How Creator Communities Generate Revenue

I've worked with creators who've earned $40M. The richest ones all do this one weird thing. They ignore their audience. Not completely. But they ignore what their audience thinks they want. Watching the space evolve for 15 years, the pattern is clear to me: The creators making real money aren't chasing viral moments. They're building boring businesses that sometimes their audiences don't even see. Here's what I mean: 💰 Nischa makes finance videos for young professionals. What started as investment banking content evolved into a full financial products suite. Her audience came for the free advice. They stay for the premium tools. 📚 Ali Abdaal is one of my favorite business and productivity creators. His personal narrative is awesome. But behind the content is a coaching business, course platform, and software tools that probably generates more than his Adsense. 🏢 Nick Huber is the most honest about it. He literally shows you his portfolio of unsexy businesses - storage units, tax prep, insurance. His content is just marketing for his real empire. The "weird thing" they all do? They use their creator business as R&D or sales funnels for their real business. • Their audience validates ideas • Their content builds credibility • Their platform attracts partners •Their revenue comes from solving unsexy B2B problems It's the same lesson my father taught me with his vineyard. The romance of the winery attracted visitors. But the real money would have been if we could have capitalized on distribution and logistics. The creators getting acquired for $250M+ aren't selling their audience. They're selling the infrastructure they built behind it. Strategic acquirers appreciate audience, but more than anything they want businesses with solutions. The richest creators figured out how to deliver both. — 👍 Like this post? Click my name + follow + 🔔 👋 Hi, I'm Olivier, and I help creators build businesses cross platform, and I also work as an M&A advisor. 💸

I grossed $81,109 in Q2 as a part-time creator. no management or viral moment. Just consistent systems, repeatable offers, and a clear message that attracts the right brands. Here’s where the revenue came from: ✔️ Sponsored Content (67%) ✔️ Brand Partnerships (14%) ✔️ Speaking Engagements (9%) ✔️ Advising (7%) ✔️ Digital Products (2%) ✔️ Newsletter Ads (1%) I share this because 3 years ago when I started I didn’t know how to charge more than $500 for anything. I thought I needed a huge audience and representation. But all I needed was a strategy. Here’s what worked for me: 1. Revenue follows trust and trust is built in public. From day one, I shared my ideas, gave away value for free, and stayed consistent. That's still my number one focus today. 2. Price everything in advance. Know your rates before they ask. It removes emotion and speeds up decisions. 3. Save a counter-offer email template. A calm, clear response helps you push back without burning bridges. 4. Treat your brand like a business. The newsletter, brand deals, advisory work, and speaking gigs aren’t side hustles. They’re business lines and I have a plan to grow each. 5. Be selective. Growth isn’t about saying yes to more. It’s about saying yes to the right things, the ones that compound your credibility, audience, and income. 🧠 If you’re a creator-entrepreneur who wants help, I break this down weekly in my newsletter Content to Commas 📩 Join the community → https://lnkd.in/g9EGuyRa

Alex Hormozi may be the first creator billionaire. I interviewed him on the Karat podcast to learn his secrets on how he made over $10M+ last year from content- here's 3 lessons below: 1. Content isn't the business. Content generates *leads* for your business. Most creators are in a broken business model based on volatile brand deals. Hormozi recommends developing a business around a sticky retentive problem - then pumping leads to it through content aka free advertising. He follows this himself - his content drives deal flow for his private equity firm - and also customers for portfolio companies like Skool. Last year, his companies made over $250M in revenue. 2. Hormozi sees 5 distinct ways to make money from content: * Brand deals * Affiliate * Collabs with investment (as he did with Skool, or see PRIME) * White label * Doing your own product in-house (e.g., Feastables) If your content is good at getting impressions but not conversions - do brand deals - and you're basically a media company. But if you have conviction in your conversion- start with affiliate - and then carefully consider deeper partnerships based on your bandwidth. Hormozi knew he only had energy for one real "brand bullet" - and saved it for a deep collaboration with Skool. 3. Most creators are a 97/100 on content - but they're a 0/100 on monetization. Hormozi believes they spend too much time on thumbnails and not enough on learning business. That's the real constraint to their growth. Comment HORMOZI and I'll send you 21 takeaways from the pod as a timestamped transcript - and an analysis of 10+ other creator talks we've done.