I own some very well-followed social accounts. How can I make this a business?
I run a number of Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram accounts which hundreds of thousands of followers in large niches (fashion, technology, film, music, student, etc) and through these can grow these and other accounts at a rate of 10,000 per day if I work on this full time (currently am a consultant with a background in content sites hence social/traffic driving background. Not necessarily looking to do a startup (i.e. a lifestyle or e-commerce business would work for now) but open to all ideas. As content is very hard to make money from (sadly) I'm thinking to sell a product through the site, i.e. clothes, possibly with a local focus. Am I thinking too small? I have a lot of experience in community management so can grow lots of accounts of engaged people and have sent millions of clicks to sites, but would like to use this for myself rather than clients so I have a fanatical startup focus. Any ideas really appreciated, thank you!
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There are definitely opportunities to think bigger (really, ANY idea can benefit from substantial / targeted eyeballs), but starting with sponsored posts / affiliate would give you an easy and instant monetization opportunity.
Just sign up to a few advertisers at CJ that align well with your niche to test it out.
OP is channeling the average user telling you that if you do this you will be unfollowed.
I'm not sure I agree with OP, it depends on the topic. The HN crowd is not indicative of the general public.
For example, the fashion people would probably be happy to see curated ads.
Spam about cat litter is just spam.
But it can't be constantly off topic. finding the balance is delicate, and most people do a shitty job.
However, if you really want to monetize... You need to think long and hard about exactly WHY these people are following you. You need to understand what they are getting out of the relationship and than you need to think of products and companies that are native to that experience.
For example with fashion, you can simply put a link to an e-commerce site in your profile and drive hundreds of not thousands a day in sales (there is case study out there of someone selling thousands of dollars worth of ties on instagram but I can't find it from my phone)
If people are following you because they like your content...you can try to charge them a buck or two to get exclusive access to more of your content.
Just remember, social media is not meant for advertising and unless you can find a native monetization you will not be capturing most of the value you can.
Feel free to email me if you want to brainstorm this with me. Check my profile for contact info.
May email you also, thank you!
Interestingly enough, I find you can either get spammy and low-quality and cash out a lot now, or build a legitimate audience and following, and create revenue that lasts for a long time. The spammier you are, the faster you make money, but the faster it disappears.
There are four obvious ways you can make money from this:
1. Find a good affiliate program, hawk their goods every now and then, and make a small percentage. This is surprisingly hard, but when done right makes a bunch.
2. Drive traffic to a site with adsense. You have to drive more traffic than you would ever believe, but it's relatively secure.
3. Sell tweets/promotion to other folks. This is pretty easy, but obviously you won't have much control over what people are using your accounts for.
4. Create/license what blackhatters call a "panel," and write an automated way anyone can come and use your accounts for a fee. This usually requires a lot of really small accounts, not a few big ones, but even blackhat noobs can make $100/day with a couple thousand accounts doing this (you can buy accounts for cheap). This gives you even less control, and basically turns you into a giant spam bot.
Contact me off-list and I can explain a little bit more in depth how it's done and put you in contact with some good folks (email in bio).
Be sure to check out sites like instafluence.com and sponsoredtweets.com (even celebrities). Legit companies pay a lot of money for promotion from big accounts. I know candycrush was paying over $1/download, and a few people pulled in $10K+/month. There are even people making a few thousand dollars a month selling cheap tweets/posts to places like fiverr.com or seoclerks.com - generally lower quality, higher volume accounts. It sounds like you've figured out how to grow them though, and if you can scale that out you've got a money making machine.
I think the main thing, if you're in it for the long run, is to preserve authenticity. It's easy to start seeming spammy.
Feel free to email me at jfracht@gmail.com and I'll connect you.
http://www.stansberryradio.com/Frank-Curzio/Latest-Episodes/...
I thought it was pretty eye opening and seems relevant to your situation. Talks about streamlining the content creation process, getting advertisers to pay for sponsored posts, and he is now developing his own products to sell that would otherwise be pitched by advertisers in his sponsored posts.