Monetizing Your Personal Brand in the Post-AI Era: Advanced Strategies for Modern Creators

[00:00:00] Are you ready to transform your personal brand into a thriving revenue stream with the power of AI? Today, I'm going to reveal some advanced strategies to help you go beyond traditional influencer marketing deals while still leveraging them effectively, but discover new data-driven income opportunities for your personal brand. Get ready to revolutionize how you monetize your personal brand on this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

[00:00:30] Digital, Social Media, Content Influencer, Marketing, Blogging, Podcasting, Vlogging, TikToking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, Email Marketing. Whew! There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice.

[00:00:54] Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your Digital Marketing Coach. Helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your Digital Marketing Coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. This is Neal Schaffer, your Digital Marketing Coach. And welcome back to my podcast.

[00:01:24] Today's episode is extra special because I'm going to pull some content directly from a class that I teach at UCLA Extension called Personal Branding, How to Become an Influencer. Think of this as a snapshot of the module where I walk my students through the many ways you can monetize your personal brand. Whether you already consider yourself an influencer or are just starting to build your digital presence.

[00:01:47] Now, I know that this is the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast, but it's funny because when I decided to write The Age of Influence, it was actually a speech I gave at an MBA class at USC where the first question I got asked after my speech was about the ROI of influencer marketing.

[00:02:05] And the second question was, how do I become an influencer? So I believe that this topic of personal branding, how to become an influencer is sort of intertwined because there are so many marketers that I know that have become influencers. I think of someone like Jay Baer who is a marketing influencer, but he also, with his knowledge of how marketing works, was able to successfully create his own tequila brand for those that don't know the story.

[00:02:30] So, if you've been listening to this podcast, which I hope you have, you know that I'm a big believer in embracing AI wherever and whenever possible. I truly feel that each of us, whether we are business owners, marketers, content creators, personal brands, it can help raise our game when we incorporate AI into our marketing and monetization strategies. That's why I'm updating this class content with a fresh AI focus.

[00:02:57] We're going to look at how you can leverage these tools, not only to better understand your audience, but also to unlock entirely new streams of revenue. So, you know, the idea of monetizing a personal brand often begins with the type of brand collaborations that are the hallmark of influencer marketing, where sponsors pay you for product promotions. And while this approach is still incredibly relevant, you'll find brand deals on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and blogs everywhere.

[00:03:24] It's no longer the only way to leverage your online authority. AI now provides personal brands with additional insights, faster content creation, and more strategic experimentation, empowering you to diversify beyond or complement alongside those brand deals. So today I want to share some strategies that merge the tried and true, like sponsor collaborations or digital ads, with fresh AI-driven approaches to help you truly optimize your monetization.

[00:03:54] As I mentioned in previous episodes about AI, if you're not seeing the benefits of using AI, you haven't used it enough. So with that in mind, let's first look at the evolving landscape of personal branding. So traditionally, as I said, influencer marketing revolved around partnering with brands for sponsorships, and that's still a core option. You got home decor bloggers who might showcase new interior paint, or travel bloggers who might highlight a vacation package.

[00:04:24] Finance podcasters might work with investment apps. But AI has changed the way by giving you more ways to monetize and allowing you to be more effective in your monetization. So here's the real shift. And that was the episode I was thinking of, the AI shift. It's time for the AI shift. Go back and listen to that episode. But AI helps you identify, when prompted right, and when fed the right data, exactly what your audience wants, often better than a brand can.

[00:04:50] By analyzing engagement metrics, social listening data, keyword trends, traffic data, any data that you can get your hands on, you can uncover new products, services, or content you might offer beyond brand sponsorships. For instance, if you notice your audience is hungry for deeper training on a niche topic because of the engagement that you've gotten for that, that is a potential digital course.

[00:05:15] If you see an uptick in requests for specialized advice, maybe you launch a consulting service. Brand deals remain a pillar for most personal brands. But AI lets you spot other profit centers, even ones a sponsor might not have considered. So let me introduce a few of these AI-driven approaches to personal branding. The first is AI-powered audience and competitor insights.

