Most creators get monetization completely wrong

I speak to dozens of creators every week.

They all end up asking me for help with the same few things…

And the biggest one is monetization.

“What is the best way, and fastest path, to start monetizing my content?”

I’ve spent lots of time exploring the various creator revenue models and analyzing if there is a “right answer.”

Here’s my conclusion…

While there are many ways to earn via content, I do believe there is an optimal strategy that all creators should be using.

I call it…the Creator Money Ladder.

The Creator Money Ladder

It’s called a ladder because there are 4 rungs that should be approached in order:

1. UGC

2. Brand Deals

3. Content Services Agency

4. Owned Products/Services

The 0th rung of the ladder is CPMs (platform fees like YouTube Adsense, Tiktok Creator Fund, IG Reel Bonuses). I call this the 0th rung because this is free money that you should turn on regardless of which rung you choose. As soon as you qualify, everyone should begin collecting this.

Let’s breakdown the basics for each rung of the ladder…

1. UGC (User Generated Content)

• You make content for other brands to post on their own channels

• You are essentially trading your time for money

• You get to improve your content creation skills, but drive zero personal audience growth on your own channels

• Typical rates are $1,000 - $5,000 per month (15-20 videos per month per client), but you need to know how to make great content

2. Brand Deals

• You make content for other brands that you post on your own channels

• You are trading some time for money, but also build your own audience. This is essentially getting paid to increase your earning potential (which I consider a money glitch)

• You build a valuable personal media brand asset

• Typical rates range from $1,000 - $20,000 per video

• Optimizing a platform for brand deals is the fastest path to hit the minimum requirements to turn on CPMs

3. Content Services Agency

• You make content for other brands and also handle posting it for them on their channels (this is you running a full service social media agency)

• You are essentially trading your time for money. This is more time-intensive than pure UGC, but you can more easily scale it with employees and hired talent

• You get to improve your content creation skills, but drive zero personal audience growth on your own channels

• Requires advanced client service and strategy skills

• Higher earning potential ($5,000 - $15,000/month per client), but you need to know how to make great content

4. Products (Owned/Affiliate)

• You make content about your own/other brands that you post on your channels and is intended to drive product sales

• You get to improve your content creation skills and drive personal audience growth on your own channels

• You only earn when your content converts product sales

• Requires deep audience trust and having a product to sell

• Highest ceiling but longest timeline to convert at scale

• This approach can also unlock CPMs but will grow slower because you’re not optimizing all content for max reach

To be clear, you don’t need to hit every rung, nor do you need to have more than one working at a time (although the beauty of the ladder is that they do stack on each other once you get them going).

Here’s the biggest mistake I see from beginner creators…they try to do all of them at once.

And let me tell you from experience…trying to sprint up a ladder is the fastest way to a broken leg.

The optimal strategy is to work your way up slowly from the bottom, focusing on one rung at a time, and only skipping rungs per the below framework…

If you need immediate income → Start with UGC (this is not my recommended path, but the fastest way to recurring cash flow)

• If you know how to make great videos, you actually don’t need a massive following to prove you know what you’re doing (30 posted videos with 5-10K followers should be enough proof)

• This helps gets cash flowing while you learn to build the content skill ($1-$5K/month possible)

• Easily able to transition to other paths or ladder up later

• Big Warning: UGC delays building your personal brand asset. Because the biggest drawback with UGC is that it forces you to trade your most valuable time for money and not grow your own channels (the compounding cash engine asset)

• If you do not need money in the first few months, I would skip over UGC (this is what I did)

If you can afford to play a longer-term game → focus on brand deals (this is my recommended path and where I started personally)

• Focusing on brand deals keeps 100% of time spent on growing your own channels

• This enables you to increase your earning potential the fastest

• Growing your following fast, means you unlock CPMs sooner

Growing a large personal brand to monetize with brand deals lets you master the content creation game while building an audience asset that has an increasing earning potential.

It’s like getting paid to learn.

And focusing only on brand deals first is the exact strategy I used personally. It’s what led to having $110K of brand deal offers sitting in my inbox in month 16 of going full-time. I’m on pace for $300-400K annually in year 2 just from brand deals while saying no to 99% of opportunities.

And here’s the big strategic mistake…

Most people say they aren’t interested in building a personal brand designed for brand deals because they want to sell their own products/services.

And I 100% agree that the end goal is to sell products/services from your content.

I’ll be honest…for me personally, this was always my primary goal.

But as I got started, I realized something super important…

When you’re starting out, it’s a losing game to focus on both a) learning how to make content and b) learning how to make a product/service.

These are two distinct skillsets…each is a distraction from the other.

Instead, I recommend to focus only on the content game first, build a massive personal brand, monetize that personal brand with brand deals while you’re growing it, take the cash flow, automate out your content team, and then begin learning how to properly build a product/service.

When it comes time to drive demand for that product/service, you’ll now have the expert level knowledge of content and the cash flow from the brand deals.

And if you make a product for the same audience in which you build your brand deal optimized personal brand, you also have a huge pool of people to sell to.

This is why I don’t view it like an either/or, it’s both. The goal is to ladder up from one to the other.

If I would have tried to learn content from scratch while building a product, I would have never become world-class at content, burned myself out, and wasted a ton of money.

The lack of focus would have killed both dreams.

Focusing on one content format and one monetization model is the easiest path because it requires the fewest net new skills and allows you to max focus.

It’s 1 then 2, not 1 or 2.

Now if you already have a product/service built and cash flowing, this is a different story. I still think you could massively benefit from building a category focused personal brand where brands would be begging you to talk about their stuff as well…whether you took the brand deals or not, is up to you.

Remember: All paths require significant upfront work. Anyone promising overnight success in either path is lying to you.

But I believe there is a smarter route up the mountain that will pay you as you learn to climb.

P.S. - If you want help building your optimal monetization strategy and thinking through how you should attack this for your own niche, reply "money ladder" and I'll send you details about Short Form Academy, where I’ll personally help craft yours.