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Many creators wrestle with how to do what they love and also make a living. The drive to express your creativity may have first inspired you to film videos, write email newsletters, take photos, or record podcasts. You devote a lot of time and energy to this work, and it’s natural to want to earn income from it. As the online audience for your content grows, you may want to learn how to monetize your digital content.
There are a number of ways you can bring in revenue while making work that you’re passionate about and building a relationship with your followers. You can even create multiple income streams, or sources from which you earn more revenue. In fact, the more opportunities you give for brands and followers to engage with you, the more revenue you can earn for the content you’re creating.
Read on to learn more about different ways to monetize your audience—and discover ways to combine those tactics to increase your overall revenue.
Creating a members-only area on your website
A members-only section of your website is one key way to monetize your content. With Squarespace, you can do this by using Member Sites, which is a gated-content section of your site that your audience can access by paying a one-time or recurring membership fee.
Think of your Member Site as a library for your skills and expertise. Once you integrate a payment processor to accept membership fees, members can interact with a wide variety of exclusive content that you create.
Behind that membership paywall, the types of content you could share include:
A regular schedule of video classes or longer online video courses that include exercises and supporting materials for students to download as they take the class at their own pace
E-books, white papers, or blog posts exclusively for your business’s current or prospective clients or for your online followers
Links that only your members can access behind the paywall, so they can schedule exclusive appointments with you, or sign up for members-only webinars and email newsletters
Keep in mind that content in this members-only section won’t be indexed in your site map or visible to search engines. If you want to increase search engine traffic to your site, it’s a good idea to post a few videos and sample content on your public-facing web pages. Feature keywords people might use when they use search engines to find content like yours. This will help improve your site’s rankings in search engine queries—and give potential members a better idea of what they’ll find once they pay for access to the members-only section.
Learn more about charging for gated content
Monetizing your video content
If you create videos on a regular basis, there are a number of ways you can earn revenue from this content:
Gated content: Instead of posting your videos to a streaming platform, post them to a member section of your website. This strategy allows you to make your videos exclusively available to your community, and tailor your video content specifically to your members’ interests.
Paywalled video libraries: Create a video library on your website and share it with site visitors for on-demand video. Make the library browseable or even offer a couple of free previews, then give visitors the option to pay for more access.
Online courses: If you create videos to teach your audience a skill or share your expertise, you can turn them into an online course, organized into lessons and chapters. Students can sign up and pay for access.
Selling goods and services: You can think of videos as a tool to show viewers how to use products you sell online. Alternatively, if you’re primarily a content creator, develop a merchandise line for your fans to buy to display their love for you and your work.
Affiliate marketing: If you’d prefer not to set up an online store of your own, you can join brands’ affiliate marketing programs and recommend products to your viewers. The brands will supply you with a unique link that you can post in the video description or on video cards. Each time people click that link and buy a product via that link, you’ll earn a percentage of each sale.
Advertising: If your YouTube channel meets the platform’s requirements for subscribers and video hours watched, you can explore options within the platform that will add display or video ads to your videos.
Branded content: A more direct way to earn revenue is to collaborate with companies to create sponsored videos or feature their products in your videos on social media. Advertising rates depend on the number of views each video earns, so branded content may be more lucrative if your audience is engaged and more niche.
Keep in mind that you’re not limited to using just one of these strategies to monetize your online videos. You can earn revenue from multiple sources at the same time.
Offering subscriptions to content you regularly produce
In addition to posting content in a members-only section of your site, you can also monetize your digital presence by offering a subscription to your content. With subscriptions, you charge followers on a monthly or annual basis to deliver things like video, audio, and text to them. The benefit of this strategy for you, as a creator, is that you’re building a regular income stream that gives you a predictable financial foundation—so you can have more time to focus on creating new content.
A few examples of subscriptions that independent creators successfully offer:
Podcasts. Many podcasts and video channels set up subscriptions so their fans can voluntarily support their work. If you offer this kind of subscription, you could reward subscribers with bonus episodes, email newsletters, or resources you post in a password-protected section of your website.
Video classes. During the pandemic, many industries—including educators, personal trainers, and chefs—turned to filming online classes. Video subscriptions of all kinds continue to be popular with teachers and students alike.
Email newsletters. Newsletters with paid subscriptions have taken off the past few years. Many writers use them to communicate directly with followers instead of relying on media outlets to publish their work.
Products. Some creators, or online retailers, sell product subscriptions such as coffee-of-the-month clubs or curated boxes. Squarespace offers ecommerce tools to charge subscribers automatically every month in exchange for new products.
Before you launch a subscription, take time to think about what kinds of content or products you already create, how frequently you create them, and how to market the value proposition for your subscription to potential followers.
It’s important to think realistically about how much time you spend creating new content so you can set your subscription fees appropriately. In addition to giving your subscribers content on a regular basis, think about how you can reward their loyalty by creating opportunities for your audience to interact with you.
Working with brands to create content
Many companies have made partnerships with influencers a key part of their marketing plans, and many creators have successfully collaborated with brands to create sponsored content.
The value of branded content isn’t just the revenue it might bring you. The other value of branded content is it gives you a chance to be selective about the brands you create content with, so that you can introduce your followers to products and companies that you endorse. In exchange, you’re bringing these companies to the attention of an audience they might not reach through other marketing channels. If you make content in a specific niche, brands who supply that area of interest with specialty products may find a partnership with you especially valuable—your partnership with them would target the exact people who would be most likely to buy their products.
Branded content can take many forms. If you make videos, record podcasts, or write blog posts, you could review a company’s products, or highlight one product in a longer feature. You could also cocreate a video or set of photographs that you post to your social media channels and the brand shares with their own platforms. Be sure to let your audience know about the partnership with a hashtag or a short note, so they continue to trust in the value of the content you create for them.
If you are interested in making branded content, consider creating a portfolio that you share with companies to show the value of a partnership with you. You’ll want to include details about the reach of your content, such as:
The channels you post content on
Your subscriber figures
Examples of the kinds of sponsored content you have already made or would like to make
When you’re establishing partnerships with brands, read over all the legal materials you sign to make sure the agreement is mutually beneficial, and don’t hesitate to negotiate.
Learn more about sponsored content
Repurposing content to create multiple income streams
Adopting an entrepreneurial mindset about being a creator will help you come up with new ways to monetize your digital presence and maximize the revenue you earn for your content.
Your content earns revenue from two types of sources: your followers and outside sponsors. Just like print magazines make money off advertising and reader subscriptions, you can earn revenue from both sources at the same time.
Think of all the content you produce as an ecosystem, in which each piece feeds the others:
Set up several different ways to engage your followers, such as podcasts, blogs, and social media posts. In fact, you may grow your audience in the process, because you’re increasing the number of ways that people learn about you. Some of your followers would love to read about the topic in a short blog post. Others would prefer to watch a video about it.
Every time you create a new piece of content for one channel, direct your audience to your other channels. Tell your video viewers to visit your website. Send out an email newsletter telling people about your new e-book.
Each time you create a new piece of content, think of how you can repurpose it so that it can earn passive income for years to come—for example, recording your live webinars and selling access to the video to people to view it on the members-only section of your site.
Once you’ve mapped out ways to link all of your content channels, bring revenue in from both brands and followers, and earn passive income from content that you’ve reused—you’ll see just how many possibilities exist for earning money from the content you create. The more income streams are feeding your work, the easier it will be to make a living doing what you love.
This post was updated on March 7, 2024.