- Introduction
- The Prerequisites
- Conclusion
- Book Recommendation
Introduction:
Enough talk about masculinity, enough talk about developing an alpha mindset, enough talk about understanding female nature. Let’s discuss the major problem tormenting most men today and that is: lack of money.
Believe it or not, the modern age is rich with opportunities for making money with ease. And the internet happens to be hegemon. As you might have heard a million times by now, the internet is a digital platform that could be used to earn money whilst asleep. At first, I didn’t believe that shit. I thought those gurus were bluffing to sell their courses until I had a taste of it. And I will tell you from experience that it is very possible to earn lots of money through the internet while you are busy sleeping, dreaming and snoring. Being broke in this era is a sign of laziness and complete ignorance. You don’t even need to own a laptop especially if you are just starting out. All you need is your phone and an internet connection (or Wi-Fi) and you are in perfect shape to start.
Like I said, there are diverse ways to make money online but this essay will solely be about making money as a content creator on social media like myself. Consider this essay as a prelude; I hope it will give you the impetus needed to start your own online empire. More essays will be written by me on the incredible art of making money on social media. I, of my own volition, will lead you through this confusing maze at zero cost to you. Let’s dive in.
The Prerequisites:
As you all know, the first criteria for making money on social media is to build an audience (followers or subscribers) for your social media brand—A social media brand helps you to create awareness for your business online. If you have no audience in place that will consume your content you can’t make any dough.
Now the type of content you create depends on the niche you choose. A niche is an area of specialization of your social media brand. Some examples of a niche are: Wealth, fashion, beauty, health and fitness. A brand can be a conflation of one or more niches. For example my brand is a conflation of three different niches—masculinity, wealth and female nature. I wander into other niches once in a while depending on what I feel like writing.
A social media brand can fall into either one of these groups:
- Providing value in exchange for money. For example Durablemanlecture and
- Entertaining people in exchange for money. The most popular example of this is MrBeast (MrBeast).
No matter the path you decide to walk, both are analogous to one another in that they are centered around: wasting people’s time. The difference between the two classifications however is that, the former, you provide valuable content in return for time wasted—content so valuable, it will improve the quality of the life of your audience. In the latter, what you provide is temporary relief from boredom. I believe it is better for a social media brand to be a combination of both categories but this is a topic befitting for another essay.
Nonetheless, self-improvement, wealth, photography, graphic design and so on are niches which are all peculiar to providing value in exchange for money. Music, art, humor, and so on are niches which are peculiar to entertaining people for money.
Each niche could also be divided into sub-niches. For instance under wealth we have digital marketing, cryptocurrency, real estate investing and so on.
As absurd as it might sound, these sub-niches also have their own sub-niches. For example, under the umbrella of digital marketing we have copywriting, content writing, affiliate marketing, blogging, email marketing, web development and so on. And the cycle could go on and on depending on the niche and sub-niche.
So basically, If you want to make money online, you must be media-savvy enough to waste people’s time without letting them be aware of it—You must learn to distract them and it must be done with great finesse. This is the secret sauce for success on social media.
Furthermore, there are researchers who make a living from manipulating social media algorithms to make it even more addictive to the human psyche. These scientists only have one primary and pure objective: To find ways to make the users of a social media platform spend more time on it. Those among my readers who use TikTok might have noticed that when you are on TikTok and you decide to leave, you need to press the back button twice. When you press it the first time, it refreshes your feed and brings fresh content to your timeline impelling you to stay. This is just an example out of the many devious tricks employed by these platforms to waste people’s time. And this is where content creators come in. From my daily interactions with people I noticed that they have this misconception that content creators are those who make videos only but that’s falsehood. Writers are also content creators. Nonetheless, content creators like myself are the tools used by these social media platforms for the profitable assignment of wasting people’s time.
I realised this scheme a long time ago and this is why I embarked on a mission to start my social media empire. I didn’t want to be used by social media without getting something out of it. Now, I can tweet and scroll on Twitter whilst earning money from it—a win for me and a win for X. This is the difference between a creator (content creator) and a consumer (the normal social media user) in that the consumer consumes content without earning from it. Whilst the creator is busy creating content, consuming content and simultaneously making money from it. Or perhaps to put it bluntly, consumers waste their time on social media for free, without getting paid. Whilst creators are being paid for time wasted. The former is a puppet being used by social media, whilst the latter is using social media. The relationship of the consumer with social media is like a man whose efforts and sacrifices are not being reciprocated by a woman he is desirous of; It’s simply a toxic relationship for the man.
