- Everyone wants to build the biggest audience they can
in social media.
Whether that's YouTube, Twitter, Instagram,
Tik Tok, whatever.
But here's the truth, you really only need
1,000 true fans in order to make a living
and be able to do this kind of thing full time.
Now that's not the same thing as saying that,
oh, you only need 1,000 subscribers,
you only need 1,000 Twitter followers,
you only need 1,000 followers in Instagram.
You need 1,000 real people, who are willing
to have a relationship with you
that leads to a financial transaction.
And so today, we're gonna talk about making $100,000 a year
with 1,000
loyal, real fans.
Let's get into it.
Hey everybody this is Roberto Blake helping you
create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
For those of you who are new here, first of all, welcome,
my name's Roberto Blake.
I'm a creative entrepreneur, public speaker
and I have a social media coaching business,
AwesomeCreatorAcademy.com.
And today I wanna talk to you about a $100,000 a year income
as an influencer or somebody who's leveraging social media
and these marketing platforms.
And because I know I'm gonna get the skepticism
because of the view count on the videos
and everything like that,
I'm gonna throw some numbers up here.
I'm gonna throw up numbers that represent
the sales dashboard of Awesome Creator Academy.
And I'm also probably gonna just put up
last year's YouTube ad revenue,
which I'm gonna make a dedicated video about.
'Cause here's the thing,
what you believe you need to accomplish in many cases,
is, you know, wildly over exaggerated.
The reality is that if you become more business savvy
as an influencer, it's much better in many cases
to be paid rather than popular.
And there are a lot of methods that you can do this.
Now I'm working on something that I'm calling,
The No B.S. Guide to Making Money Online.
It's gonna be a video.
It's gonna be a 45 minute lecture video,
where I break down a lot of these concepts more in-depth.
But today, I want to do a normal-size Roberto Blake video,
which is still longer than most things on YouTube,
because I'm gonna break down the financials
of how this works.
So let's get into some real numbers here.
If you add 1,000 truly loyal fans in your audience
it means that you need to be able to have
a $100 relationship with them throughout the year.
Now when I say that, the math doesn't seem
nearly as intimating, right?
It means that, how can I
be in a position where I have $100 in transactions
with each of my 1,000 most loyal supporters in my audience
across all of my platforms, regardless of size.
And there are a couple of ways
that this actually really works out.
So, there are different things you can do
in terms of transactions.
This can be affiliate revenue.
I did a whole thing on affiliate marketing,
whether that's Amazon or what have you.
And there are other affiliate programs.
I've done some videos about these that do payouts
of $100 even per transaction, $50 per transaction,
or recurring revenue.
So affiliate marketing, imagine that
you had a number of people
sign up for some software as a service.
Let's say you got 1,000 people
to sign up for a software as a service
and that software of a service was $10 a month, okay,
in terms of your affiliate commission.
All of a sudden, $10 a month
from 1,000 people is $10,000 a month.
See, the math isn't that hard when you think about it.
Now, obviously getting 1,000 people to do anything
is the challenge here.
But that comes down to how much in alignment you are
with those people.
It's why I've told you in the past that there are
content creators out there with a following of 5,000,
10,000, that are making a full time living and income
because they have something to sell.
They're not living off of ad revenue,
or even just off of Patreon donations.
Which by the way, even with that,
even with Patreon donations,
people like my friend Steve Dotto,
are making thousands of dollars,
even as much as $5,000 a month because,
not even 1,000 but several hundred people
from their audience are making a commitment to them
of $5 to $10 a month.
For the price of two Fiji waters,
you can contribute to the feeding and care
of your favorite social media influencer.
I've gotta make that joke a couple of times
throughout the year.
So just know that that's a thing.
The way that I approach this is a couple of different ways.
A lot of you know that I have a product.
One of the things I sell in Awesome Creator Academy
is the YouTube starter kit.
It's not a course, it's a template pack
of Photoshop graphics.
I used my skills as a graphic designer, as a marketer
to make thumb nails, YouTube channel artwork,
YouTube end card graphics, live streaming graphics,
and I keep kind of updating this bundle
every couple of months and the price doesn't change.
And I often run coupons.
In fact, I'm gonna run a coupon for that
and some of my other digital products
in the description down below for you.
I'm also gonna leave some links to some other resources,
free and paid, that you can take advantage of
that relate to this video.
Now I made that product
around Black Friday
of November 2017,
so it's over a year old on that product
and I think I've done maybe 800 sales or more
of that product,
which is amazing.
And I actually don't run a lot of ads for it just yet.
That's something I'm planning on.
And I don't actually talk about it nearly enough
on this channel.
But it's one of the things I did
that significantly contributed to the revenue
for Awesome Creator Academy and my overall income.
And that's one $99 product.
And I'm not telling you you have to go out
and make a $99 product.
