Don’t Focus Only on Ads: Sales is Where It’s At!

If you’re content creating online, then chances are you’re motivated to do so by money.

Indeed, the dream to write and make money online is a fairly common one these days… but if you focus only on writing, you won’t make a life-changing income.

The same happens for videos, podcasts, or other content avenues.

However, you can make it big if you are a talented content creator who gets an audience and then sells to the said audience — it’s sales where it’s at.

The money is on the list… why?

Because you can sell things to subscribers.

I know you really didn’t want to read this because at your core you know it to be true and you don’t want to be a salesman… but this is how it works, and I’m just breaking it down to you.

Content Creation and Ads: Only a Small Percentage Make It

If you’re looking to make tons of money online, and what we call life-changing gains, then you are probably going to need to sell — as we discussed above.

But why?

Well, simply because ad revenue is too little.

Here’s the average ad revenue per 1000 views = $4

Now, if you take a look at how platforms work, you’re going to see most of them take a cut of that.

But what about the others?

Well, Medium pays you by the “read time” of people who are subscribed to the Premium accounts. The pay-per-view is lousy and I won’t even share it — I know you probably know it by now.

So, only an extremely small percentage of people succeed at content creation using ads only.

Selling To Your Audience: Content as a Means to Get Customers

What you really want to do is keep providing quality content on your niche and build up an audience.

You then need to find or create products that the audience would value and sell them to get some real money.

If you go for affiliate marketing or affiliate products, you’ll get a cut of the sale — although digital products often have a very generous profit margin.

If you create the product yourself and sell it, for example, on Gumroad — you’ll get the full amount.

The Money is in The List: The Old Newsletter Adage

You’ve heard people, bloggers, writers, YouTubers, and other content creators rave about newsletters and state the money is in the list.

Well, that’s because it’s true!

But it’s not so they can send the list their content — of course, they need to do that much more than selling to keep the audience interested, but the goal is to sell.

They do 8 of 10 newsletters providing content, or value, and they send 2 of those 10 newsletters promoting their offers.

This is how entrepreneurs build up their content creation business.

You need to sell!

Like it or not, the ability to sell is what separates good from legendary content creators.

If you shy away from selling, chances are you’ll never make it.

Get comfortable in your salesman's shoes — after all, sellers connect buyers with products they need so you’re doing them a service!

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