Your personal brand is your calling card — it’s how others perceive you in your industry. Your personal brand shapes first impressions and leads to career growth. In fact, a LinkedIn study found that 71% of professionals believe that a strong personal brand increases opportunities. It also takes a bit of effort to build. Which is exactly why you should monetize your brand.
Here are three easy ways to monetize your personal brand:
1. Become a public speaker.
Brand new public speakers can make $500 to $5,000 per talk. Expert speakers can command as much as $50,000 per talk. Coaches, consultants, and entrepreneurs can supplement their income through speaking engagements. It is also a great way to boost your career and establish yourself as an expert.
Effective public speakers tell a story that connects with the audience. Research shows that using examples showing emotion improves retention by up to 75%. And keep it short. TEDx talks are less than 18 minutes, but some experts suggest 8 to 10 minutes is long enough.
There are boundless opportunities for public speaking. While TED is often considered the holy grail of public speaking, other venues can be incredibly lucrative, including:
- TED and TEDx. A TED talk is a short presentation with a focus on technology, entertainment, or design (TED). TEDx focuses on a local geographical area, and TED talks are held on the main stage. Each feature “ideas worth spreading.” TEDx talks improve visibility, position you as an expert or influencer, and act as a digital business card. The TED YouTube channel has 23.4M subscribers.
- Conferences. Public conferences, meetups, and business events often hire keynote speakers. Seek opportunities within your niche. Reach out to conference organizers and provide a reel. You may need to take non-paid speaking engagements before being hired. Use those to establish yourself as a public speaker.
- Podcasts. There are five million podcasts globally with 464 million listeners. The industry is valued at $23.5B. Becoming a guest on a podcast improves your visibility and gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and build trust with your audience. Podcasts also offer a safe place to learn valuable public speaking skills as they are often only audio. Don’t be afraid to direct message hosts on instagram and pitch them yourself as a guest, with the following information: your interest in being on the show, your expertise, your episode topics, and your willingness to share the episode.
Glassophobia, fear of public speaking, affects 75% of the population. Symptoms range from a few butterflies in your gut to full-on panic attacks. But practice helps. Hire a public speaking coach or join a local Toastmasters group to more affordably and consistently hone in on your public speaking skills.
2. Develop online courses.
Before the pandemic, online learning was expected to grow 14.6% between 2019 and 2026 to reach $374B by 2026. But that changed in the spring of 2020 — the market grew 900% as schools were asked to shelter in place. Now online learning is part of everyday culture. Research shows that online learning improves employee retention by 25% to 60%. Online classes and training are offered by 93% of businesses.
An online course can cover any topic.
Most online courses can broadly be defined as “how-tos,” like how to excel in digital marketing or how to open an Etsy store. Popular categories include video and photography tutorials, digital media marketing, financing and investing courses, health and fitness, DIY creative arts and crafts, personal development, content creation, and lifestyle courses.
Successful courses have three components:
- Course topic. Your topic doesn’t have to be something you’re wild about, but it must be something you can competently talk about at length. You need to have a certain level of passion to prevent burnout. Thinkific, an e-course platform, describes a winning course as Passion + Skill + Experience + Target.
- Market appeal. You will need to validate your topic. Does it have a target audience? It takes time to create a course, so discovering whether someone will buy it before doing the work is worth the effort. During this phase, it is important to assess the competition and tweak and refine your topic.
- Compelling learning outcomes. What will your students walk away with? A compelling learning outcome is something tangible or measurable. It will tell students what they will be able to do following your course and provide the context of your course.
Most online course creators host their courses using online learning platforms. These differ from learning management systems (LMS). LMS focuses on seamless delivery over sales and marketing. Online learning platforms like Kajabi, Udemy, and Coursera allow creators to market, sell, and deliver their courses.
The most successful course creators analyze the data, continuously evolve their courses to meet market demand, and offer a live virtual component.
3. Create and sell digital products.
Digital products are intangible products or media sold and distributed solely online. An ebook is an example of a digital product. Customers get instant access with the click of a button. Digital products are not physical goods, so you never run out of inventory or carry stock in a warehouse or storage facility. Each year $54 billion is spent on digital or virtual goods.
Digital products can be incredibly profitable. They have low overhead costs with high profit margins. Most e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Etsy offer automated, seamless transactions. Digital products can be anything from free or paid products to subscription services or licenses to use digital products.
According to Deloitte research, 33% of the monthly expenditure is spent on bundled digital services and 23% on entertainment. The simplest digital products fall into a few broad categories:
- Graphic design. Create templates to improve social media posts, help with branding, or style cover letters, CVs, invitations, announcements, flyers, and restaurant menus.
- Stock illustration and images. This category includes emojis, icons, infographic elements, illustrations, vector images, doodles, handwritten quotes, and web elements. Stock photos can also be sold.
- Printables. Meal plans, workouts, event planning templates, calendars, journals, logs, activity, and coloring pages are all examples of printable digital products. Many printables are editable so costumers can personalize them.
- Print on demand. Ebooks fall into this category. So do trackers, logbooks, activity books, and coloring books. Print-on-demand products also include t-shirts, mugs, fabric, wrapping paper, greeting cards, and shower curtains.
- Video. Stock videos, transitions, and animations are examples of video products. Openers and closers for YouTube creators is another example of a digital product.
While these are “easy” they do take effort. And you must build your brand before you can monetize it. Content is the fastest way to establish your brand — it allows you to intentionally create how you’re perceived. And this will shape how you monetize your brand later.
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