And not all of you are gonna do things like artwork
or templates or things like that.
Or online courses.
Now if you wanna get into that sort of thing,
if you wanna get into online courses,
I'm using Kajabi.
I'm building something else out on Teachable.
Teachable is the cheaper option.
I like Kajabi because I'm doing coaching too
and that's another service that I provide.
So there are a certain number of people that do
the high-level coaching with me
and it's a higher transaction.
I'll get into that in a minute
on how to get more than $100 relationship in a year.
But if you wanna do something affordable
for your digital products,
I'm gonna link to Teachable down below.
Everything down below is probably an affiliate link,
just so you know.
But see even that proves my point.
A combination of merchandise, if you do the margins right
maybe it's 5 to $10 per t-shirt,
if enough people buy different t-shirts,
merchandise, posters, mugs, hats,
things throughout the year, does it add up to
$100 in that relationship and can you have 1,000 people
that are wiling to do that?
Or some combination of that and supporting you in Patreon.
Or some combination of that and maybe hiring you
to do a service.
Can you have 100 relationships with people?
100 relationships with people that are worth $1,000
throughout the year.
Are there any relationships that you can have that are worth
more than $1,000 per year?
Instead of thinking about having
the largest audience possible,
think from 1,000 people or less.
And how much value you can deliver in the relationship
and how you're gonna get that value to them
and what's the price tag attached to that?
That is the key of the 1,000 Fans
and how you make $100,000 a year.
It's relationship based and value based.
It is a matter of a combination
of how many relationships you have
and how much monetary value
is attached to those relationships in terms of the exchange,
the transaction, what have you.
Having a variety of products that are
between, you know, $10 to $50
that are accessible for the majority of your audience
is gonna give you some of that leverage.
That's gonna give you the broadest base.
Having something that you give people
to get them to go to your Patreon,
I'm gonna talk about Patreon a couple of times here.
There are some people I know have concerns with it.
But here's something I will tell you
that is an advantage of Patreon, and it deserves
a dedicated video.
But I wanna make this point, Patreon support
compared to YouTube memberships
is different because YouTube takes 30%
of the membership fees
and I don't think a lot of content creators know that.
So you're not getting $5, you're getting about roughly $3
when someone becomes a member of your YouTube channel.
Also, as you guys know, YouTube is very limiting sometimes
with being able to reach and connect to your audience
with the algorithm.
Something I'm looking at, and this is a dedicated video
'cause I'm also still working on revamping this strategy,
but something that I'm working on is a more robust
Patreon community for you guys.
Not just perks but an actual community because
Patreon has some features
that I don't think most people know about,
which is why I have to make a video.
You can actually message all of your Patreon supporters.
You can reach 100% of your Patreon supporters.
So now imagine if you were on YouTube
and you could actually reach 100% of your audience
not only with post but that you can direct message them
if there's an announcement or something
you wanted them to know.
That's important.
You guys know that doing giveaways on YouTube is hard
and just got harder with the new policy changes,
like the fact you can't use Gleam.
I have to do a video about the new policy changes
'cause again, another set of policy changes
at the beginning of the year.
That's an incoming rant, don't worry about it.
But my point is that between Twitter, you can't reach
all of your followers.
Instagram you can't direct message all of your followers.
And there's not a great system there.
Although I like the algorithm there a little bit better
to be honest with you.
And it's the same for Facebook
and most of the social media platforms.
The only ways that I've seen around it are
doing an email list.
I switched from Mailchimp to ConvertKit.
I'll link them both because Mailchimp is free
for those of you who are smaller YouTubers,
not making a lot of money.
Just use Mailchimp, it's free.
If you're a little bit more savvy and you have the budget,
ConvertKit long term will be cheaper
because you're not double charged on emails.
Dedicated video.
And also the automations are better long term,
especially if you're a business-type person.
So I'm gonna link to those.
But having an email list is direct access to your audience
and Patreon can give you direct access
to all of your Patreon members and supporters.
So I think that that becomes important in terms of
maintaining the relationship, and I think that
if you do your strategy right, where you're making
both free and paid content on Patreon,
you can get more of your supporters over there.
Which gives you more access to them.
And having more access to them is gonna let you go deeper
and that's gonna probably lead to you being able
to monetize your audience a lot more.
Not just with Patreon support, but just letting them know
about any promos, any giveaways, anything that you're doing
that allows them to support you.
Now in the 1,000 Real Fans theory,
I want you to also understand there's levels of affluence
among your fan base.
It all depends on the demographics and the positioning
of your audience.
If you have a super young audience, it's gonna be harder
to get the most monetary value
out of 1,000 fans,
which is why people who have younger audiences
actually need larger numbers to have any chance
of making a full-time income and living
because they can't directly monetize that audience
as easily sometimes.
