How to Become a Full-Time Content Creator in 2023
Your dream life is just 12 steps away.
Author’s note: this is an updated version of the ultimate guide to becoming a content creator that I posted last year. I’ve added components that I’ve become more familiar with and removed things that aren’t relevant anymore. Enjoy!
I could sum up this entire 6.8k word guide as follows: post high-quality content frequently.
I have a lot more to say on the subject (see the other 6,700 words below) but that’s the effective summary of this ultimate content creator guide.
I’m a freelance content creator living my absolute dream. I work as little as I can. I love my life so much more than I did when I was working a nine to five.
If you want to know exactly how to start turning your passion for creation into a career, read on.
Step 1: Select Two Platforms to Post Content
To get started in your journey to become a full-time content creator, you need no more and no fewer than two platforms to publish your work on.
For me, my main two homes are YouTube and my blogging platform.
For you, they might be Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora. Probe your feelings — where do you feel most excited about doing a lot of work?
Before you become a successful content creator, you should know that you will have to create a LOT of content to get noticed.
Don’t pick the platform de jour. Pick one where you love posting stuff. Trends come and go. Your passion has to remain, or else you’ll burn out before you see any success.
Why do you need two platforms?
Posting on too many platforms is exhausting, demoralizing, and pointless.
It’s exhausting because even cross-posting takes time.
It’s demoralizing because you’ll post the same thing on four different platforms and see no signs of life.
And it’s pointless because you’ll waste time and energy on too many different platforms instead of truly understanding two.
However, you should choose two, not just one.
First, it’ll give you a place to cross-promote content. For example, I frequently post the same post on both my YouTube channel and my blogging platform. It takes work, but it takes less work than coming up with novel ideas constantly. It’s a great way to get additional content, research which types of topics you’re best suited to, and determine which platform likes what sort of content.
Second, you may find that you’re better suited to one than another. If I had started my journey just on YouTube, for example, I would have struggled and probably given up because writing comes easier to me. But I discovered I liked writing and filming. When the filming wasn’t fun enough, writing sustained me, and vice versa.
Variety is the spice of life. Just don’t go too hard.
How can you select your two platforms?
Consistency isn’t the factor that matters. Commitment is. If you can post for a full year, every week, on a platform, you’re far more likely to be successful than if you give up after a month. While it’s possible you’ll get an early hit as a content creator, it’s far more likely that you’ll continue on with highs and lows.
If the thought of writing twice a week fills you with dread, don’t start a blog.
If the idea of filming, editing, and publishing a video twice a week exhausts you, don’t start a YouTube channel.
Look for the type of content that will allow you to continue even when you aren’t successful. Despite what many people will tell you, no platform is truly dead unless it’s literally defunct. You can still start a channel on pretty much any platform — LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook — and make it work.
There’s no one hot channel where it’ll be easier to make a living. All take work, dedication, and time.
Look for where your skills and interests will best align, and look for where people like you are successful.
Example: if you’re very witty and have a good grasp of trending topics, Twitter is a good home for you. If you enjoy making polished visual content, go to Instagram or YouTube. If you like gaming, go to Twitch.
Counterexample: my live blogging on Twitch is NOT very successful because that’s not typically what people go to Twitch to watch. I’ve had to bring over my audience, instead of growing my own on the platform. I still do it sometimes, but not very often!
2. Create a Profile
So you have your platforms picked out. As a content creator, the most important step is that you need a platform to post your content. Platforms make it easy to create content without worrying about distribution.
But the second most important step is to create a profile where you control the narrative. Someplace where you can post your content to your own rules and not worry about any distribution, whether the platform’s algorithm or SEO.
This is NOT where you will build an audience. This is where you will CONNECT with your audience. This is merely a place for interested followers can get a sense of who you are, and engage with you more deeply than platforms allow.
While you will create a profile on something I consider a platform, it’s separate in intent: you’re not posting content here to earn money, go viral, or anything like that. It’s simply a place to develop your brand and post your contact information.
You’ll need a website.
There are a lot of free options out there, and I recommend you start with one of them. For instance, I created this one on Wix in under two minutes. Your website should be:
Cheap. Don’t spend money unless you’re ready to go full-time on something.