[00:05:39] So there are AI-driven platforms like SparkToro for audience behaviors or Brand24 for social listening, which can help reveal which sites, podcasts, or social channels your followers frequent. SparkToro really is an audience research tool. And I think having interviewed people from SparkToro, they were trying to figure out how do they differentiate themselves from BuzzSumo of just being able to find information. But I think with AI, the more you know about your audience, truly,

[00:06:09] the more you can personalize everything that you do to attract them and in every product or service that you develop. So I think its value has exponentially grown. And if you haven't tried them out, S-P-A-R-K-T-O-R-O dot com, great platform. So you might discover with the help of SparkToro or Brand24, the social listening tool, that your audience, for instance, is bigger on Pinterest than you realized. Or they're actively discussing related topics on Twitter spaces.

[00:06:39] Knowing where and how people engage helps you not only negotiate stronger brand deals because you have data on exactly which platform yields the highest ROI, but it also helps you develop your own offers like an e-book, membership, or coaching package based on real-time audience needs. Now, the second approach is a data-backed content strategy. So once you know what content resonates, you can use AI tools. Surfer SEO, Market Muse are AI SEO tools,

[00:07:08] but even SEO tools like Ubersuggest or SEMrush to craft optimized content around those hot topics. This matters whether you're eyeing higher ad revenue, increased affiliate sales, or brand sponsorships. The more focused your content, the more you build authority, and the more sponsors and potential customers value your platform. This is all part of this library of content approach that I talk about in digital threads, but now we're applying it to the personal brand.

[00:07:37] The third approach is personalized offerings at scale. So AI also enables you to create personalized products or services with less overhead. For instance, audience segmentation. And you can do this through tagging, through your email marketing, with the analytics as far as what content gets views, get engagement. But if 30% of your followers want basic beginner tips and 70% want advanced techniques,

[00:08:04] you can quickly create two versions of a mini course using AI to outline lessons, right? Interactive engagement. You can use chatbots to recommend articles, upsell affiliate products, or invite people to sign up for a workshop. This can complement brand collaborations by funneling your audience to specific sponsored content while also promoting your own offers. Now, I have used a chatbot on my website way before ChatGPT. I haven't used one recently, but I know that they've only gotten better with time.

[00:08:34] So that's definitely something that you should be experimenting with if you have a website. And then faster content creation. Tools like ChatGPT let you draft newsletters, course outlines, or social posts tailored to different audience segments, helping you keep pace with brand deliverables and personal revenue streams. So speaking of revenue streams, how do you actually make money? So let's cover the core monetization methods that I go over in my class.

[00:09:03] Now, some you probably already know, and some you can enhance or develop further with AI. So I'm going to walk you through what these are. I'm going to offer you some examples, some tools, the AI angle, and some minimum requirements. Because in all honesty, one does not monetize their digital presence overnight, right? And some of these require more work, more followers, more something than others. And I want to go into that because this is a really important part

[00:09:33] of understanding this so that you have a realistic expectation. So sponsored posts and brand collaborations is the first one. And they really remain a mainstay of personal branding and monetizing influence. Put simply, a company pays you to promote its product, whether it's on a blog, a YouTube channel, or a social media platform. Think of scenarios, and I mentioned this before, the home decor blogger reviewing a new interior paint line, a tech YouTuber unboxing the latest gadget,

[00:10:02] or an Instagrammer modeling a fitness brand's clothing. For the best results, many creators find brand deals through influencer platforms or influencer apps. And there are a number of them, or influencer marketplaces. There are a number of these out there. I have dedicated blog posts on neilschafer.com on influencer marketplaces, influencer apps. And if you go there, you'll find some. Some that I'll just throw out there, some names, Aspire IQ, Upfluence, Grin,

[00:10:31] are platforms that come up pretty often. But literally, any influencer marketing platform that services brands also has a section on their website for creators or for influencers that allow you to register. And then from there, depending on your niche and everything else, you might get opportunities. So you'll want to register on a lot of these sites. Now, when you want to leverage AI, consider using analytics tools. I mentioned SparkToro and Brand24

[00:11:01] to demonstrate your audience's demographics and engagement data. You can also obviously use the insights data that every social media platform gives you, as well as a Google Analytics data, assuming that you have a website. And really, you can plug this into AI to try to get further insights and to try to extract data that might be very attractive to brands that might want to collaborate with you. So all of this can help you negotiate better rates and prove your value to brands.

