Become a full-time content creator in 2023 (your 12-month plan!)

How many of you have been daydreaming about quitting your full-time job and doing content creation full-time? It was my dream (and now reality) - so I figured why not give you a real, honest walkthrough on how you can become a full-time content creator too! Let’s get into it.

What really is a content creator

There is no one true definition of a “content creator” because everyone's path is different. But, my simple, noncomplex definition of a content creator is someone who creates digital content.

But, to get a bit more complicated, when wanting to make a full-time income from creating content - I feel like there are directions you can go or a hybrid of both.

Option one is the basic content creator path. Now being “basic” in this case isn’t the same as the slang referring to unoriginal, unexceptional, and mainstream - instead I am more referring to the revenue streams. The most common revenue streams that come to mind when thinking about a content creator are affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, and ad revenue (if applicable depending on the platform). This is actually where I suggest you start your creation journey.

The second option is the entrepreneur content creator path. You will still have the common revenue streams we already mentioned, but now you might start to expand your revenue options with things like digital or physical products, courses, services, membership programs, merchandise, or whatever else you might be interested in offering. The idea here is that beyond your content bringing you in revenue - you can use your content to redirect your community to paid offerings too!

Quarter One:

As promised in the title, I wanted to give you a 12-month plan for becoming a full-time content creator. I am going to break this down quarter by quarter for you. First of all, I suggest everyone starts their journey as a basic content creator. I am someone who gets a new idea and immediately wants to jump into it — so right now, you might already be thinking of a few digital product ideas or what you could include in a membership program — but stop, take a deep breath and refocus on the core of your brand.

If you haven’t already, in these last couple of days in January, make sure you have really ironed out your target audience - which inevitably will lead to your pillars and niche. This is so, so, so important for what will happen later on when wanting to work with brands.

Beyond that, this last two months of the quarter it’s time to get in some practice and find the best creation and posting schedule that works for you, so you can be consistent.

I know others and I talk about the importance of quality over quantity, but when you’re just starting - I actually recommend pumping out as much content as possible in your comfort zone. If you try to create quality over quantity, it’s going to take you so long to harness those skills in all of these various areas of creating your content - whereas if you just create as many pieces of content as you can, you will find your content quality get better and better. If you look at my YouTube and Instagram content from years ago compared to now, you will see it’s a huge difference - and that’s because I have posted 100s of videos and Instagram posts to get to this point. The idea is … if it takes 100 pieces of content to improve your skills - well, you better start working on those 100, right?

I also think now would be a good time to apply for some affiliate programs you might be interested in. Places like Reward Style and Amazon Affiliates, or do a Google search for brands you love with the word “affiliate” and apply with some brands directly. It can sometimes take some time to get approved, so this will get you set up for next quarter.

So, in summary, in Quarter One, you will:

✅ iron out your target audience

✅ find a schedule that is comfortable for you

✅ post as much content as you can, so you can harness your skills

✅ apply for affiliate programs

Quarter Two:

In this second quarter, it’s time to take things to the next level and actually try making some money. First, I would evaluate how the last few months have been going. Did your skills improve? Did you find a routine that worked for you? If you feel good about where you’re at, it’s time to move to the next step, if you need to make adjustments - I would do this now.

Beyond that - you really need to make your focus this quarter on building an engaged community. You don’t need to have 100k subscribers or followers to be successful as a content creator - you just need to build a supportive, strong community. But how?

There are really three pieces to this engagement puzzle.

Creating entertaining, educational, or inspiring content on whatever platform you are using — and starting to readjust to creating quality over quantity content — delivering your best self to your community.
Show up beyond just your normal scheduled posting - something like stories on Instagram are one of the best ways to do this. You can use photos or videos and stickers to real-time engage with your community. You can also make posts on YouTube as well, they have a polls feature that can get your community more involved!
Of course, it’s important to post consistently on any platform - but you can’t just post and be done. You need to interact with your community by making sure you answer comments and DMs - especially when you’re just starting out and your community is smaller. As you grow, it might be hard to respond to everything - I get it, but you can just do your best to be as engaged as possible!

Also, by now, you were probably approved to work with some of the affiliate marketing programs you applied for - so now, you should take the time to add any relevant links to the appropriate places. If you are on YouTube, place these links in your description of past and future videos when needed. For Instagram, add these links to your link in bio platform. I use Liinks, which allows me to link to multiple sources, I highly recommend this if you’re trying to become a content creator full-time. Also, if you already have a website, I recommend adding a favorites page to list all of the products, apps, and services you recommend. Doing this now will really help you in the future - for example, if you’re on YouTube - these videos are evergreen and just because one of your past videos doesn’t have a lot of views now, you never know when it could randomly get some traction and you’ll already have those links in place if it does.