Easy to manage. Don’t waste time and energy learning how to manage a website if there are easier options.
Simple to customize later on. Give yourself room to grow.
The bulk of your efforts will be spent on your platform, so you want to remove as many obstacles as possible to keep your website up-to-date. Later on, it’ll become more important, but today it’s just one of the ways your future followers will be able to contact you.
You’ll also need a social channel.
You may have already chosen one of these as your platform, but I recommend selecting another if so. For example, I use Twitter and Instagram purely as part of my profile, where I post my contact information and the odd post in a strictly non-professional capacity.
Your social media here should be separate from whatever your real-life one is. It can be the name of your company, or your name and a verb (like Zulie Writes) blog. The reason is so that your content creation has a profile, not just you. It’s a place for followers to get a bit of extra flavor and for you to reach more areas with very little effort.
This is NOT where you will post your audience-building content. This is where you goof off and have fun. Fun is a critical part of your job!
Step 3: Design a Content Plan
This is the actual meat of the matter. A content plan is going to be the skeleton of your content creator income. Don’t worry too much about finding a niche early on and sticking to it — I find most people at this stage have no idea what they’re best at creating content in and aren’t keen on picking just one niche. That’s OK! This can shift as you grow.
Choose your topics.
Try to select 4–5 topics that you enjoy talking about. For example, I love writing about travel, pop culture, freelancing, and writing. I love creating videos about freelancing and blogging.
What you absolutely must keep in mind is that your topics have to be:
Valuable for an audience (entertaining, informational, or both), otherwise nobody outside your family and friends will consume your content.
Interesting to you, otherwise you’ll burn out.
Something you have experience in, otherwise you’ll be outcompeted.
You’ll find the topics that match these criteria shift over time, but that’s totally OK! Your audience won’t expect you to be totally static.
Here’s a video that walks you through an in-depth strategy to find those topics:
Pick your schedule.
The most important factor here is that it is a schedule you’ll be able to keep up.
Be honest with yourself: can you post twice a week on your platform? If not, then scale back to once.
The danger is that posting becomes a chore and something you resent. At the start of your content creation journey, you’re probably still working or in school, with lots of other time commitments. It’s easy to burn out. Don’t overcommit — you can always add more if you are able, but start low and slow and build up.
More isn’t better on any platform.
There’s always a misconception that more is better. I find that’s false for two reasons. First, I’ve found successful content creators on every platform (yes, including TikTok) who don’t post as often as they “should.” And they’re still killing it.
Content creators with mediocre content have to post often to stand out, but those with high-quality content can do so much less often and trust their audience will wait.
Second, consider how many fantastic content creators have given up because they tried to post the “optimum” number of times to their platform and weren’t able to keep it up. I bet it’s a lot.
Even if it means a slower start, better to start on a once-a-week posting schedule and actually continue on your journey than try a three-a-week posting schedule and give up a month in.
Draw it out.
I actually print out a big monthly planner at the end of every month and write out what my content plan is, as well as the topics I’ll be creating in. I try to mix it up while staying in my lane. This gives me the freedom of choosing topics I’m interested in that week, while staying consistent for my audience.
Step 4: Track Your Time
When you’re doing what you love, it’s easy to sink hours into it and not look back. Don’t fall into that trap: track your time.
This is important for two reasons.
You will have a much better understanding of where your time is going. When you look back, you’ll be able to know whether your efforts are worth it.
You will be able to value your time once you start earning income. E.g. I know I spent 20 hours on YouTube this month and earned $500. That means my time on YouTube is worth $25/hour.
Choose a tool to track your time.
I use Clockify, a free tool, to track how I spend every minute of my content creation — answering emails, meetings, actually writing or filming, editing, and so on. This helps me see what I’m actually spending time on, and finding a return on investment.
For example, I tracked all my working hours in November 2020 and found a surprising breakdown that I spent a lot of time on YouTube and not as much as I thought on writing.
Attach your income.
Many platforms give you money through ad revenue share, like YouTube. There are also alternatives to YouTube monetization that grant income through other methods, like subscriptions.
