It's a new year. Welcome to 2025. Welcome to Digital Creator with me, your host, Dylan Schmidt. This is the first time we're meeting. Hello. I am recording this episode, hopefully, without interruption because there are high wind warnings where I live. And Edison, the electric company, sent me an email saying, hey. Your power could be shut off sometime between Tuesday Thursday. At minimum, it would be out for 8 hours. So hopefully that doesn't happen. Hopefully, I could just record this in one shot. Today, I wanna talk about a reality check as we start out the new year, why most creators stay stuck. This could also be a completely different outcome by the end of this year than it was for you last year. For the end, I wanna say of 2023, I heard a lot of creators talking about burnout. 2024, I would say I heard a lot of creators just fizzling out, getting other jobs, just not counting it as hard, because they weren't seeing a return on the investment in time spent and money spent. Totally cool. If you keep doing the same thing, you're gonna get the same results. I wanna talk about why most creators stay stuck. That is the content hamster wheel. Creating more doesn't equal earning more, which is a brutal reality anyone who is creating content has to learn at some point. You can post 20 times a day, and you can post 2 times a week and earn the same amount of money depending on how you have your content business set up. Both can be effective. Both have their places. Not everyone needs to do more, and not everyone needs to do less. It's all about what's serving your goals and outcome. And so I'm gonna break down kind of like a 3 tier revenue system, if you will, in this episode right now, so we can kind of make sense of how you can get off the hamster wheel and treat this like a real business that supports you so that you can keep making content, not burn out, and have a clear difference between just some passive income stream, active income stream, and link the idea behind having a large audience and why that doesn't guarantee revenue. So let's break it down. The 3 tiers. At a high level, I'll go over it and then we'll go in the weeds. Tier number 1 is foundational revenue. Tier number 2 is scalable revenue, and tier number 3 is premium revenue. Looking at these closer, tier 1 would be foundation revenue, and this is advertising and sponsorships. This is pricing your content based on impact, not just the views you get. This is creating the long term partnership packages, keyword packages, and then building, recurring sponsorship revenue. This is also secondary to that Affiliate marketing strategy, selecting products that align with your audience's journey, creating evergreen affiliate content, and using more advanced techniques for increasing conversion rates around that. Now each of the six things that I just laid out could be its own podcast episode. I'm not gonna do it justice here, but I do kind of wanna just, like, go through each of these a little bit more in-depth because what I'm about to lay out in this whole episode is, like, probably an online course, But I don't have time or desire to make some online course, so I'm just gonna, like, cram in my brain to download to you. You know? So advertising and sponsorship's done right. You don't need a large following. You don't even have to have started creating content around your niche to secure advertising and sponsorship. If you align yourself with the right partner and you paint the vision, advertisers or sponsors would be interested in that. Happened when I started making content on social media. Right away, I had people interested and I had organic interests of people that were just like, hey, I like what you're doing. I had people that were peers of mine in the industry who I'd never met that were like paying attention. I was like, woah, this person's been doing it for 3 years. I just started and they're paying attention. And And then I also had companies that were like, I see what you're doing. This is very interesting. And I'm like, you're paying it. You see me? That's weird. And then as I've kept doing it, getting interest from, you know, bigger companies, smaller companies, everything in between, it doesn't matter about the views. Like, I don't pay attention to the views because that is tied to mental things for me that it just doesn't serve me. Right? If a TikTok video gets 200 views, cool. If it gets 2,000 views, cool. If it got 20,000, 200,000 views, cool. It's not gonna change my mood. I can't let it change my mood. And when it comes to money, companies, brands, they don't really care about it. The right ones that you would wanna pursue an advertising and sponsorship relationship with, they're not tied to that. They're more tied. They're more interested into who you are, where you're going, probably where you've been. Right? Hopefully, I haven't done anything like shady that, you know, they're not gonna align with someone that doesn't represent their core values. But I've said it before and I'll say it again. Companies lack a human touch most of the time. And when they can invest in somebody that's like a human face, like a content creator, they know it works well. Like, from a business standpoint, it works well because they are trying to advertise this product or service they offer, which is just straight sales. And