My 2021 creator playbook
I'm focusing on growing my YouTube and Twitter audience this year. This is the playbook I came up with:
- Pick one thing you want to be known for. This is critical because you want your brand to be easy to remember, and because it's hard enough to build credibility at one thing, let alone two or three.
- Find platforms and communities that provide reach to people in your niche. For example, fitness instructors do well on Instagram and YouTube. Educators do well on YouTube and Udemy. Entertainers do well on TikTok and YouTube. Filmmakers do well on YouTube. Ideas about politics, technology and finance do well on Twitter, etc.
- Consistently create content on the platform you chose. Do it for free. Do it a lot. Your goal is to build familiarity and credibility.
- Learn the platform inside and out to maximize your growth.
- Once you have an audience, the most common monetizing mechanisms are: affiliate marketing, sponsorships, AdSense (if you're on YouTube), self-paced or cohort-based courses, merchandise, and info products.
Trending on Indie Hackers
If you control your platform, such as having a blog or hosting your own podcasts, you can monetize your audience directly with micropayments. It pays orders of magnitude better than ads do, so people can actually make a living with like 10k followers instead of 1m.