RULE #1: Build more than a personal brand
RULE #2: Sell products, not attention
RULE #3: Driver higher customer value through recurring or repeat purchases
RULE #4: Choose a better business model
Big Idea: Don’t sell attention to your audience. Sell your own products.
Sponsored content is not that profitable. The best thing to do is to create your own product and to drive that attention to where you build equity long-term.
Ali Abdaal and David Perell discuss the paths they took to become million-dollar creators through writing and YouTube.
They discuss how to get started, their tips for getting better, how to identify & use your unfair advantages, and the different ways to monetize an audience.
Gina Bianchini, CEO of Mighty Networks, discusses the burnout and frustration creators are going through to keep up with the treadmill of creating content every day.
Big Idea: Forget the creator economy, a community economy can be much more sustainable.
You don’t need thousands of people in a community to make a living. Whereas, you need millions of followers to make money on the big platforms.
“Many people give up very early. They see five posts, no traction, they give up. It took me over hundreds of videos to get to where I am, honestly, thousands of videos. I didn’t give up every single day. I just posted content over and over again, and finally, something started blowing up. So make sure you stick to it.”
“After I realized that affiliates could bring in way more money, I stopped doing brand deals altogether just because you can get a lot more traction through affiliate marketing if you do it right.”
Many people say that ideas are worthless and execution is everything. However, growth is so much easier when you start with a good idea.
“A big mistake many first-time founders make: Spending too little time on market + idea selection. 50%+ of the outcome of your startup is baked into what you decide to work on and when.”
My favourite quote on this topic is from James Clear;
“If you’re not working hard, ideas don’t matter. The best idea is worthless without execution.
If you’re already working hard, ideas are crucial. Most effort is wasted on mediocre ideas.”
Another insightful post from Jake McNeill at CreativeHackers.co.
“Bizarreness makes things more memorable. They jump out at us and are easier to recall.
People also gossip about bizarre things. There is social kudos in delivering stories about bizarre and unusual things.
Blackbeard used bizarreness to frighten his enemies but also to create a mythical persona that people gossiped about which increased his effectiveness and success as a Pirate.”
“From a $10,000 a month “blog” to a 7-figure “Media Company”, a lot can happen in five years.”
Big Idea: The most successful creators are becoming media companies. How would your approach to content creation change if you acted as a company instead of a lone creator?