then they have a content creator who has done so much work building up trust, giving away value, and they have an audience that's interested and they have all the gear and everything. And I've worked with these companies, you know, and a lot of the companies they're like, they struggle. They go internal. So they go, oh, we could have our CEO do it. The CEO and what happens is, like, the marketing team tries to get CEO to start a podcast or make content, and it doesn't go well. The CEO is way too busy. Usually, they're not the best on camera, generally speaking, and it's not a priority for them. And, you know, as a content creator, it's already hard enough to balance all the different things associated with it. Imagine trying to run a company, and then you have a marketing team that's, like, trying to get you to do this stuff, and you're like, yeah. I've seen Joe Rogan or, you know, whoever. The idea of it sounds cool, but doing it and then doing it long term and doing it well and getting better at it like a skill, night and day difference. So you position yourself with these companies and you make their lives easier because they don't have to get their CEO to do anything. You make it super easy. You offer them a package. You know? This is what I talk about. This is the audience that I help. This is who I reach. It's a no brainer. They have money for this. Right? And before we move on to tier 2, I'll just say, creators will look at companies and use their own budget as a reference for how much the company could spend on the services that they would invest in the content creator. For example, might be like, oh, I might wanna charge this company $700 a month or something. And they're like, wow. $700 is a lot of money. Not to these companies, it's not. They make $700 mistakes all the time when it comes you know, I see some of these companies with their Facebook advertising, and they have the targeting set wrong. So they're advertising to people who have already bought their thing or, you know, they do it through you have to spend a bunch of money on testing anyways. When you're pricing these projects that you're doing with these companies, don't use your own reference point for if something's a lot of money or if it isn't. That's important. Okay. Tier 2 is the scalable revenue, and that's things like a digital product suite development, templates and tools, online courses and workshops, membership communities. Also, automations and systems. So that's like sales funnels, email marketing sequences, and payment and delivery systems. This doesn't mean, you know, all content creators need to create their own online course, but think about ways, because there's quite a few of them, that you as a content creator could scale your own revenue with things that don't require more of you. So I'll just give you a bunch of ideas here. And if you do it right, you only need like one. We're talking if you were a podcaster around this specific topic, it could be how to start a podcast course. Or if you were a real estate agent content creator, it would be how to get more leads for real estate through social media templates or whatever. Typically, if you're more in the thought leadership realm, you're gonna use more templates, tools, clear outcome focused, vehicles that help people achieve a specific result. Like, a fitness trainer is obviously gonna help people, you know, get in shape. What is that version of getting in shape for you if you are in that kind of thought leadership space? But if you're not in that thought leadership space, if you're more in, like, the interviewer type where maybe you're an absolute thought leader and you have amazing thoughts and all that, but you're saying you've positioned yourself as more of like an interviewer, someone who it's been a few years now, but who has done this well as, like, Lewis Howes. He wasn't seen as, like, a thought leader at first. He would just ask questions to people he's interviewing, but over time, he became more of a thought leader. I think Jay Shetty actually falls under this too. But regardless, anyways, if you were an interviewer, you could still look at your audience and figure out what it is that they're looking for. Why do they come to your content, your podcast, your YouTube videos, whatever, and offer them something that enhances their experience in that. Now I'll give you an example. I am not a baseball expert by any means, just a fan, but I've been experimenting with baseball content. I would never wanna position myself as a baseball thought leader at least right now because I don't know enough, just a fan. But what I could do is set up some type of Patreon and offer a simple but scalable, keyword scalable solution where people could pay just a little bit of money and get access that enhances their experience. It creates revenue for me. It helps me create more baseball content and doesn't need to be complicated. And in fact, every new thing you add into something like that makes it less likely to be a hit, no pun intended, with the audience you're trying to target. What I mean by that is if I was doing a baseball Patreon, I wouldn't add in, like, you get a community, you get weekly live calls, you get, you know, all these different things. It's like you just get the community or you get a sticker pack once a month and the community or