You don’t need to go viral to make money as a Creator. Here are 5 ways you can start earning today.

In this post, I’m sharing five ways that you can make your first $1,000 as a content creator in the next 30 days. And here’s the good news: you don’t need to go viral to start making money as a creator.

Now, let’s jump straight into helping you make your first $1,000 as a content creator. Stick around until the end because number five is actually my favorite. I haven’t seen anyone else talking about this. Plus, at the very end of this post, I’ll share with you a bonus tip to fast-track your way to a higher income as a content creator.

As always, if you’d like to watch instead of read, click the video below.

DISCLAIMER: Links included in this post might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting me so I can continue to provide you with free content each week on my blog and on my YouTube channel!

5 Ways to Make Your First $1,000 as a Content Creator

UGC

UGC, or User-Generated Content, is a great way to start making money as a content creator because you can get started with 0 followers. If you just started your journey today and you want to become a content creator, you can get paid for UGC right away.

How is this possible? Because UGC is when everyday people get paid by a brand to create content for them to share on their page. This could include videos, photos, or reviews, but the most common UGC brands want is video content.

How to Get Started with UGC

• Week 1: Focus on building your portfolio; this way, you have examples to share with brands. I recommend building a mini portfolio with 3-5 sample videos. You can create your portfolio on Canva (you can create a landing page in Canva to share with brands).
• Week 2: Find UGC deals. I recommend pitching yourself 5-10x a day. You can do this in two ways: you can use 3rd party platforms like Joinbrands or find work through Twitter, or you can cold pitch brands. If you want to steal my exact pitch, watch my YouTube video at 3:20.
• Week 3: Ideally, by week three, you have some brands ready to work with you. So now, you’re in the negotiate and finalize deals phase.

Road to your first $1,000 as a creator with UGC=

• $150 (organic usage) —> 7 brands or videos ($1,050)
• $250 (paid usage) —> 4 brands or videos

If you want to go down the UGC route, I have an entire video that breaks down how you can start making money with UGC. I’ll leave the link here. And if you’re really serious about going the UGC route, I have a UGC creator bundle that helps you build your sustainable UGC business from the ground up.

Brand Collabs

Now, before you say, “I don’t have enough followers for brand collabs, or brand collaborations aren’t for me,” know this: I have many students with under 10,000 followers landing both PR and paid collaborations. So, while brand collaborations are a more challenging way to guarantee $1,000 in 30 days compared to UGC, for some creators reading this, you’re ready to be paid. You just don’t know it yet.

Brands love to invest in nano and micro creators (10k or less) with loyal, niche audiences. Don’t get me wrong, brands also love to sponsor the biggest creators, but there are even more brands that don’t have as big a budget, but would love to partner with their perfect creator, regardless of following size.

The reason that brands love working with smaller creators is that they tend to have more loyal, connected followings. So keep in mind that brands care more about your engagement rate and your audience’s connection than your follower size.

How to Get Started with Paid Brand Collaborations

• Ask yourself: Are you already creating content that brands would pay for? Do you naturally talk about products in your videos? If not, start doing this with things you already know and love at home.
• Join 3rd part platforms. My first paid collaboration was through AspireIQ, and when I was just getting started (with less than 10k followers), it was the number one way I worked with brands. Others include Octoly, Collectively, and Obvious.ly.
• APPLY APPLY APPLY

You can also pitch brands directly, which I teach you how to do in this video.

Road to your first $1,000 as a creator with brand collaborations=

TikTok (5,000 followers, 2% engagement rate, 3 months organic usage) = $200 —> 5 brand deals.

There are so many factors that go into how much you charge for brand collaborations. So much so that I’ve already written this post on ‘How Much to Charge for TikTok Collabs‘ and made this YouTube video ‘How much to Charge for Instagram Collabs.’ And if you want my free pitch templates, you can download those here.

Digital Products

This is one of my favorite ways for you to start making money as a content creator! Everyone should be creating digital products. Everyone. Create something once and earn from it forever. Plus, you’ll be growing your email list and building your business outside of social media — your online products will grow AS you grow.

I even had a student who took maternity leave from posting, but she left her digital products in her bio, and she continued to see sales while she was away. If you’ve been dreaming about passive income, this ones for you.

Here are some examples:

• Notion Templates
• Canva Templates
• eBooks, guides, checklists
• Mini Courses
• Planners

How to Get Started Selling Digital Products (Powered by Stan Store 💙)

If you’ve been around for a while, then you already know that I love Stan Store. They’re a tool built by creators, for creators. And they’re the perfect place to start selling your digital product because they also handle things like email subscribers, link in bio, and payment processing without any hidden fees.

