Joe Rogan turned the following interests into a 9 figure brand:
Mixed Martial Arts
Psychedelics
Comedy
Hunting
Diet and Fitness
Yes, he does interviews with very successful and famous people, but the podcast didn’t start out that way.
It started when Joe turned on a microphone and started talking about the things he was interested in.
If you watch his first episode, you’ll see that he’s come a long long way. Instead of using a bunch of fancy equipment and feeling the need to craft the perfect show, he just started experimenting…
Young people don’t consider Hollywood actors or athletes A-List celebrities.
They probably think of people like Mr.Beast — the world’s top YouTuber with more than 200 million subscribers.
Just to put that into perspective, Netflix, a company currently valued at 94 billion dollars as of this writing, has roughly 220 million subscribers.
A single person has an audience that rivals one of the world’s top entertainment companies.
You probably won’t become the next Joe Rogan or Mr.Beast, but you can be wildly successful by achieving just a fraction of their success.
But you have to do it the right way. I’ll explain how later on in this letter.
First, let’s talk about why content creation is a viable vehicle for wealth that almost anyone can use to build their own tailor-made careers.
You Can Turn Damn Near Any Interest Into a Content-Based Business
You might be thinking to yourself…
“Is it really possible for me to make a living creating content? I’m nobody special.”
Yes, it’s possible. It’s possible because the things you’re interested in and the traits you have are valuable to other people, whether or not you know it.
Some examples:
If you’re fashionable and have good style, people will pay you to teach them how to dress. You could even build your own clothing brand
If you’re in great shape, you can teach others how to get in shape and eat right. The fitness industry isn’t going anywhere anytime soon
You’re an accountant. Pick a niche to dominate that’s growing like crypto. There are millionaires will pay you TOP DOLLAR to save them dollars.
You’re a mechanic. Teach people how to do simple repairs and teach other mechanics how to start profitable shops
If you have good social skills, teach people how to come out of their shells
You’re good at science. There’s literally a guy with a multimillion-dollar biz teaching college students chemistry
You travel a lot. Show people how to get good deals on hotel, flights, and activities. Show them the hidden cool spots not featured on most travel blogs
You like going to raves. Create your own rave gear. I’ve seen someone with an 8 figure company selling hydration backpacks
If you like woodworking, teach people how to build their own custom-made furniture
You’re into spirituality and mindfulness. Create a spirituality based biz helping people get in touch with their deeper selves
The possibilities are endless…
But there’s a right and wrong way to do it.
The Ultra-Hard Way to Build a Content-Based Businesses
Most people get disillusioned with content-based businesses because they choose the most difficult monetization route possible.
Several online platforms will pay you directly for your content:
YouTube will pay you for placing ads on your videos
Podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple do the same
You can get paid directly for your writing through platforms like Substack and Medium
Writing a highly trafficked blog post can get you paid via ad revenue
Instagram and TikTok will pay you for short-form content like posting reelz and tik tok videos.
Here’s the problem…
You need to accumulate a massive audience to get paid.
Let’s use YouTube for example.
Per Influencer Marketing Hub, you can make roughly $18 per 1,000 views on your videos. I’ve seen the number as low as $4, but let’s choose a high estimate like $18
In order to make $100,000, you’d need to get 5.5 million YouTube views. High hurdle to overcome.
Let’s say you could convert 3 percent of your video viewers into email subscribers. With 5.5 million views, you’d have 165,000 email subscribers.
Convert 1 percent of those email subscribers into buying a $197 product, and that’s $325,000.
Charge $497 and you’re looking at $820,000. Charge $997 and you’re looking at $1,645,000.
Using the ‘back-end’ monetization model you can 10x the income you’d make from earning money directly from your content.
You can achieve this effect with a lot less than 5.5 million views of your content.
Depending on the niche you’re in, you can charge premium prices, meaning you don’t have to build much of an audience to make a handsome living.
Build something that scales, and you can make a great living selling lower-priced items like merch, e-books, mini-courses, you name it.
Let’s take a look at the steps needed to make this monetization model works.