something, you know, something very simple that doesn't require people spending much time and effort to be a part of. People love making purchases that solidify their identity. I am guilty of this all the time. So I say this not from, like, this is a manipulated thing. This is like, I do this. If I'm taking something seriously and I wanna really get into it, I make purchases to reinforce my belief in what it is that I am into. For Godzilla, to use another example, super into Godzilla. I'm watching every Godzilla movie in order. So what do I do? I purchase every Godzilla movie. Can I watch every Godzilla movie on streaming? Absolutely. But I want to own every Godzilla movie so I could watch it in 10 80p or 4 k because that reinforces my own personal belief that I am interested in this thing. And if someone was like, you can't buy the Godzilla physical media anywhere, I'd be like, what? And then you would know people would start making, like, bootleg Godzilla movies so that you could buy them. Right? There would be a market for it. So the whole thing here is not to just, like, create something out of nothing so that you can make money. It's to create something that can scale, that people really want and you can deliver, but it doesn't take much out of you. Next is tier 3, which is premium revenue, and these are not gonna be your everyday things unless you're a millionaire. But these are things like your high ticket offerings, your 1 on 1 consulting, group coaching programs, done for you services, could be things where, like, you create a presentation. You have, like, a keynote presentation. Donald Miller, who wrote a brand story, Business Made Simple, he talks about having, like, a keynote speech that you deliver. And, you know, public speakers get paid a lot of money, but if you could get in the public speaking circuit where you did, like, 4 to 6 per year, some of these public speakers are getting paid 20 k plus an event if you find the right event. And what's cool is if you get, like, in with the people where they do, like, a yearly event or maybe even there, like, a touring event, You might have a setup where you have a 6 figure business where you're just doing like 4 to 6 events a year and making a really nice income from just that alone. And these public speaking events again are around topics where you're already creating content on that. So, you know, there's so many cool little strategies I could get into on how you could create that keynote. But your social media, the content that you're already creating is a testing ground for that content that people are wanting. So you can kinda like rest assured if people are liking it at a free level, in a public workshop level, chances are high that they'll be interested in it, of course, if you tweak it so that it's contextual to the audience you're giving it to. And the thing that people are missing out on when it comes to, premium revenue is telling the truth. What I mean by that is you are a content creator, very likely that you're not making your main income from creating content. You probably have a regular job and then content creating on the side, maybe you like to do content creating full time. Whatever it is, your time is limited and people forget to express that and people go, well, they should know how much stuff is, like, overlooked, we assume. Right? You have to mention that you do have limited time and availability. There needs to be some type of application process so that you can weed out serious people and also you have boundaries of the type of projects that you do wanna take on, whether you're doing a live workshop speaking or 1 on 1 consulting or group coaching, but whatever it is done for your services needs to be an application process so that your own sanity is taken to an account, and you can deliver what you're trying to deliver at a high value. And for these, you need to have a premium pricing strategy. Someone that's paying $20 should not get the same experience that is paying$20,000. I mean, how would you feel, right, if you paid that and you got that experience? It's gotta be different. You can't give your life away for $20,000, but you can design it so that, it does feel like a premium experience and they are getting something that nobody else is getting. So if I was giving you homework and you're like, Dylan, this sounds awesome. How do I put this into practice? This is what I would do. Phase 1, 1st couple of months, January, February, audit your current revenue streams, optimize your existing content for monetization opportunities, set up some basic systems and tracking in place so that you know who's coming from what and where. For my company, ContentClips, I know where everybody came from. I know if they came from TikTok, from Instagram, if they were a referral. Who referred who? What's going on? I need to know that so I know what's working. Anyways, then you would get some quick wins to generate immediate revenue. You need to know it can work, but more importantly, you need to know it's possible because that will fuel you to get to the next tier. And that phase 2 is scale. This would be like March. Oh my god. I'm doing months. If you've listened a few months ago, you know that I graduated high school before knowing the months in order, and here I am doing the months live on this podcast. So months 3 