[00:11:29] And while you don't need a massive following, right, it's important to have a modest but engaged audience. In fact, nano influencers, and we label them as people between 1 and 10,000 followers, often excel when they focus on the niche that resonates deeply with their followers. Less followers, higher percent of engagement, leads to a very, very active niche audience that brands love to work with influencers on. Obviously, you also need to remain authentic.

[00:12:00] So, if you want to go this route or if you've been going this route, you always want to pick sponsors that truly align with your brand values and audience interests because authenticity is what keeps your followers' trust. And without your followers' trust, you lose followers, you lose engagement, and when you do do a sponsor deal, it's not going to amount to much, right? So, that is of critical importance. So, the second one is ad revenue or network monetization. So, this could be ads placed

[00:12:29] on or alongside your content. So, we call this ad revenue, right? For instance, a photography blogger might use Google AdSense or Mediavine for display ads on their blog while YouTubers monetize through the YouTube platform, which is called the YouTube Partner Program. as social networks like TikTok or Instagram Reels also offer creator funds that pay based on views. Now, to optimize for ad revenue, you can turn to AI-driven platforms which test different ad placements on your website

[00:12:59] automatically to boost your earnings. One of these tools that I've yet to try out, which I've heard of, is called EZOIC, E-Z-O-I-C. I believe we're going to see more of these in the not-so-distant future. That said, for ad revenue, you typically need consistent traffic. Think 10,000 monthly visitors or a certain number of watch hours when it comes to YouTube to qualify for their partner program. Now, with YouTube, you need at least 500 subscribers or 3,000

[00:13:28] valid public watch hours over the course of 365 days or a year. Obviously, you can also get there through shorts if you can get 3 million valid public shorts views. Needless to say, you might be able to get the followers, but the watch hours is really, really hard to do. I have yet to even achieve this status myself. And also, for some of these platforms like Mediavine, you also need to have a certain website traffic in order to qualify. So,

[00:13:58] also, you know, if you go this route, keep in mind that placing too many ads can hinder user experience. So, balancing revenue potential with audience satisfaction is crucial. And this is one of the reasons why I just completely stopped doing ads on my blog. I used to do them, some of you might remember, but I've not had ads there for a few years, I believe. All right, the third is affiliate marketing, which is all about earning a commission whenever someone purchases a product or service through your unique link.

[00:14:27] Personal finance bloggers might promote budgeting apps. Travel influencers often link to booking sites for their recommended destinations. And beauty YouTubers frequently review skincare or makeup products with affiliate codes. So, you can sign up for affiliate networks, ShareAcell, which recently became AWIN, Commission Junction, or CJ, CJ Affiliate, right? Amazon Associates, obviously one of the most famous ones, to find suitable products. So, on the AI side, I already talked about

[00:14:56] how we can use tools like Surfer SEO or SEMrush to help uncover high intent keywords and ChatGPT to help draft product reviews, which then, obviously, you'll want to refine in your own voice. Now, while you don't necessarily need a gigantic audience to begin affiliate marketing, you do require some consistent traffic or a trustworthy niche reputation to see meaningful conversions. Remember, authenticity, once again, is key. Detailed, genuine reviews that resonate with your followers tend to drive the best results

[00:15:26] because if they trust you, they will trust your recommendation and they will happily click through on that link and buy that product generating affiliate commission for you. number four on the list is UGC or user-generated content creation, something that I've been talking a lot about on recent episodes, talking about the emergence of the UGC creator and these are people who are specifically leveraging their personal brand to generate revenue from this revenue stream. So,