So that's a real challenge.
But if you have an older or more affluent audience
and you're doing content that caters to that,
tech channels could be a good example of that.
Business development channels,
personal development channels, fitness channels.
I think that those are great niches that have people
with a little bit of disposable income
where this 1,000 Fans really applies a lot better.
So you really have to think about your niche
when it comes to this.
That's why sometimes a strategy
that doesn't look like it works good YouTube,
works very well from a monetization standpoint
in terms of how you segment and diversify your audience
with variety content.
Now for growing a YouTube channel, variety content
doesn't work very well.
For growing a robust business, in some cases,
it can because it allows you introduce
diversity of products, diversity of services
or diversity of sponsorships.
And that's a strategy that a lot of people don't realize
that this channel has had set up for a very long time.
It gives me a lot of flexibility as an educator,
and as someone with manageable ADHD
that gets very easily bored
with just focusing in on just one thing.
And I have Shiny Object Syndrome,
it's a real issue sometimes.
But it gives me flexibility in my business offerings,
my partnerships and the other people
that I get to collaborate with.
So for me, it's strategy that takes
my actual weaknesses in some areas
and then leverages them as strengths.
And this also allows me to be able to pull
the audience and the relationships that make the most sense,
and that I want, at a variety of levels.
And the leveling is important.
So let's recap and break this down real quick
into some manageable, actionable steps for you guys.
I want you to really think about what you can offer
an audience throughout the year, either in one
or multiple transactions that is $100 plus worth in value.
I also want you to raise your level and your value
to where you feel confident that if you had
the right relationships, you could offer
more than $1,000 in value throughout the year.
And if you're really ambitious, if you're really ambitious,
you need to think about how you could deliver
$10,000 in value to someone throughout the year.
And then you need to start identifying who in your audience
do you really believe you can deliver that value for,
can afford it and will respect it.
And how can you go deeper on that relationship?
What would you have to do
in order to cultivate that relationship?
Speaking of which, let's talk a little bit about
our relationship here.
And this is gonna be a very good example for you guys.
Something that most of you don't know because
I haven't really promoted Patreon in the past,
it's been more of a thing for the podcast,
which I need to do more regularly,
we have some great guests coming.
But recently I've gotten very much into Patreon.
And I'm giving a lot of free value over there
in the form of my blog posts,
behind the scenes of me sharing my photography,
my personal photography stuff that doesn't even fit
on any of my other social media platforms.
This is stuff I wanna share in Patreon,
gives me a creative outlet but also let's me give you guys
a little bit more of a connection or access to me.
And what I really want over there is I want
the 1,000 loyal fans.
Even if it's just a $1,
I would prefer to have you guys over there.
I'm also gonna start trying to use Patreon
to get around the algorithms, when it comes to
getting people my content, I'm working out a strategy
for that as well.
But just so you know, there's all kinds of cool stuff
over there at the $1 tier.
You get access to my audio motivation library.
So it's a lot of audio motivation files
that I'm putting out.
We also put some out for free if you wanna just
try it out before you commit to the $1 tier.
And we also have the $5 book club where we're doing
a book reading once a month.
Right now we're reading "50 Ways to Yay",
it's a great motivational book.
I highly recommend it.
I'll link it in the description.
But ultimately I'm using this as a way to also test out
some new content strategies because I think more of you
should be on Patreon.
If you're a content creator, 'cause by the way,
this isn't just a plug for my Patreon,
I'll make a dedicated video as a plug for my Patreon.
I want to show you guys different strategies
you can experiment with to one, have more access
to your community, 'cause I really believe in
both email marketing and direct messaging systems,
like the one in the back end of Patreon.
I'm also looking to live chat capabilities
for people with their own website.
I also think Discord.
If you guys haven't joined my Discord server,
link down below.
Just get all the links.
But Discord brings your community together
and that can strengthen the bond.
That can also help you with view velocity
in the YouTube algorithm.
That definitely needs a video.
This is become a long rambling of the videos
that I'm going to be making in the future.
Might be a good reason to subscribe.
But I wanna show you guys some of these things
because I really think that they can help with your channel
and with monetization and with giving you back
access to the relationships
you've worked so hard to build.
Because I'm finding myself frustrated with how some of
the social media platforms are operating when it comes
to giving you access to the relationship you cultivated
with your fans, with your audience, with your supporters.
So I really wanna know what you guys think about this stuff
in the comment section.
Feel free to ask me any of your questions
about email marketing, Patreon or monetizing,
the way that we talked about.
This is something I feel very strongly about
and I hope that I gave you some good, actionable advice
in this video.
Question of the day, are you ready
to start monetizing your audience, why or why not?
I would actually really love an answer for this question
in the comment section, 'cause I wanna know
what is making you hesitate when it comes to that.
Like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today.
Take care.