Forum brainstorm: Make money from written content

[Andy Black]

Let’s say you have a load of written content. Maybe blog posts, forum posts, books, or white-papers, etc.

Let’s say you’ve already had some success selling that content or using that content to sell other services or products.

Imagine we’re in a brainstorming session where no idea is too crazy and where we suspend critical feedback.

What suggestions would you have for such written content creators to help them leverage what they’ve already created, and maybe go where the puck is heading?

Rapid fire bullet points. No idea too crazy.

Go!

 

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[Andy Black]

Some thoughts:

1) The content library may be a bigger asset than the audience built wherever that content was published.

Take the library and publish it on other platforms and build new audiences?

“Don’t say different things to the same people. Say the same thing to different people.”


2) Turn popular written content into audio and/or video.

Ready made podcasts and YouTube channels, with associated snippets to go onto social media platforms.

The software to help do this is incredible now, and super affordable. Look at Wave.video and Ocoya deals on Appsumo.

Freelancers can help with this quite affordably too.

3) If you’ve just grown organically then consider ads.

4) Platforms, communities, podcasts, YouTube channels etc are crying out for more content. How can you create win-wins?

 

[Andy Black]

• Paid email newsletters.
• Online or in person courses/workshops/events.
• Communities.
• More (books, white papers, etc.)
• Ads, paid shoutouts, etc.
• Selling leads.
• Selling the website, funnels, content, etc.

 

[MTF]

• Depending on the type of content, perhaps adapting the content to fit another non-competitive niche and selling it B2B as a tool for more leads, better marketing, etc. For example, if you have a report with 20 ways to market a cleaning business, then you can probably easily adapt it to create a guide on 20 ways to market a lawn care business. Or if you give your marketing students a guide on how to learn copywriting in general, perhaps you can adapt it for a specific industry and help with copywriting for a specific aim (say, copywriting for travel businesses).
• Putting the most quotable parts of your content on t-shirts, mugs, and other merchandise.
• Creating a school of thought/academy under your name and then training others to use your approach to help others. For example, Terry Laughlin founded Total Immersion (a swimming school) and there are now thousands of coaches across the world. And it started with him turning his content (probably locally taught only) into something more "legitimate" marketed as a school with instructors, qualifications, etc. Same with Tony Robbins or pretty much any modern fitness trend (like Crossfit, Animal Flow, etc.).
• Hiring someone to organize your content or build from one of your ideas and publish a series of co-written books/resources. Sort of what Dan Sullivan is doing.

 

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[jdm667]

• Find a print magazine in your niche and syndicate/repurpose your content for them to earn a one-time or recurring fee and exposure in front of their audience. On the flip side, contact them and ask if they would like to advertise their publication on your blog or in your newsletter in exchange for a fee.
• Start doing weekly polls of your audience (website visitors to your existing content, or poll existing subscribers by email, social media, etc.). Ask questions relevant to your niche, and publish the results. Thereby using your existing content/audience to create new data/insights to share. Bonus: ask your audience what questions they would ask, then turn around and ask those questions!
• Get in touch with someone who can translate your content into other languages, let them do it, and give them a cut of the proceeds. Similarly for blog posts to Podcast or YouTube content - let someone else do it for you, and take a cut. This would be great if you are short on time, since any extra revenue is found money to you. Their level of effort is more than a freelancer, since they are on a commission % basis.
• Take all the questions you've ever answered about your niche. Package them into a PDF lead magnet "101 Questions & Answers About XYZ" and get email addresses in exchange for the PDF. Email those people and ask them for questions you haven't answered yet to get more content ideas.