Even if the platform doesn’t have a native monetization method, like Twitter or Instagram, it’s possible you can start earning money earlier through brand partnerships and sponsored posts.
You should keep track of all that income in a spreadsheet and attach it to your time, so you know exactly how much you’re earning per platform.
If you’re not yet earning any income, you should instead attach the factor that is most likely to help you earn money. For example, a good metric for YouTube is hours watched. On Twitter, impressions earned is a decent metric. While it’s much harder to compare, it’ll at least give you some basis for measuring your efforts and outcome.
What benefits does this bring?
Tracking time gives you total clarity on your return on investment.
At this stage, your time is absolutely precious. If you’re spending an hour a week on Twitter and that isn’t earning you any income or getting any results, it may be time to scale that back. Meanwhile, your YouTube channel may still not earn money, but you’re growing your hours watched much faster than you had originally hoped.
Tracking your time can help you plan out your time better and more effectively for the future.
Later on, it’ll also help you understand what your hourly rate is. For example, I earn about $250/hour for my blog. This helps me know what I should charge clients — which you’ll begin to get later on in your journey!
Step 5: Start Building Your Mailing List
It’s so cliche but honestly still true: email rules. Email is how you talk to your audience with no algorithm or SEO. It’s just people who want to hear from you.
It’s a place to start gathering your true fans. Your audience will casually consume your content on YouTube or Medium or anywhere else you post— but your fans want to hear more from you. A mailing list gives you a place to talk to them directly.
Note: I find it helpful to distinguish between an audience and my fans. An audience is who I create algorithmically-friendly content for. My fan is who I make merch for, who I create products for, and who I talk to like a pal, not a random reader.
Choose an easy platform.
Don’t overthink the beginning! Many mailing lists are free and easy to use, like ConvertKit’s basic plan (up to 1000 free subscribers before you pay a penny).
Select a simple call to action.
There are two approaches I suggest.
1.“Sign up here to hear more from me.” You can offer a weekly roundup of content. Post this call-to-action at the end of all the content you post, with a hyperlink to your mailing list.
Pros: very easy to set up. People who sign up will be VERY keen to hear from you, because there’s no incentive for them to join other than hearing more from you.
Cons: you probably won't get very many subscribers.
2. “Join my mailing list to get X.” You offer a freebie downloadable, like my five-day starter kit on Medium.
Pros: You’ll have a much higher rate of signups, and you start your relationship by offering real, exclusive value to your subscribers.
Cons: A little harder to set up, and requires up-front work.
Start a dialogue.
A lot of people get caught up at this stage. You may think you need a comprehensive format, or a pretty template, or loads of drafts ready to launch your newsletter
These things help, but they’re not necessary to become a full-time content creator, especially at the start. You can simply send out an email once per week. Think of it less like an email and more like a dialogue. I find this helps remove the pressure.
If you’re stumped on where to start, here are three beginner-friendly options:
Rule of 3: Something you wrote, something you read, and a question for your followers. This helps build relationships between you and your fans as well as your peers, which never hurts. It’s also a good way to start talking to your fans and understand how you can serve them.
Roundup: A list of all the content you created this week, an easy way to keep fans up to date.
Letter to a friend: This is how I started. I just wrote something I’d like to receive. I talked about what I’d been up to that week, and I discussed some of the challenges I’ve faced and how I overcame them.
You may think it’s not “worth it” until you have more fans. Let me tell you, even if you have ten email subscribers — even if you have one! — it is 100% worth writing a newsletter to that one fan. If you want to become a content creator in 2023, you need to talk to the people who believe in you on the reg.
The Next Stage
Let’s take a brief pause in this content creator journey. The first five steps are very beginner friendly. You should set up your platforms, your profiles, and your mailing list. You should have some ideas for content. You should become very familiar with how you spend your time.
Those five things are all you need to start your content creator journey.
However, at some point — maybe in a month, maybe in six months, maybe in a year and a half like me — you’ll get to the point where you feel you can give more. You want more. You’re ready to scale up. And now, you have the bandwidth and expertise to do that.
This next section details that stage. Jump in when you’re ready.
