7 Different Ways to Make Money With Short Form Video 💸

Affiliate Deals

Affiliate marketing is when you promote a brands products and get a commission for every sale you drive. This is an easy way for any creator to monetize because there are countless brands that let you sign up as an affiliate. Once registered you will receive your own unique code and when people buy through your link, you get commission. The best part? Most of these affiliate programs have no follower minimum so you can start today no matter how any followers you have.

Reminder: When it comes to affiliate marketing, odds are most of your commissions are going to come from a handful of videos. Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t driving tons of sales in the beginning. It can take just one video to make you thousands of dollars.

Make User Generated Content (UGC)

UGC is another way you can start making money with short form video with 0 followers. A UGC creator makes authentic feeling content for a brand to use on their socials, in ads, and on their websites. UGC creators do not post the content on their own profiles, this is solely for the brand to use.

Pro Tip: A great way to get UGC deals is to make one video for free, send it to the brand, and if they like it, offer to do more for payment.

Run Ads for Brands

A lot of people wait for brands to reach out to them but once you start to get traction with your content you should be reaching out directly to brands via email and DMs. When you do, attach your highest performing content that is relevant to that brand. 

The reason a lot of creators wait for brands to reach out to them is they don’t know what to charge so they wait for a brand to make an offer. To help you get around that, here’s how we’d price out a brand deal.

Agency / Consulting

As you develop your skills as a creator you can start to sell your knowledge, expertise, and skills as a service to other brands in the form of consulting, training, or even social media management.

An advantage an agency/consultancy has over some of the things lower on this list is you can see a return on investment quickly. When making a product or a paid community, you have to put in the work to grow your user base to a pretty significant size before making decent money. With an agency on the other hand, four clients paying a $2,500/month retainer makes you $10,000/month. If you put all your energy into this, getting four clients isn’t that hard.

The question every freelancer has when they start is “what do a charge”? Here’s an easy way to price yourself in the beginning:

Premium Content / Paid Communities

If you’ve built an engaged community that trusts your recommendations enough to be purchasing from brands then there’s a good chance they’d be willing to pay for premium content and/or access to a paid community of your own. This can be in the form of a premium newsletter, Skool community, Patreon etc.

The benefit to premium content or paid communities is while in the beginning it can be a lot of effort for minimal return, over time the return increases while your effort remains the same. Not to mention that these are subscription based so it’s more stable MoM revenue compared to doing brand deals.

Digital Products

If your audience views you as an expert, digital products like ebooks and courses can do very well. The downside to these types of products is it is a one time transaction, however the benefit is you only have to build it once and you can sell it forever. Whereas subscription services require you to constantly update them with new content.

Physical Products

When a lot of people think of physical products, the first idea that they have is merch. While merch is great, its potential is limited to your fandom. While any creator business is going to benefit from your audience, the idea is to build products that can stretch beyond your followers.

Prime is drank by people who don’t watch Logan Paul, people eat JoyRide without knowing who Ryan Trahan is, and some Chamberlain Coffee drinkers don’t realize the company was founded by Emma Chamberlain.

If you make content for a clearly defined niche then you will have an audience that is clearly defined. With the knowledge of who your audience is, what they like, and what they need, you can create a product that services those needs directly.

Of course the challenge with physical products is manufacturing and distribution which is why it’s lower on this list.

Invest in Companies

This monetization opportunity is underrated for those with the business smarts and patience to watch it play out. One of the biggest benefits that comes from consistently posting short form content and building an audience is the people you meet. Through posting content online our founder Buster has met his sports heroes, pop stars, entrepreneurs, billionaires, and more.

With the connections you make, you can get access to opportunities to invest in companies within your niche. And because you have your own platform, you can leverage it to grow the value of the company and your equity within it.

Again, this opportunity takes the business smarts to pick the right company and the ability to delay gratification which is why it’s at the bottom of the list but the ROI can be huge.