How to Make Money As An Online Influencer

Everybody wants to know how to make money as an online influencer. ‘Influencer’ is this super sexy term that’s floating around the ‘net lately. Essentially, it’s utilizing your expertise in a certain area, to create an online presence to ‘persuade’ people to do things like, see certain destinations, learn new skills, experience new things, and/or make purchasing decisions, etc.

It’s a really cool gig if you know what you’re doing to position yourself in your market.

But the #1 question when people see online influencers is, “but how do you make money?!??!” How do we make money to travel the world? Yet still manage eat? Pay bills? Student loans?

That question is valid as hell.

After reading that article about the girl that WENT BROKE being an Influencer but funding her travels into deep debt – I had to write this.

So let’s get into it.

You know how they say that “the average millionaire has seven streams of income”?

While I’m not a millionaire (yet), I can confidently say most online influencers aren’t making millions. Some of them too, are even driving themselves into debt trying to make their social media handles lit. I’m not sure.

However, what I can tell you is, I have managed to create a life from being online Influencer that still allows me the freedom to travel, invest, and genuinely live the life I desire.

Want to know how?

Here is a layout of the various streams that allow you to make money as an Online Influencer. Some influencers do some, all, and a bit here and there. I utilize each and every one of the options (because #GetTheseCoins).

Transparency Moment: Some of these streams more consistent than others.

Also, I create and utilize systems that allow a lot of my income to generate on autopilot (more about that later in the post).

How to Make Money As An Online Influencer

Products:

Guides/ Checklists/ Templates: Creating PDFs of guides, templates, checklists, etc. is the quickest way to start making money. Say you create a Guide to Cuba; all you do it type of out your information, make it pretty (I like Canva), and add a payment link to it. Boom. This is one of the easiest ways to make the income – especially on autopilot. And by autopilot, I mean “making money in your sleep.”

Online Courses: Creating an online course is a bit more involved but a super easy way to make money as an Influencer. The way to create a course like, ~~Travel Hacking 101~~, was to do it as a Live online event (see under ‘Experiences’), save the recording, including a guidebook, other resources, then *twerks*. You gotta course to sell. Easy.

Consulting: For people who want to “pick your brain,” or sit down with you and ask you a ton of questions – create a space to dedicate time for them. It’s as easy as setting up Acuity to schedule appointments, then using Zoom account or Google Hangouts to speak with them one-on-one. Obviously, your time is valuable so make sure to set up a payment for this process.

Done For You Service: If you’re an influencer and want to DO the service for someone (ie: create a website for someone, run their social media, etc), versus consulting with them, then a DFU (‘Done-For-You’), is a great option for you.. An example of this is my ~~Brand-In- A- Box~~ service, where I create custom marketing strategies for travel brands. Note: This involves more hands-on work on your end, but there’s always outsourcing to places like Fiverr for help.

Merchandise: The one is straightforward. If you’re looking to bypass researching vendors, shipping, fulfillment, and more complexities, then check out services like Printful, VistaPrint, or Zazzle, which are easy ways to start selling merchandise.

Information:

Sponsored Posts: There’s a ton of Influencer programs you can join, or Brands may reach out to you. However, sponsored posts are when they send you a product or let you try a service, and you get paid to feature it on your platform. Here’s a quick example from Dove.

Affiliate Links: These are links that are assigned a special code to you, so when anyone clicks it and signs up, you get a commission for it. A simple example is AirBnB and Booking.com.

Experiences:

Curate Trips: Even if you’re not a Travel Influencer, then you can curate trips to showcase, tour, and experience the industry that your serve. Towards the end of the year, I’ll be doing the first installation of ~~#DestinationDone~~ to South Africa and Swaziland. Obviously, since I’m in travel, this makes sense for my niche and industry. If you’re into other things, say comics as an example, then curate a trip to one of those really cool conferences.

AirBnB: If you have a home with extra space, then you could always put your place up on a home-sharing service. Late last year, I purchased a home in Atlanta and put it up on AirBnB. It’s doing so well, that I’m damn-near homeless! It’s all good because that’s one stream of income that’s running like a well-oiled machine.

Live & Virtual Events: Creating Live Events is another way to make income as an online Influencer. You can create live in-person or virtual classrooms educating your audience in your expertise. It’s quite easy to set these up through a simple system and process. You can teach them as long or as short as you would want. To maximize this, I like to add additional resources to sweeten the deal!

How to make money as an online influencer really isn’t that difficult.

No BS.

In fact, making money on autopilot, as in influencer, from YOUR expertise is really quite simple.

I created a solution to teach you how to make money off your online influence.

Are you getting paid for your influence? Tell me below!

** This post contains affiliate links.