Step 6: Come Up With a Brand
Your brand is who you are as a creator.
Author’s note: Look, I hate the word brand, especially applied to me as an individual, but nobody has come up with a better one yet.
Your brand is the sum of everything you are and post online. Your brand is your content, your profiles, your attitude, and the value you give to your audience and fans.
A brand does the very important work of conveying two things: who you are professionally, and the fact that you are professional.
You don’t need a brand at the start, so it’s easy to miss in the beginning. But when you’re burgeoning into a full-time content creator, you absolutely will require a personal brand.
The components of your brand.
There are three components of your brand. You’ll need a color scheme, a logo, and a bio.
Color scheme: Choose your color scheme based on the mood you like to evoke. My color scheme is floral and bright, for instance, because I like colors that pop and my audience thinks of me as a bright, energetic creator. This will go on your website, your mailing list, your merch, your channel artwork, everywhere.
Your logo: Your logo is an extension of your color scheme. I hired a designer to help me with a logo.
Author’s note: I put this stage is later in your journey to become a full-time content creator for a reason. It DOES NOT make sense to spend money on this until you’re sure you’re ready. You can succeed up until this point without one! When you’re ready, then invest money into yourself.
Bio: Your bio should be 50–75 words that describe who you are as a creator — Whimsical? Fun? Educational? — and what your audience can expect from you, such as topics, frequency, and platforms.
Don’t brand as a beginner. I made that mistake. I branded myself as a cat mom. Now, I have migrated my niche a little bit and I know I rarely write about my cats anymore. I had to re-do a lot of my branding work to make more sense of the value I offer.
Step 7: Give Fans a Way to Give You More Money
This is such an exciting stage in any creator’s journey! Your audience will be giving you some money through ad revenue, or royalties. Your audience watches your YouTube videos, reads your articles, and likes your Instagram posts.
But your fans will love what you do and want to give you more money. You should begin giving some thought to how you can do this.
What can you give them?
This differs from creator to creator. Some fans will want exclusive, backstage content. Others will want 1:1 time with you, or access to you, like through a private Slack channel. Still others will want courses or ebooks.
For me, it made the most sense to go the educational route. I offer coaching, consultations, and courses. I used to offer a Patreon, but shut that down when my time tracking showed me it was an ineffective way for me to communicate with my fans and earn money.
This is not a way to scam your fans. A lot of creators feel dodgy asking fans for money without realizing that it’s a two-way street.
Your fans want more from you. Providing exclusive content for them allows you to give it.
How to choose the extra content you sell.
Pick the type of content that makes sense with your brand and the content you post, as well as what your audience is asking of you. For me, many people wanted to learn what I know, so it made sense to do a course. For you, you may find that your Instagram fans want printouts of your artwork. They may want the chance to buy exclusive artwork before anyone else, or unique prints.
Whatever it is, create multiple tiers to cater to the various levels of fans. You may have casual fans who want to give you $15-$20, but you will also have those who want to give you $1000s.
This requires a lot of self-belief. It may feel unrealistic at this stage, but you need to know that your fans are there. You are serving your fans by giving top-tier knowledge or value, and by giving them the opportunity to give back.
Believe it because you are WORTH it!
Step 8: Secure a Proper Home Office
OK, when I started my content creation journey, I did all my content creation sitting on the floor of my living room, with my laptop on my coffee table. It worked! It worked for over a year. No complaints. I wrote and I filmed and I posted from that spot. My most popular YouTube video to date is filmed there on that humble carpeting.
But about a year later, I needed more (and my knees were yelling at me). You will too. You’ll need a place to be creative uninterrupted by cats, partners, or construction workers. Especially if you’re filming or creating other visual content, it’s critical.
The bare minimum for a home office.
All you really need for a home office as a content creator is a desk, a phone, and a closed-off area. When we moved to Boston, I picked out our flat spatially based on the bright, sunlit office I knew would be my studio.
You don’t need anything else. You don’t need a ring light, a picture-perfect backdrop, fancy headphones, or a fancy keyboard. You might want little accouterments that help you get into the creative zone — for me, this is a pencil, a notebook, and a small potted plant — but you don’t need them.