Step 1 - Capture Attention
In the digital world, eyeballs are your currency.
Creating content puts you in front of people who might be interested in what you have to sell.
If you want to capture attention, focus on a form of content creation and a platform to create content on.
Too many new creators try to do too many things at once. They have a Medium blog, a substack, a youtube channel, a tik tok, etc, when they’re better off mastering one of these channels first.
I didn’t start making videos until years after I started writing. When I started my YouTube channel, I had a built-in audience to send to my videos.
See how this works?
Choose a method of content creation that works with your personality. The three main forms of content are:
Written — Medium, Subtack, WordPress blogs
Video — YouTube, Tik Tok, Reelz
Audio - Podcasts on Apple & Spotify, publishing audio articles
Next, choose the platform you want to master and focus on that platform alone until you get really good at it.
Next, choose one social media platform to promote your content above all others. You can, and probably should have accounts on all social media platforms, but don’t devote equal time to them.
Twitter is my main focus right now because written content is my go-to and I believe the growth potential for Twitter is huge.
Next, you need a means of capturing attention. I suggest pretty much everyone use email marketing for this.
When you get people’s emails, you get direct access to them and you have an audience you can take with you.
Platforms are great for getting attention, but the platforms themselves change over time.
For example, there was a time when you could do massive numbers just by posting to
Facebook because it had high organic reach — organic traffic is the traffic you don’t have to pay for.
They switched to an ad-based model and choked organic traffic to incentivize people to pay for ads. Creators who built their businesses on top of Facebook without capturing that attention saw their businesses fold overnight.
When it’s all said and done, you want to have a ‘stack.’
Here’s what my stack looks like:
Medium for attracting attention
Twitter for promotion
Convertkit/substack for email marketing
Step 2 - Capture Value
If you can’t turn that attention into money, then it’s useless.
Capturing value is an entirely different skill — one that most creators have a hard time with because they are afraid to promote and sell.
If you can’t sell, you can’t make money, so it’s a skill you just have to learn. Once you learn it, though, the world opens itself up to you.
Here’s how to turn attention into dollars via value capture.
First, your primary goal is to help people. Educate, entertain, and inspire them. You can do this through the content creation itself, but it’s important to do it while moving people closer to a sale.
Some ways to do this are:
Provide valuable free information - Checklists, free goodies, e-books, exclusive content
Get your audience to know, like, and trust you - This is where I use email. I send emails where I don’t try to sell anything at all and just provide value
Ask them what they want - The best way to come up with product ideas is to ask your potential customers! Conduct surveys. Get on zoom calls with potential prospects.
When it comes to products, the best way to make one is to get people to pay for it before you make it. Think Kickstarter here.
Come up with an idea for a product, reach out to your most engaged fans, pitch them the idea and let them show their interest in it by paying you first.
I did this with a recent personal development program I made. I sold spots to the program before I had created any content.
I built the product out in real-time after the launch, creating a new lesson each week for a 12-week program.
This is a zero-risk way to make and sell your products.
You can also make money through products with zero risk by using affiliate marketing where you promote other people’s products at no additional cost to the customer for a comission.
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Spend most of your time providing value to build up your ‘trust bank account.’ Then, periodically, sell and promote your services.
Each time you sell, you deplete the balance of your trust account, so you need to build it back up by providing value.
In between launches, spend time helping your audience. Every once in a while, do a product launch to capture value. Repeat.
Only a small fraction of your audience will ever buy from you, and that’s okay! Make your free content extremely valuable anyway.
Keep making your product better. Get feedback from early customers and use that feedback to improve the product. Get testimonials from customers to add social proof and credibility to your offer.
Re-launch the product. As the value of the product increases, increase the price. Make the offer more attractive over time by adding new features, bonuses, and guarantees.
Read the book $100m Offers for a detailed look at how to do this.
The specifics of how to run a launch are too large in scope to cover in one email, but I’ll do so in the future.
The moral of the story is this: grabbing attention and then capturing value from that attention can make you rich.
Get started.
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