In theory, making money on social media is simple. All you need is a phone, an internet connection and a social media app of your choice. But it is hard to execute because it will take months. Or years. This explains why we have more consumers than creators. Most people aren’t willing to do the hard work. They prefer to consume alone because it’s simple, it’s straightforward and there’s no stress and challenge attached to it. But guess what, creating something that will last long in this world never comes unscathed. It always comes with tribulations. And the sooner you start the better. You don’t have to start with X (formerly Twitter) like I did, you could start with another social media app you can’t do without using daily for example Facebook, Substack, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn and Medium. There are others but these are the main ones I’m aware of. WhatsApp and Telegram are not part of my list because they are not social media apps you can easily monetize on unless you have thousands of contacts or you have another platform where you have lots of followers and can easily funnel those followers to your WhatsApp or Telegram. WhatsApp and Telegram however are great for marketing the services you render to families and friends. But Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube and so on help you to market and provide your services to a wider range of audience (people from different countries and backgrounds)—WhatsApp can’t do that for you. If you don’t have a large variety of audience to market to, how will you make money? Let alone, make lots of it?
The type of social media platform you decide to use to grow your audience solely depends on the type of content you would like to create. For instance if you love writing you could start with any one of these platforms X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Substack, Reddit, LinkedIn and medium. If you prefer to create videos you could start with TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. Or perhaps you prefer to create image-based content, Instagram is perfect for that; You could also try X.
Furthermore, to monetize your social media account, you can sell your digital products—for example an eBook—to your audience, you can sell courses, you can sell the products of other creators in your field (affiliate marketing). What’s more, the platform you are using to post your content could pay you for your services. For example YouTube, TikTok, Medium and X pays its creators. You just need to meet certain criteria for monetization and you are good to go. Take for example X (formerly Twitter), you need to be a verified user, be active in the last 30 days, have at least 500 verified followers and you need to have 5 million impressions in the last three months to be eligible for Creator’s revenue.
Mind you, you don’t need to be perfect to start. When I started my account on X, I wasn’t that good of a writer as I am now. Even presently, there are a lot of things I need to improve to better serve you guys. But the truth holds sway, get rid of your inclination for perfection and the delusion of a perfect timing. These two things need to leave your life if you want to make money online. The thirst for perfection will kill your authenticity. And if you are lacking authenticity, it’s gonna be hard to get the desired results you want on social media.
Also, having a 9 – 5 is no excuse not to build an online empire, it’s no excuse not to have a side hustle. So you’re telling me you prefer to work for someone else instead of working for yourself? Likewise, being in school is also not an excuse. I’m not a full time writer. I also have a job in real life. Yet, on one hand, I have the time to write on X and on the other hand, I also have a blog to manage. Instead of scrolling without aim on social media, instead of wasting time binge watching movies, why don’t you use that time to build an audience on social media for yourself? Obviously I know how hard it is. But you are a man and you need to do hard things to make the quality of your life better.
What’s more, competition is not a problem. Content creators are in high demand because social media platforms are vast and the consumers or users of these platforms are quite insatiable—they are always in search of new content, ever hungry for a new source of dopamine. And you can be a new source of this dopamine and also print money from it.
However, It’s also worth saying that you don’t have to be in the masculinity niche that I’m in. In fact, don’t go this route. Create a brand where you can talk about any topic of your choice whether it’s self-development, football, wealth and so on. That’s what they call a personal brand. My anonymous brand will surely get to that stage. But it will take time because I made a mistake with the foundation.
Conclusion:
In brief, money is flowing like a river, it’s sad that the masses are riddled with ignorance and slothfulness, that’s why they can’t fetch from that river to quench their impecunious selves. The fact is, I’m not making as much money as I want from my small online empire but with time I will get there and you can too. Those social media influencers you admire, you can also be like them. There’s nothing special about what they do. All you need is to take the first step which is quite hard for many but that’s where the magic is.
Book Recommendation:
This is the best book out there that will walk you through the whole process of making money on X (formerly Twitter). Click the link: The Art Of X (Build a business that makes you $100 per day).