The upshot is no matter what kind of content creation you’re doing, it’s going to be a lot easier to get it done if you have a quiet area dedicated to helping you create, set up the way you like.
Identify your level-up needs.
Your needs will depend on the kind of content, and how you can level up. For example, when I was getting better at YouTube, I needed a better camera, a tripod, and a microphone. I was ready to take my YouTube content to the next level. These were worth investing in.
If you’re not sure how much to budget for your level-up needs, look at how much that channel is earning for you at this point. I used my YouTube earnings and put them towards YouTube-geared content.
Look for other successful creatives in your niche and platform. What helps them succeed? What would give you an edge? Successful Twitch streamers often have brightly lit backgrounds. Professional authors often get fancy headshots done for their bio.
Step 9: Identify Ways to Improve
When you’re a beginner content creator, you suck. No offense, it’s just true. I also sucked when I was a beginner.
None of us really take classes in how to create content — we just start creating content because we like it. So in the beginning, there’s no use looking for specific areas to improve. You need to improve at pretty much all of it.
At this stage, though, you’ll have a much better idea of what you need to go to the next level beyond things. Your craft is good, but you’ll notice areas that could use polishing. Your job is then to find ways to polish
How to improve your craft.
There are three ways to do so: research, competitor analysis, and outsourcing.
Research. First, you can take courses or do independent research. There is so much rich information out there in books and videos, for free or paid, that can help you do what you need to learn. For instance, I noticed I could improve my SEO skills this way, so I began independent study in SEO.
Competitor analysis is the second possibility. At this point, you should be aware of the other people in your circles. What are they doing better than you? What could you learn from their success? For example, I noticed my competitor/colleague Nick Wolny does an awesome job launching products to his mailing list. I learned from him, and applied the lessons to my own content creation.
Outsourcing is a third avenue for improvement. There will be things you may not want to buy or learn, and in that case, other people have the skills you lack. By now, you should have some income that helps you hire the people with the skills to help improve your craft — for instance, I hired someone to design my website and logo. This also helps you scale up.
Step 10: Discover Diverse Income Streams
There are so many platforms that can help you start creating content, and they take care of hosting, distribution, and payment. That’s why I recommended that you start your journey to become a full-time content creator on platforms.
As a beginner, you want to focus on the creation and less on the management. That’s what platforms are great at. You can post on YouTube very easily. They host the video, they host the comment section, they do the distribution, they show you the analytics. But you get a smaller cut of the money in return.
Later in your journey to become a full-time content creator in 2023, you should look for alternative income streams.
I like to think of my content creation income streams in three buckets:
Platforms (like YouTube, ad revenue from my website, Twitch)
Clients (people or companies who pay me to create stuff, like agencies or startups)
Myself (selling my books, my courses, consulting to my fans)
Platforms.
Platforms are good for beginners but they should only be 1/3 of your income stream at this point. As they are responsible for the distribution and payment, often you have to play by an algorithm’s rules, and give up a hefty chunk of your payment to the platform.
Example: when I publish on YouTube, I have to trust that it will be shown to my audience. But despite my 20k followers, I don’t always get 20k views. I also have to give up about half the ad revenue I generate to YouTube as payment for hosting me and my content.
Pros: Easy to get started, the very low entry barrier to management, good for a test run of content.
Bad: you rely on algorithmic rules, you do better if you learn to “game” the system.
Clients.
Clients will find you now that you’re creating content, and they will want to pay you for you to do your very good work — for them. This is such an exciting stage in your content creation career, and it’s worth trying to build relationships with those clients.
However, clients are occasionally unreliable. They come and go, and you can’t control how much work they give you — only the price you set for them. That’s why it’s also important to develop the third stream: your content.
Example: I had a wonderful client who paid me $1000 per month to write four fun blog posts. They hired me for three months total and then moved in a different direction. There was nothing I could do. No hard feelings on either side, but out of my control.
Pros: you have a much closer view of what’s successful, especially compared with platforms. You don’t need to navigate an algorithm — you just need to do what the client says. It’s typically much better paid than platforms, too, since you’re getting all the income.
