How to Make Money From Social Media

How to Make Money From Social Media

How to Make Money From Social Media. If you made the same Google search for social media, guess how many results you’d get? There are many people actively making money from their social media accounts. Decide what you want Before we even get into business ideas and monetization strategies, I just have to ask: What do you want from all of this? Instead, you want to narrow down your idea to a particular niche. Decide who you want to do business with. Validate your business idea Most people skip this step and go full throttle with their business ideas. Deciding how you’ll monetize your business idea is the easy part. Online courses Ebooks Online events Don’t you need a website to host these digital products? The social media platform that you select has a lot to do with the type of content that you’ll distribute.

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Want to know a fun fact?

If you Google “make money blogging,” you get 78,000,000 results.

make money blogging Google Search

That’s no surprise.

There has been an online business boom over the past few years. The web is plastered with stories of average Joes making millions from their blogs.

If you made the same Google search for social media, guess how many results you’d get?

Not half as many. Not even close.

There are plenty of people in our industry who will tell you that social media isn’t monetizable.

You’ll hear comments like these:

“You need your own website.”

“It’s too risky.”

I’ve got news for you.

I’m not one of those people.

Sure, it’s risky.

What business doesn’t come with a risk?

You may even decide to get your own website to scale your business further.

That’s fine.

But right now? You can absolutely monetize your business idea on social media.

There are many people actively making money from their social media accounts. The rise of YouTube business moguls and Instagram influencers bear testament to that.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a viable business idea that you can monetize using your social media channels.

Let’s get started.

1. Decide what you want

Before we even get into business ideas and monetization strategies, I just have to ask:

What do you want from all of this?

What is your purpose?

It could be money. It could be freedom. You decide.

Come up with a very visceral response to these questions and put it down on paper.

When business gets tough (and it will), you can go back to your purpose for an extra dose of motivation.

After you’ve come up with a concrete “why,” you need to decide what you want the result to be.

That’s where you need to get specific.

Here are some examples:

  • Gain 50,000 Facebook fans
  • Make $5000 per month in affiliate income
  • Launch two online products by the end of the year

Why do this?

You can’t attain something that is not concrete and measurable.

More importantly, you can’t reverse-engineer a plan if you don’t begin with the end result in mind.

Now that you know what you’re working toward and why you’re doing it, let’s get into the action steps.

2. Define your idea and craft your niche market

My guess is that you have a few general ideas already.

However, you don’t want to be painting in broad strokes.

That’s not a business model that works.

Instead, you want to narrow down your idea to a particular niche.

Here’s how.

Decide who you want to do business with. Don’t worry about alienating people or confining your idea to a box.

While it sounds counterintuitive, if you focus on one audience, you will have more impact.

You can always revisit this. Your niche is not set in stone.

Aim to be as specific as possible.

For example, you can decide that you’ll be targeting young female entrepreneurs between the ages of 21 and 30.

What service or product will you be providing to your target audience? This is a matter of reducing your idea to suit your target audience.

Again, this needs to be very specific.

Let’s say that your general idea is in the marketing field. Perhaps you want to provide marketing services and use your social media channels to get clients.

If you were to narrow “marketing” down, here’s what it would look like:

  • Content marketing
  • Copywriting
  • Direct response copywriting
  • Direct response copywriting in the health niche
  • Direct response copywriting in the alternative/natural health niche

Do you see how many layers you can peel off your general idea?

3. Validate your business idea

Most people skip this step and go full throttle with their business ideas.

Now is the time to take a step back.

You have a concrete idea, but you’re missing some crucial insights.

  • Does your niche market actually exist?
  • Does your idea conform to your long-term, result-oriented goal?
  • Are there enough people out there with the problem that you’re solving?
  • Are they willing to pay you to solve it?

That’s where validating your idea comes into play.

Here’s how you can do it.

Step #1: Go to Google Trends to get an overview of your niche market.

Plug in your niche keyword in the search bar and press enter.

Google Trends

You’ll get a graph showing the interest for your keyword over a particular period.

content marketing Explore Google Trends

If the graph is steady or on the rise, these are good signs.

If there’s a decline, you may want to reconsider your niche or do some further research.

You can also scroll to the bottom of the page to find “related queries” and “related topics.”

content marketing Explore Google Trends 2

These will also give you ideas for narrowing down your niche. You can click on the individual queries to see the overall trend for them, as well.

Step #2: Find competing products on online marketplaces.

Competition shouldn’t scare you.

In fact, it tells you that there’s a market for your business.

It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to sell, be it a service or a product. You only want to know if there’s demand for your topic.

Here’s how you can do that.

Search for your niche topic on Amazon. Browse through the books and evaluate the overall demand.

Books with lots of reviews, good or bad, are a good sign.

Amazon com content marketing

Go to Udemy to check out the online courses in your niche. Again, you’re looking for proof of demand.

Lots of courses with ratings are a positive indication.

Online Courses Anytime Anywhere Udemy

Go to YouTube to see if there are popular videos on your topic. If people are viewing video content on your topic, there’s definitely demand.

content marketing YouTube

Search for your niche hashtag on Instagram. I plugged “content marketing” in the Instagram search bar and saw that the hashtag had over 600,000 posts. That’s a great sign.

contentmarketing Instagram photos and videos 1

After you validate your idea, it’s time to start thinking about how you can monetize it.

4. Come up with a monetization strategy.

This is perhaps the most-asked question.

How do you…

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