I want you to start by reading this post: 100 Digital Products You Could Create This Weekend. Then jump into these steps to use a digital product to make your first $1,000 as a content creator.

• Week 1: Find two problems that your audience is facing, one small and one bigger. The small one will be your free email offer, and the larger one will be your paid product. Make sure that one leads into the other so you can create a funnel. Again, you can create this in Canva.
• Week 2: Export both products and add them to your Stan Store (sign up here). If you want a FULL video walkthrough of how to do this, watch this video next.  
• Week 3: Start talking about your offer, add it to your link in bio, and set up ManyChat automations that send people the link when they engage with your content.

Road to your first $1,000 as a creator with digital products=

You sell a $29 digital product —> 35 people buy = 1-2 people per day

OR a $47 digital product —> 21 people buy.

If you’re already actively posting about the same topic as your digital product, sales will come naturally.

You don’t need a huge audience. You simply need one powerful product that solves a real problem for your audience.

Consulting or Coaching

I was originally going to share a membership as the fourth way to make money as a content creator, but I think hitting $1,000 in 30 days with a membership would be harder than offering coaching or consulting. A membership is usually a low-ticket offer, meaning you charge around $10 a month. To make your first $1,000 as a content creator, you’d need to find 100 people to join your membership in the next 30 days.

While a membership is a low-ticket offer, coaching is a higher-ticket offer.

A high-ticket offer that lets your audience work directly with you is the quickest way to hit your first $1,000.

• Week 1: Choose the topic that you’re going to coach on and what the structure of your coaching will look like. Start posting as the expert on that topic (if you aren’t already)  
• Week 2: Keep posting on that topic. The goal here is to hyperfocus on this topic, showing your audience that you’re the expert.  
• Week 3: Start to tease coaching.
• Week 4: Open coaching as a limited-time offer, with doors closing after a specific timeframe or after you reach a certain number of people. For example, you could say: “Coaching is finally here, but the doors close in 5 days,” or “coaching is finally here, but only for the first 5 people who sign up.” You want people to act fast.

Road to your first $1,000 as a creator with coaching=

1 person at $1,000 —> 2 people at $500 —> or 4 people at $250.

Gig Economy App Vlogging

This is one way you could start making money as a content creator that I don’t really see anyone talking about. I would love to see one of you take this and run with it, and then come back to me in 30 days saying, “Millie! You won’t believe how much money I’ve made!”

So basically, you’re going to leverage Gig Economy Apps to make income while also using them as a signature series in your content. The idea is that you join the app as a provider and every time you go to ‘work’, you could vlog and share your story and experience. Your video could be, “let’s see how much money I can make in the next 3 hours as a Doordasher.”

Road to your first $1,000 as a creator through the gig economy=

• Instacart: $15-500 a day
• DoorDash: $70-300 a day
• Meowtell: $40-400 a day
• Rover: $20-100 a day

It’s not unfeasible that you could make $180 a day through the gig economy, which is almost six full days of work, or 12 half days.

Of course, these are rough estimates. There are many variables to take into account that will impact how much you make on gig economy apps, such as:

• How many hours do you work a day?
• The time of day that you’re working
• How busy or active consumers are on the apps

However, this one is a double whammy: not only are you making income through the gig economy, but you’re turning that content into platform monetization and helping you grow overall.

Bonus Tip to Fast-Track Your Way to a Higher Income

Let me tell you about two people. Person A has a $29 digital product that 100 people bought, leading to $2,900 in revenue. But then there’s Person B. They also have a $29 digital product; they also got 100 people to buy it, but they made over $11,000 because they implemented this one tip… What is it?

Email Lists and Sequences

You just had to know I’d bring this up, didn’t you? OK, let me at least explain.

The real magic of scaling as a content creator happens through email automation. What this looks like is you setting up a simple email sequence that upsells buyers to a related offer.

Let’s continue with our example of a $29 digital product that 100 people have bought…

If just 15% of those people purchase your mid-tier product at $397 (let’s say it’s a course), that’s an additional $5,955. And if only 3% of your original 100 people go on to buy your higher-ticket offer at $997 (let’s say it’s group coaching), that’s $2,991.

So, when you add it all up, for every 100 people who go through your funnel, you’re not just making $2,900 from your starter product. You’re actually generating over $11,000 through your automated email system, without doing any extra manual work.

If this sounds interesting, read this post next because it is a DEEP dive into the magic of the $29 funnel.

Thank you so much being here, I’ll see you in the next one. Follow your joy!