Cons: Can be hard to acquire, no way to scale unless you start outsourcing your work, and clients can come and go independently of the quality of your work.
Your own content.
By selling additional content on your own website or other areas you control, you can control the distribution, the marketing, and the stream. It’s harder to do this at the beginning because you just don’t have the audience. But at this point, you have the audience, you have the fans, you have the reach. You just need the sales.
Example: I sold 16 places to my cohort back in February of 2022 at $400 a pop. I had a wonderful time, made a ton of money, and delivered hand-crafted value to my students.
Pros: the potentially highest level of income because you set your own prices. Very close relationship with the people on the other end.
Cons: you have to sell yourself vigorously, which many creators are uncomfortable with.
Step 11: Level-Up Your Mailing List
Do not ignore this step! Your mailing list is your single pure line of communication with your audience that is free of algorithmic interference. There, it’s just you and your fans.
Now that you’re more developed as a content creator, you’ll want to do a few things to take it to the next level.
Design a juicy lead magnet.
Before, you could get away with saying, “Sign up here if you like me!” You didn’t have to commit to a posting schedule or niche, really. Now, as a Branded Professional Content Creator (TM), you need to step up.
By now, you’ll know a) what kind of audience you’re trying to build and b) what you could offer them.
A lead magnet is a piece of free, valuable content that you give away in exchange for someone signing up for your mailing list. As a content creator, I can’t overstate how much this matters. Your mailing list will be how you stay in touch with your audience, get their feedback, share your content, and let them know about the services and products you provide.
Your lead magnet sets the tone for the sort of email list you’ll keep. For example, I mostly send blogging tips and content, so my lead magnet is a starter kit for the platform I blog on. It is also the very first time someone will hear from you personally, so make sure it’s as high-quality as possible.
Think to yourself: what is an audience member most likely to want from you? What do you get asked about the most?
The more you give away, the more your audience will trust you.
Introduce more sophisticated content.
While you can continue simply sending links, I recommend starting to transition into a more conversational style here. You can really expand your thoughts and give your audience the chance to hear from the real you.
Feel free to recommend other pieces of content but with additional commentary. Solicit comments, feedback, and emails from your audience. Start a dialogue.
12. Patch leaks in your funnel.
By now, you will have a funnel of content. This is how you make money.
At the top, you post stuff on your two (or more at this point) platforms.
For example, I may post an article on my blog. From there, my audience (someone who finds my content through distribution or search) can choose to follow me on that platform, or engage with me more deeply on other platforms, or sign up for my mailing list.
Once they’re on my mailing list, I send regular, valuable content. I work hard at turning my audience into fans or even clients.
With reliable fans, you can start selling stuff to them. Or they might reach out to hire you directly. A great system.
But this all depends on getting noticed at the top of the funnel. Every platform has different distribution rules.
Understand the distribution.
Whatever platform you’re on — Instagram, TikTok, Twitch — spend as much time as possible getting to grips with how content is recommended.
For example, I only recently started paying attention to SEO on my YouTube channel and blog. While I knew how to make my blogging platform recommend content, I had no clue how to get noticed on YouTube and Google except by accident. Now my views have increased.
Understand audience needs.
Let’s say someone watches my video, but they don’t subscribe. Why not? What could I do better to patch that gap?
Examples include:
Reminding people to subscribe. This sounds silly but just asking really works, that’s why so many YouTubers ask you to smash that subscribe button.
Tailoring the content to the audience better. Maybe my videos are reaching people who aren’t really interested in them. This might mean I’m not using SEO correctly, or my headline/thumbnail is accidentally misleading.
Offering a short benefits analysis. I do this by telling people at the start of every video what my channel is about.
Now they’ve subscribed to my YouTube channel, but they’re not signing up for my mailing list. How come?
Options to improve:
Creating a better or more specific call to action. If you’re reaching the same pool of people over and over again, it might be your existing CTA isn’t effective. Swap to a new one, or create a more tailored one to use on different kinds of posts. For example, I might post my 5-day Medium course on my writing-specific articles and videos, and post this guide that you’re reading right now in PDF format on my more creator-journey-geared content.