4, March April, you would develop your first digital product. You create an automated sales system. You build an email marketing engine, and you would establish a content to sales pipeline, meaning you know where people are coming from. You know how you're reaching people. You have a digital product of some type to sell. You're moving them from your content to your digital product. Email is helping you achieve this. Zapier is maybe automating some things, but you have a clear content to sales pipeline. And then phase 3 would be optimization, which would be May June. So by my birthday, you'd be launching premium offerings, refining your systems and processes, scaling winning strategies, and starting to get the idea of or already building a team and delegating some tasks so that it would take off stuff from your plate. Now old Dylan would have, like, gave you all that without saying the months. I would have just said, you would have done your foundation, then you scale it, and then you optimize it. 2025 Dylan is saying, let's just stop for a second. That's 6 months. Dylan, I wanna do this by the next week. Cool. That's not how this works. It takes time. And a very wealthy, very successful man once said to me years ago, and I think about it all the time, is the longer the ramp, the more successful it will be. So if you give yourself realistically, like, 6 months to do this, but you follow what I've laid out here in a line, you'll be more successful than if you try to do this by February. Longer the ramp, more success. Now that doesn't mean sitting around or anything like that. And in fact, there are some common pitfalls you're gonna wanna avoid, like starting too many revenue streams at once. Don't just throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. Be methodical about it. Don't move so fast. You're just gonna be spinning in circles. Also, underpricing your offerings, it's one thing to set the price really low so that you see if anyone kind of bites. It's another thing if you set it too high and people don't have that trust yet. You can look at what other people are charging for a similar service. You can also go into the creator club, if you're not a member already, the creator club dot com, and get some feedback there. Also, don't neglect your existing audience relationships. A lot of what we've laid out here, you might think, this is cool. Is this for someone more experienced? No. You have an audience even if you haven't published content yet because your audience could be considered business relationships that you've made up until now in your life or people that you've never met in your existing audience already. For example, you might be connected with a bunch of people on LinkedIn who, you know, you met them 4 years ago, but you haven't kept in touch with them. And you start posting some content. Next thing you know, you're like, oh, I haven't caught up with this person, but they now work at this one company that's exactly interested in what I'm doing. So there'll be all these connections that is gonna work out differently than how it is in your mind, if that makes sense. Don't count your existing audience out before you just try going and throwing in more people and thinking you need a bigger audience. Not true. Also, now the pitfall to avoid would be poor system documentation. Start to treat what you're doing as if you had to explain it to somebody or you were gonna sell what you were doing. Not only will you find inefficiencies in what you're doing, but when you get to that 5, 6 month range of when you're starting to look at building a team and delegating some things, Your future self will be so thankful of your current self that you thought in this way because you don't have to start from scratch because people go years without documenting any of the systems they're doing. And then last pitfall I wanna highlight here is insufficient market research. If you offer something that nobody wants, it's not other people's fault. It's your fault for not doing enough market research and finding out if there's any demand for what you're offering. And the same goes for topics in your content too. Niche content is fantastic. It performs great. But monetizing niche content is a different ballgame. Getting someone to pay attention and getting someone to pay 2 different things. And it's important to study what people are paying for, not just what people are watching with their time. A great example of this would be recently the YouTuber, Marcus Brownlee. He launched an app that was wallpapers, and it was a huge failure because it was charging something like $60 a year or something for wallpapers. People were like, I get wallpapers for free. It was one of the bigger flops of 2024 because whoever was looking at that didn't do the right market research. People don't wanna pay for wallpapers, especially when they're used to getting something from for free from somebody that they're used to getting something free to. Alright. On that note, come say hi if you're not already in the creator club. We'd love to chat more about this. If you need direct help from me, just let me know. I do offer coaching consulting. And just like I was saying in tier 3, it is more premium. So it's not for everybody, but if you think it might be for you, feel free to reach out. I'll catch you in the next one.