[00:15:55] in user-generated content creation, brands pay you to produce content for their own channels rather than posting it on your platform. You might be a fitness coach filming workout demos for a gym's TikTok or a fashion stylist taking product photos for a clothing brand's Instagram feed. Although UGC implies content from everyday users, it's actually becoming a professional service. We're skilled creators, so you've got to have some photography, some video skills here, produce high-quality media for brands. So,

[00:16:25] because the final content goes into brands' platforms, you don't necessarily need a large following. What matters most is a strong creative skill set or relevant profile. Here, thinking about tools, project management tools, monday.com or Trello, which I use with my team, can help you stay on top of deliverables and then AI-powered editing apps like Descript or even something like Opus Clip can help streamline your workflow. If a brand plans to use your work in paid ads,

[00:16:55] you can justify charging premium rates due to the creative and commercial value that you're providing. So, if you create great content and the algorithms pick it up and you start getting a lot of views, it might just pop up in the For You page of marketers that work for brands or agencies that represent brands. They might see that you don't have a lot of followers but they like your content and this could open up a channel for you to monetize through UGC creation. There are also UGC creator platforms.

[00:17:24] If you Google for them, you'll find a number of them where you can sign up and just like influencer marketing platforms, you can also generate additional business there. Number five on the list is fan donations and subscriptions which can become a powerful revenue stream if you have a loyal audience. Viewers or readers support you financially through one-time donations like buymeacoffee.com for those that have heard of it, I've never done it, or ongoing memberships and that's normally Patreon.

[00:17:54] So often these ongoing memberships are in exchange for exclusive content perks. So think YouTube channel memberships with bonus Q&A sessions, Patreon tiers offering early access to new content, or Ko-Fi tips for behind-the-scenes updates. You don't need a huge number of followers for this model, just people who are genuinely invested in your personal brand. So you need some followers, right? On the AI side, you can quickly create mini content or personalized thank you messages

[00:18:23] using tools, obviously like ChatGPT. Provide real value such as deeper insights, sneak peeks, or interactive live streams to keep your donors and subscribers happy and engaged. I know some successful Patreons that upload unique content there like unique podcast episodes and maybe once a month they do a live stream Q&A for their members for instance. All right, number six. Number six is something that I have implemented which is a digital membership or private community.

[00:18:52] So while fan donations are often more casual like $5, $10, digital memberships or private communities like my own Digital First group coaching community involve a more formal structure where members pay a monthly fee for access to resources, networking, or direct interaction with you. A marketer, like myself, might run a private Slack or Circle community with weekly Q&A sessions. Funny thing is I've tried both Circle and Slack. I've even tried a LinkedIn group we're currently using a Facebook group

[00:19:21] but whatever your members prefer is really what matters here. While a nutrition coach could create a Mighty Networks group where members discuss meal plans and share progress. Mighty Networks being another great platform for a private community. If you want to incorporate AI, chatbots can greet newcomers, handle routine FAQs, and link members to curated resources. You don't need a massive user base to succeed here. What matters is that your core audience trusts you enough to pay monthly for exclusive value.

[00:19:50] Hosting regular challenges or live events keeps engagement high and ensures people stick around. And I have added additional things over time to my own community such as a quarterly private 30-minute coaching session. So there's no one way to keep people engaged. You need to find what works best for your community and your members should you decide to go that route. All right, number seven, digital courses. One of the most famous ones.

[00:20:19] Something that I have yet to do which I hope to do in the not-so-distant future and I know I've been saying that for quite some time but digital courses let you package your knowledge into a structured learning experience. You might use platforms like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi. There's a number of them out there and they can all help you host video lessons, PDFs, and quizzes. Picture a social media expert teaching Facebook Ads 101, a language tutor offering 30 days to conversational Spanish, or a marketing consultant delivering a

[00:20:49] Build Your Email Funner Masterclass. Actually, come to think of it, I have done a digital course, done cohort style when I did a class on influencer marketing strategy using the Maven platform for those that remember. I digress. So AI can absolutely help expedite course creation through ChatGPT which can outline modules, generate transcripts, or even draft quiz questions. You don't have to use ChatGPT, you can use Cloud, you can use Google, but nevertheless, any one of these AI tools can help you do that.

