I have built a career and business around sharing knowledge and information. And I can say it is a fascinating way to build income streams for three reasons;
- Knowledge is inexhaustible. You never run out of knowledge by sharing it. The more you share what you know the more knowledge you acquire. And the better you get at sharing what you know.
- Knowledge is the best form of wealth. You can lose all your possessions; the world can experience recession and lockdown. But if you have useful and helpful knowledge, you can rebuild your wealth and continue to be relevant.
- Sharing knowledge is the best form of passive income. Think about it. Instead of speaking to a room of 50 people once a month, with digital media tools, you can upload your information on the internet and millions of people can access it over a prolonged period of time without your presence.
These are just few of the benefits of turning what you know into an income generating asset. If you are successful, you can make enough money to pay bills or even build an empire from it. But of course, there is no overnight success here. The old principles of success still applies; consistency, persistence and focused action.
If you are a beginner and still confused with how to turn what you know into money; or are not even sure of what it is you know, this video is for you. Be sure to watch it to the end because there are valuable lessons to take away. But before we get to it, I’ll like to invite you to subscribe to After School TV for more insightful videos like this. Here are 7 steps to turn your knowledge into a profitable source of income.
1. Identify what you want to share
Most times the problem is not that people don’t know what they can share. The problem is that they think that there are already many people sharing that or that their level of knowledge is not good enough.
Recently, I was looking through a new online learning app and saw a course on ‘how to take good photo on your phone’. And this course had a lot of positive reviews. It’s true that most fields are already saturated. Your level of knowledge may not be as advanced as the top people in the field. But here is how I choose to look at it. There are many medical doctors, yet people still study medicine. There are many lawyers, yet people still become lawyers. And this is the same for most other fields of study. The point is that there will always be competition. And the chance that you will stumble on a profitable field with no competition is close to zero. This is why you need to follow the next step if you are struggling to identify the knowledge you want to share.
2. Choose a field to dive deeper into
As I mentioned in the beginning of this video, one of the advantages of sharing knowledge is that the more you share it, the more you know because you will be compelled to research and study further into the field. And the more you try to explain it to other people, the better you understand it.
This is why you choose a field of knowledge that you have interest in and that growing your knowledge will improve your life. Majority of content creators today make the mistake of just looking for what will bring the most clicks to their blog or views to their videos. It’s no wonder why they run out of steam and lose momentum at a point. Human nature abhors stagnation. If you do something that does not add to your growth for a long period of time, you will get to hate that thing. So choose a field you are willing to learn deeper into. That way, you are not just helping your audience, you are also helping yourself. And in that case, you won’t be too bothered about competition because however it goes, you win.
3. Identify your target audience
Let’s say you have been good with managing your personal finance. You were able to save from the little salary you earn to buy your first real estate property; then your second property and now moving to your third over a period of 7 years. You definitely have something to share from your unique experience on how to create a wealth plan with the little you earn. You can decide to start putting out your experience for anyone that finds it interesting or you can carefully think about it and decide to target entry and mid level employees.
It is important to think about who you want to share your knowledge with, and to choose people who can relate with your stories and experience. Knowing who your potential audience is will guide how you create your content, your voice and marketing strategy.
4. Identify your voice
Your voice is the tone and personality with which your message is delivered. For example, the way you speak to your parents is different from the way you speak to your teacher, friends and co-workers. If you have identified your target audience in step three, that will help inform your voice. Another thing to clarify is whether you want to share your knowledge as a person or a corporation. In most case, people connect better with a person than a corporate organization.
5. Identify your content distribution model
How do you want to create and distribute your knowledge? Do you want to start a blog, a YouTube channel, a social media page or a combination of them? These are important questions you’ll have to answer. If you want to start a blog, you have to learn how to use blogging platform like WordPress. If you want to start a YouTube channel, you have to learn how to create video content or hire people to do it for you. Social media also requires learning how to engage your target audience and grow your followership and authority. You can use a combination of all channels and atomize your content. In other words, your blog content can be used to create your video, and used as content for your social media posts.
6. Identify your audience discovery model
This is how you want your target audience to find your content. Do you plan to grow organically or do you want to use paid advertising to grow your audience? Organically, you will have to learn search engine optimization to grow your blog to start getting traffic from search engines. For YouTube, you have to understand how the YouTube algorithm works; same with social media. If you have a budget, you can spend on social media, search or video ads to start building your audience immediately. However, unless you are selling a product or products with high return on ad investment, running ads may not be profitable in the beginning. Rarely do you hear of a YouTube channel or blog that grew substantially from ads. Whatever you do, it is important that you build a community around your brand. You best bet is to have an email list.
7. Identify your content monetization model
This is where you decide how you intend to make money from your knowledge. There are three primary ways to make money from information; selling your own product, selling other people’s product and advertising other people’s business or product. In other words, you can sell ebooks, online courses, personal coaching and any other services; you can use affiliate marketing to make commissions from selling other people’s product; and you can make money from ad networks like Google Adsense or direct advertising for brands. You can use a combination of the three. However, your ability to make money largely depends on the size of your audience, your niche and the level of engagement from your community.
These are the basics of what you need to know to advance your journey towards turning your knowledge into income. There are other important concepts like sales funnel, sales page, lead generation and more. There is a lot more to learn and each of these steps and concepts needs diving deeper to understand better. Interestingly, this can all be learned. And the information is readily available. So start learning today. Until next time, YOUR SUCCESS MATTERS!
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