You might also want to keep ad revenue top of mind. Depending on your platform, ad revenue can be an option. For example, YouTube allows you to put ads in the front, middle, and end of your video. They also just launched ads for YouTube shorts. However, to get approved for monetization, you must have 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. So, just keep these ads requirements top of mind as your work through each quarter.

Something else you should do during the second quarter is streamline your workflow. How do you organize your content ideas, how are you tracking your affiliate links, and what systems do you have in place to make sure this content creation business stays on track? I personally use Notion - for both my content creation business and my creative agency business as well. Having the perfect content creator set up in Notion has seriously been like hiring an assistant, but it’s free. I actually have a content creator bundle template for Notion. You can use this to keep organized in your content creation business. This content creator Notion bundle includes my in-depth content calendar (with 9 custom views to keep your content organized on all social media platforms), a brand partnership tracker, an affiliate marketing tracker, and a customizable brand guide. It’s pretty awesome.

So, in summary, in Quarter Two, you will:

✅ reevaluate your audience and routines

✅ start building an engaged community

✅ place affiliate links in their appropriate places

✅ keep ad revenue top of mind

✅ streamline your workflow

Quarter Three:

We are now in the second half of the year and it’s time to set up some more revenue streams.

For the last 6 months, you have been essentially creating a portfolio of your content to show brands. You have also been dedicating a lot of time focusing on building an engaged community. These two things are very important when it comes to securing brand partnerships. Though a large number of followers or subscribers can’t hurt when it comes to attracting the attention of the brand - trust me - they are more worried about the stats of the individual posts or videos they are seeing. How many views, comments, likes, shares, and so on, are each post getting? The number of views and the engagement rate is going to be the biggest selling point for a brand.

So, pulling from a YouTube video I did recently about how I made $60,000 from brand deals in 2022 - here are the two ways you can secure a brand deal.

Option one, pitch yourself to the brand. When you reach out to brands, that’s called pitching brands. Honestly, this is the most energy-intensive and difficult way to get brand deals, but it is possible. You will need to write a professional pitch, find the people you want to pitch to and follow up consistently. You can track all of this by using the brand partnership page in the Notion template I mentioned before. I also have an email template you can use to write your brand deal pitches, I will have that linked in the show notes as well.

Option two, brands reaching out to you. This will only work if you make yourself discoverable. Pretty much you are going to do the digital version of jumping up and down, waving your hand in the air, yelling at the brand saying “look at me, look at me.” You can do that by adding SEO to your profiles, making the kind of content brands want to sponsor, connecting and collaborating with other creators who are getting deals with your dream brands, and tagging brands in the content that you’re already organically making.

So, during this quarter - you can start reaching out to brands, but also - setting yourself up for brands to find you as well. You will also continue with everything we have already established - keep posting quality content consistently and nurture your engaged community.

So, in summary, in Quarter Three, you will:

✅ pitch yourself to brands

✅ make yourself discoverable, so brands reach out to you

✅ keep working on posting quality content consistently and nurture your engaged community

Quarter Four:

Welcome to the final quarter of the year. The hope is, by this point - you found a solid rhythm with creating quality, consistent content, you are seeing growth in your community, that community has become very engaged in your content, and maybe, just maybe - you have started to see some affiliate marketing income and brand partnership opportunities. The idea is you just keep doing more of what you’re already doing from this point forward. You will get better and better at creating content, your audience will continue to grow, you’ll get even more brand opportunities, and so on.

But what should you do now? Beyond just keeping up with your routine, which is easier said than done - you can start deciding on where you want to take your brand from here. Do you want to stick with the basic content creator path? If so, I suggest finding more ways to improve your content - maybe that’s investing in a course or equipment, or maybe just keeping up with posting, so you get more and more practice. The choice is yours.

If you decide you would like to go down the entrepreneur content creator path. - I would use this final quarter to start planning what revenue streams you would like to expand to - again, this would be things like digital or physical products, courses, services, membership programs, or merchandise. I do recommend starting with a small offer, like an inexpensive digital product. This is something you can plan and create in this final quarter and launch in the new year to your community - providing them even more value.

So, in summary, in Quarter Four, you will:

✅ still keep working on posting quality content consistently and nurture your engaged community

✅ decide if you want to stick with the basic content creator path or the entrepreneur content creator path

✅ if you choose the entrepreneur content creator path, create a small offer (like a digital product) to launch in the new year

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Obviously, I can’t guarantee any specific results. It so depends on your actions, what you’re creating, and your niche even - but I can say, that if you show up and create quality content, your dream team audience will find you - and that will lead to revenue opportunities. Just stay focused, stay consistent, create good content, build an engaged community, and most importantly - have fun! The entire idea of leaving the 9-5 to do content creation full-time is because it seems like a more fun way to make money, right? So, don’t make it something that brings your down.