a company to negotiate some exchange. You might make a short form video recommending their product that you'll post on your Instagram and TikTok, or maybe you'll do a quick sponsor segment in your upcoming YouTube video briefly mentioning their product or service.
Real Example: The first deal we ended up doing was a $3,000 contract with a blue light glasses company where we'd include a 30-second mention of their product in one of our YouTube videos. We still work with that company to this day and they regularly send us more work. Currently, our goal is to average around $10,000 per month in brand deals.
✓ Pros
- Highly Scalable: What you charge isn't based on how long or how hard you work. It's based on your audience size and ability to capture attention.
- Passion-Oriented: Get paid to create content about topics you love.
- Free Stuff: Companies send you products and opportunities you wouldn't imagine.
✗ Cons
- Takes Time: Building a massive audience doesn't happen overnight.
- Learning to Say No: Must avoid becoming all sponsored content that kills authenticity.
- Platform Dependence: You're building on rented land with algorithm changes.
I mentioned there's a fourth strategy that influencers can use to make money, and it's easily 10 to 20 times bigger than the first three strategies. That strategy is creating and selling digital products and online courses.
Here's the reality: I mentioned with the influencer path earlier, how it takes time to build up your audience. With digital products, you can start a course business today, and start generating sales as early as next week. This gives you a tangible income stream, which will massively speed up the rate at which you build your audience and brand.
Personal Journey: When I started contentcreator.com, I had zero audience. The only person who cared about what I did was my mom. Having an actual product to sell gave me the ability to market, run ads, build an email list, and within a very short period of time, I was getting hundreds of new followers and fans per day, most of which had already paid me for something and were loving the content.
As your audience grows, the sale of your digital products will skyrocket, along with all of the other influencer opportunities. More brands will notice you, you'll get more views on YouTube for AdSense revenue, and you'll be able to recommend more products as affiliates to your growing audience.
Common Questions:
Q: What if I don't know what to teach or feel unqualified?
If you see something that people are interested in learning and you spend a week or so learning it, organizing all of the resources, and you can provide a structured learning sequence that can help a new person learn that same thing in just a day or two, that is worth its weight in gold. Everyone feels unqualified whenever they start anything new. My solution was to create a beginner level course rather than claim to teach experts. The market of beginners is always the largest and hungriest market.
Starting Small: I had no audience at first, so we started by relying 100% on paid Facebook and Instagram ads. We'd shoot fun videos marketing our course, spend a little money on ads, and generate tons of sales that brought in significantly more revenue than what we spent on ads. We started with a budget of literally $69 and made four times that back in the very first day.
Q: What if I don't want to be the face of an online course myself?
Then, don't be the face. Do you know how many super qualified experts there are out there who don't have online courses they sell simply because they're too busy or have no idea where to start? Partner with them! You handle a lot of the course creation work while they serve as the face on camera. You take upfront work off their plate while leveraging their expertise and existing audience, then split the profit 50-50.
Student Success: Mark is a student of our 30-Day Course Creator program who has never been the actual face of an online course. He simply runs the back-end business and takes a large share of the profit, and he has multiple courses that are close to or already over seven figures in sales.
Starting a freelance content creation business, or as we like to call it, a content strategy business. This is actually how I got my start in the creator economy.
11 years ago, I borrowed an old $300 camera from my now-fiancé, Courtney. I started shooting low-budget videos for local musicians, businesses, and couples getting married. Within my first year full-time though, I had scaled it to over six figures shooting the same type of content, just at a higher level, and believe it or not, I still run that business to this day.
Starting the freelance business allowed me to travel the world, working with people and brands that I truly admired. I experienced things that I never thought would have been possible, all while learning the ropes of business and entrepreneurship, getting paid well throughout the process.
Lance Perkins: Had never used a camera before, and in his first month after taking the 14-day filmmaker course, Lance went out and got a $5,000 video job with only what he learned in the program. Today, Lance makes over $200,000 per year with his video business.
Jay's Story: Another student landed a $5,000 per month video retainer with an auto dealership, filming content using only his smartphone right after joining 14-day filmmaker. That one deal amounts to $60,000 per year from just one client.
✓ Pros
- Quick Start: Easiest business to start fast and get paid for what you love
- Fast Scaling: Scale to 10k months working for yourself relatively quickly
- Low Barrier: Don't need professional gear or years of experience to start
✗ Cons
- Scalability Limits: Harder to scale to the same level as influencer or course creator
- Time Trading: Still trading time providing a service compared to selling a product
- Client Management: Juggling multiple projects for different clients
Big picture, I think for someone just getting started who wants to make some cash on the side or go all in and scale to 10K per month lightning fast, freelance content strategy is an incredible path to take.
The Key to Success
As I said before, the key to success with any of this is committing to start aggressively walking the path now versus casually approaching things, just hoping success will fall in your lap.
My Biggest Regret: I didn't start pursuing these three paths earlier. I waited for years because I didn't think I had what it took. Even though I knew how profitable online courses could be, I took forever to build up the courage to start because I didn't feel qualified and like I didn't have an audience.
You now know the three primary paths creators can follow to join the rapidly growing multi-billion dollar creator economy. What's your plan moving forward?
It's time we dive in headfirst and start mastering the skill set of professional content creation. I hope you are as fired up as I am!