An entrepreneur's guide to monetise your platform and maximise audience reach

Did you know that YouTube content creators contributed £1.4 billion to the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) in a single year? As industries go, online entrepreneurship is booming.

If you have a platform that you’re looking to monetise, now’s the ideal time to explore your options. 

To help kickstart your entrepreneurship journey, we’ve put together our top tips for maximising audience reach and turning that audience into an income.

Building a Profitable Audience

A platform with almost any number of followers can start making money. Nano-influencers, for example, have anywhere between 500 and 10,000 followers, and while income is low (around £10-£100 per sponsored post, for example), it is possible to start earning at this level.

However, the larger your audience, the more money you’re likely to make.

This makes maximising the reach of your platform just as crucial as coming up with a good idea to monetise it. Let’s start this guide, then, with a quick look at how you can build an audience large enough to profit from.

Differentiate Your Platform

In a saturated market, your platform needs to offer something new to your audience.

This could be a new spin on an existing niche. For instance, if you have a platform that provides financial information, you could stand out from similar sites by solely offering advice to university students looking to save and future-proof their money.

Whether you write a blog, have a social media profile, or create video content for YouTube, find a unique take that gives your audience a reason to follow you instead of a similar entrepreneur.

Team Up With Other Content Creators and Entrepreneurs

Partnerships are a fantastic tool for maximising your audience reach. By teaming up with another content creator or entrepreneur who also has a platform, you can effectively advertise your platform to their audience and vice versa.

Look for entrepreneurs in a similar niche or with a similar audience to ensure your partnership is beneficial.

Use Algorithms to Your Advantage

The online world is full of algorithms. If you can understand these, you can use them to boost your reach and increase the size of your audience.

Social media, for example, has algorithms that dictate what content is pushed to what users. They use a variety of factors, including post engagement, viral audio, and keywords, to identify which content they’ll display. By tailoring your content to suit this, you make it more likely that the platform will highlight posts from your profile.

We also highly recommend looking into search engine optimisation (SEO) to boost your visibility in search engines like Google.

Sell Courses and Guides

Once you’ve built a large following and maximised your reach, it’s time to explore ways to generate income from your platform. One method is through selling courses and guides related to your niche.

If you have a sewing blog, for example, you could create an introductory course for new sewists. If you’re a YouTuber, why not write a guide offering insights into how to start a career on the same platform?

There are a number of formats you can use to publish and sell your courses and guides. Some online options include:

• eBooks
• PDF guides
• Masterclass videos

You can also print a hardback book that brings your courses and guides to life in physical form. Sell and promote your book via your existing platforms as you would any other product and start earning money from your knowledge.

Try Affiliate Marketing

A popular choice of content monetisation that’s easy to implement is affiliate marketing.

This strategy involves adding links to third-party products or services on your platform. Whenever a guest clicks on the link and buys from a third-party business, you’ll receive a commission.

While this is an income stream that requires very little effort to implement, you do need a large audience to earn a significant amount of money from it. You’ll also find it easier to earn money if the affiliates you use align with your target audience.

To get started, look into relevant brands that offer affiliate programmes. Some that might be beneficial to your platform include Grammarly, Amazon, and Organic Basics.

You can also explore affiliate marketing platforms, like PartnerStack and ShareASale, which help you find affiliate links, build partnerships with brands, and monitor your payments.

Create Exclusive Content

When it comes to your monetisation strategy, an emerging method increasingly used by content creators is exclusive, paid-for content. This puts aspects of your platform or content behind a paywall, and you’ll earn money from each follower who signs up to view it.

If you have web development knowledge and a thriving website, you can create an in-built membership tier system on your own platform.

You can also utilise third-party platforms to make publishing paid-for content even simpler.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve built up a following on YouTube. You can start using Patreon, a members-only platform that allows your audience to subscribe to your channel, to publish additional videos. Once members are subscribed, they’ll have access to exclusive content that isn’t published anywhere else. 

You can also upload podcasts, music, and games to these platforms, helping you turn your content into an income.

Encourage Brand Partnerships

If you have a successful platform with a following, be it an e-commerce site or a social media profile, brands will be interested in partnerships.

These lucrative deals can benefit both parties. The brand receives instant exposure to your large audience, while you’re able to monetise your platform and boost your credibility by partnering with well-known names.

In terms of how much you’ll be paid, the average deal will earn you between £100 and £1,000. However, this can vary drastically depending on a number of factors, including:

• The size of your audience
• The type of platform you have
• The amount of engagement from your followers on your platform
• The type of marketing campaign

Top influencers with huge platforms can be paid multiple thousands for a single post. Sophie Hinchcliffe, for example, is a social media influencer who built a following for her cleaning tips, and now earns over £10,000 per sponsored post.

If you’re able to maximise audience reach and encourage engagement on your platforms, brand deals are a brilliant way of monetising your audience and becoming a legitimate entrepreneur.
Final Thoughts
Content monetisation is a popular income stream amongst entrepreneurs and one that can be incredibly lucrative. We hope this article has given you plenty of tips to help you grow your platform, maximise your reach, and turn your following into an income.

For more entrepreneurial and business advice, be sure to check out the Business West blog.