How to Monetize Your Content: The Basics of Building Your Own Brand Online

We've all dreamed of having our own business, the one that allows us to live outside the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle. However, becoming an entrepreneur involves a lot of work and sometimes one can feel lost, with no clue about where to start.

Today's Creator Economy on the internet makes it really easy to profit from your activities online. If you're passion driven and are willing to commit to your project, sooner than later you will start earning from your content.

But... where should you begin? Simple: yourself. The best way to succeed in the Creator Economy is to focus on the image you want to portray and the style of your content. In other words, your own personal brand.

A brand includes, of course, a distinctive and recognizable name or logo that sets a product or content aside from the rest. And people can become brands as well, since we all have names, styles, voices, and looks that make each one of us unique. But that's just the tip of the iceberg with branding.

RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH

In order to open space for yourself in any content niche, you have to know where you stand and how to make a difference. Keep your focus on who's your target audience and who are your potential competitors and collaborators. After your research you should be able to answer a few relevant questions:

• Who's doing what I want to do and how are they doing it? What do I like about what they do?
• What's THAT quality others are missing and that I can bring to the table?
• What kind of person can be interested in my project? How do they speak and behave, what do they talk about and where (like social media platforms)? What do they find interesting?

FIND YOUR PERSONALITY

Whether you’re building a commercial or personal brand, you need to effectively connect with other people. According to the way you present yourself and your content, your audience will have a certain perception of you. The key element here is consistency because no one will follow someone or something they can't relate to or that constantly shifts tone. Now, try to answer this:

• What's the Unique Value Proposition of my content or myself? How does that make me different from all the other creators or brands?
• What kind of concepts and feelings do I want people to associate my content and my name with? (Shouldn't be more than 3-4, tho!)
• What's the personality of my brand or content and, more importantly, how am I going to express it effectively?

CREATE AN IDENTITY

Now that you know who you are or want to be, it's going to be easier to find an attractive name and identity for your project or content. Sometimes people start their ventures precisely with the name and then build the whole project around that idea, and that's a valid path as well. Along with the name and a graphic representation for it (a logo) you have to come up with a catchphrase that should remind people only of you and identify your content. This can be called a slogan, a one-liner, a subtitle, a rolling gag, a tagline, etc. Here are your questions:

• What do my name or the name of my project evokes? Does it have a creative hidden or double meaning?
• Is my identity available online? Is there something else (even outside my niche) with the same or a similar name? Are social media profiles and domains available for my identity?
• What color (or colors, but no more than three) should represent my brand, name or content?
• What kind of people, brands, creators and content do I want to be related to? Who's my crowd, what kind of people are we and why others would want to hang out with us or me?

STAY CONSISTENT

As we said before, if you're going to put this much effort in building your brand, you have to take care of it. It's quite tempting to flow with trends and follow suit behind someone else if it seems successful. Keep in mind that people online have to see you as sort of a friend, who you want around because you're compatible. Once you've found your voice and identity, just let it spread across all of your communications (be it written, visual, auditory or graphic). This is the point where you have to learn to easily tell the story behind your brand, project or content and keep that always in mind as sort of a compass.

• What's my main motivation behind this project or business?
• What are the behind the scenes moments that my audience needs to know so they care about what I do?
• What's my main commitment to those who choose to follow me or consume the content I create?
• Why am I doing what I'm doing and where do I want to go?

Feel motivated yet? You can also take a look at these Online Monetization Strategies and probably find new ideas for expanding your business and increasing your income.

One more thing: If you're already creating content around video games and digital lifestyle and want to earn extra money, you can always apply to our Kosmonaut Program.