Boosting visibility. I could pin a comment, mention my mailing list more prominently in the video/article, or have a visual banner in the video/article.
Now your fan is on your mailing list. They read every one of your emails, but they’ve never bought anything from you. How can you address this?
A few ways to boost conversion:
Ensure you’re meeting all financial needs. As I mentioned above, some people will want to pay $7. Others will want to pay $700. Create valuable content to meet all needs.
Get more market-y. My first course launch failed because I only sent one email, lol. Put aside your fears and send 7–8 emails about your products when you sell them. This is industry standard. Your audience may unsubscribe, but your fans want to hear about what you can offer them.
Offer more value for free. This is counterintuitive, but it really works. Sometimes people need to understand you have the goods before they’re willing to pay you. Give away the cow, and they’ll come back to buy the milk after.
Open up for questions. One of the most successful sales techniques is running a free webinar because your audience has a chance to interact with you directly and give you a chance to explain the benefits.
Analyze, analyze, analyze.
Now you have a hole-free funnel. (You’ll never have a 100% hole-free funnel, but this process helps you get closer and closer.)
Every platform and product has some kind of analysis tool attached. Become familiar with it, and learn how to use it to improve. For example, here’s what ConvertKit shows me about email subscribers.
Screenshot of ConvetrKit’s analysis page.
I can see I’m trending positively, which is great. But I can compare that with impressions for more analysis.
I know my Medium starter kit got about 15k impressions in the last seven days. My website footer got about 1k impressions. That means my website footer has a more effective conversion rate.
I can look at my landing pages and audience to understand what I could be doing better.
With every contact point you have with your audience, analyze and analyze again. It’s the only way to improve.
Bonus: A Few Things That Are Helpful to Consider Now, Rather Than Later
These twelve steps can take you to where I am today. It may take you a month or a year, but in the end, you will have the opportunity to become a full-time content creator and design your own lifestyle.
This isn’t a career path for everyone. It can be lonely and it can be frustrating. Unlike traditional 9–5 jobs, where there are well-mapped paths to progression and advancement, you’ll be making this all up as you go along.
If you’ve read this guide and you feel energized and excited by the challenges to come, then this is the right path to be on. Enjoy the ride!
There are a few additional things to consider before you become wildly successful.
Do you want a pen name?
I write and create under a pen name and it makes sectioning off my life very easy. It also helps me get more vulnerable, especially at the start, because I know my ex-boss/high school acquaintance/sister-in-law won’t find my article.
Vulnerability is paramount in content creation, and it can be nice to have a degree of separation between sharing your entire life online, and your actual life.
Decide now if you want to have a pen name. Remember, you can always reveal your real name later, but you’ll never be able to put your real name back in a box once it’s out.
How will you do your taxes?
My dad (my dadsistant, as I call him) helps me with mine, but if you’re serious about this lifestyle, consider investigating sooner rather than later. You may want to speak with an accountant.
When will you quit your job?
Many people start this as a passion project while working another job. If you’re at all successful, the time will come when you have to choose.
Remember: it’s a risk to leave your job, but it’s also a risk to stay.
I recommend setting intentional check-in points. For example, every three months, ask yourself: should I stay or should I go? Don’t let one option be the default; be conscious that both staying and leaving are choices.
One good rule of thumb is that you have the capacity to earn 50% of your current income with your content creation. Ideally, once you don’t have to spend 40 hours per week at your day job, you’ll be able to scale and expand beyond 100%.
You should also do a budget. Make sure you can cover at least 6 months of living expenses if things go pear-shaped.
What will you do for fun?
I am writing a fiction book for fun that I know won’t earn money. When you’re a content creator, you need to find an outlet you do for fun that has no price tag attached, because everything you do otherwise is for profit.
Final Thoughts on How to Become a Content Creator in 2023
We live in incredible times. It has never been so easy for literally anyone with a single creative bone in their body to become a content creator in 2023 or beyond. The platforms exist, the audience and appetite for content are huge, and there’s a tremendous amount of free guidance out there.
These twelve steps and extra considerations should remove the final barrier: the belief that you can’t really do it. I’m here and so happy to tell you that you can absolutely become a content creator. All you need is the will to get started.
