Get Paid To Create

I never made Twitter ads work.

The engagement was super cheap, around 2 cents per.

But getting website clicks was difficult. Getting them to convert was even harder.

What's your experience with Twitter ads?

I will keep them running to build an audience on the platform - but not with the intention to drive sales.

Yesterday, I set up three Twitter ads to drive content creators and event organizers to my course sales page. Given it's $1 to try, I figured going to a squeeze page first would overcomplicate the user experience.

I've written two threads (same content, just first tweet is different) that perform at 0.02 Euro per interaction. Nice to build an audience that I can retarget!

The third campaign is a single tweet that includes the link directly - as compared to the other threads.

The single tweet gets interactions for 0.04 Euro - double the price.

What I find most interesting is the engagement ratio.

Threads: 16.95% engagement ratio
Single tweet: 1.53% engagement ratio

That's night and day!

Here's what I'll do to make these campaigns profitable (they only run at $1 a day and yet the two threads have 177 engagements in less than 24 hours!)

• Keep writing new threads and boost them with $1/day
• Use UTM links to track which thread drives traffic
• Double down on threads that get clicks or engagement
• Build an audience to retarget with short-form video ads or direct CTAs

So far, this seems a cheap way to build an audience.

This week, I promoted a community that has a 30-day trial for $1.

Seeing how high the conversion rate on my campaigns was, I figured I might as well try setting this structure up for my course.

I'm not sure if this attracts customers or freebie seekers but without giving this a try, I will never find out.

After all, this course is here to serve creators. The majority of my income doesn't come from this course. I just want to get this into as many hands as possible and a $1-trial might help.

Wow... I got 19 sales during the pre-launch campaign and 7 customers bought the bump offer.

Over the last week, I finished recording most of the course videos and I will have all recorded by the end of the next week - it feels amazing to create a course people have voted for with their hard-earned money!

I already started having consulting calls (another bonus I offered during the pre-launch). One of the new course members runs a physical conference in November and is short on sponsors. I helped him reposition the value of his audience and gave him ideas to pitch new brands.

Launching this course is exciting and scary at the same time. I have confidence in the value of the course though and since people paid for it, I know the demand is there!

After all, brands will invest only more money in influencer marketing in the future. The challenge will be to help creators and solopreneurs realize that they could work with brands even though they don't consider themselves influencers or think their audience is too small.

I finished setting up a pre-launch sales page with a rough outline of the course and the results students can expect after completing it.

The focus of that landing page was on course students being able to close sponsorship deals, set up appealing sponsor packages, and finding the right companies to pitch for their sponsorships.

Since it's a pre-launch to validate the need, I am charging only $100 for the course (plus a $30 order bump) instead of the final price of $150 (and $45 order bump).

Just 20 minutes after announcing the new course to a segment of my email list, I got the first sale! This feeling never gets old :)

I'd like to see at least 10 sales before I start recording the videos for the course... in this pre-launch, I am promoting the course to my existing customers first and then sending it out to my entire list of roughly 4300 email addresses.

Should be possible to sell 10-20 courses in this campaign, I'll give myself until Sep 9th for this.

🤞

I've been self-employed since 2013 and started working with brands and sponsors in 2015 as part of running my first virtual summit.

Somehow, I was always working with relevant companies in the industry I was in (WordPress) and enjoyed making friends with decision-makers and influential people.

When I doubled down on virtual summits in 2019-2021, sponsorships became the main source of income and helped me provide for my family.

However, running multiple virtual summits each year is super stressful and eventually took a toll on my family life. I was constantly booked in recordings, worried about events going well, and organizing countless tasks at once.

That's when it hit me... instead of running virtual events all the time to get sponsors, why not focus on the most important activity, the one thing that kept my bank accounts filled throughout the entire time?

I started educating myself about the various forms of brand deals and sponsorships for podcasts, email newsletters, and other content mediums.

This course is the result. I started boiling down the process I used to close six figures in sponsorships for myself into short and actionable lessons that other content creators and indie hackers could use.

After all, if you're already using software or platform in your projects or for your workflows, you're likely an affiliate for them. Why not take the relationship one step further and actively collaborate?

Working with brands is one of my biggest income sources and I want to make this income stream available to others as well.