[00:21:19] You don't necessarily need a giant audience, but you do need credibility. A few hundred devoted fans can bring in solid revenue if your course solves a tangible problem. Validate your idea first, I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a sec, perhaps via surveys or pre-sales before building out an entire curriculum has become a best practice these days because you can waste a lot of time and a lot of money building a course that no one buys. So we want to make sure that that does not happen to you. But obviously,

[00:21:47] this is one massive or I should say major way of monetizing your personal brand that I think you're probably familiar with and in fact, you've probably bought some digital courses in the past. All right, now the last few I think are going to be the most lucrative and they're not going to be for everybody, but I want you to put them in the back of your mind or if you've been doing some of these, maybe you should be doing some of the first seven that I talked about. So number eight is coaching and consulting. Like my fractional CMO consulting,

[00:22:17] you provide personalized guidance in one-on-one or small group settings. Maybe you're a lifestyle influencer offering mindset coaching, a tech blogger advising startups, or a LinkedIn guru helping clients boost lead generation. Tools like Calendly makes scheduling a breeze and you can use AI to summarize client intake forms or compile custom resource lists or use it to generate transcripts like using a platform like Otter to generate transcripts

[00:22:46] that can summarize your meetings and bring up action points or use that data later on to better understand your target audience. While you don't need millions of followers, you do need demonstrable expertise. Think testimonials, case studies, or prior results. Clearly defining your niche and the specific outcomes clients can expect will help them see the value of your sessions ensuring they're willing to invest. And you probably, like my fractional CMO clients, we all go through

[00:23:15] an initial call to make sure that it is the right fit for both of us and that is definitely a best practice as well. Number nine, if you thrive in front of an audience, consider speaking, training, or workshops. These can be online or offline, ranging from webinars to corporate trainings or conference sessions. You might be a travel vlogger who hosts a virtual plan your backpacking trip workshop or a marketing consultant like myself who delivers in-house social selling seminars.

[00:23:45] You can use AI to help brainstorm topic outlines, design slides, even collect post-event feedback. There are dedicated tools that can help you create slide decks just from AI. These are ones that I have yet to use. I prefer to use my manual method of developing slides in PowerPoint, but if you are just starting out, those apps, and if you do a search for AI slide creation apps, can definitely help you save time, letting you focus on delivering compelling content.

[00:24:15] Having a track record in your niche is going to be really important for landing these opportunities, but once you get started, it often leads to more invites and potential spinoff revenue, including brand deals and affiliate opportunities. It generates its own flywheel. Number 10 is event creation, which means organizing your own gatherings, whether in-person or virtual, that you charge for. These could be small meetups where you charge $10, large-scale conferences. I'm thinking my friend Joe Polizzi,

[00:24:45] who started Content Marketing Expo and now Creator, I think it's called Creator Entrepreneur Expo, but yeah, he yielded his influence and his personal brand to create these events. In fact, I have created the Social Tools Summit back in 2014 and 2015. We did that twice in Boston and twice in, well, once in San Francisco, once in Silicon Valley. So that's another option. Or multi-speaker virtual summits. These are very popular as well. An influencer might host a meet and greet in a major city while a niche creator

[00:25:14] could run a summit featuring various experts. So there are platforms like Eventbrite and Hopin that can help with ticketing and hosting. And AI-based analytics can forecast attendance or pinpoint the best city to gather your audience. Even smaller events can be profitable if you have a dedicated community. Sponsors may also pitch in if they see value in reaching your audience face-to-face or virtually enhancing your revenue mix. And I will say that the business model that I had that I think was successful

[00:25:44] for the Social Tools Summit was more sponsor-generated rather than end-user ticket-generated. But hey, there's no one right or wrong way to do events. And if that's something you're considering, feel free to reach out to me. I'd love to share my experience that I had running that Social Tools Summit. All right, finally, we have product development. This is obviously the hardest and very few people do it. But product development involves launching physical or digital goods tied to your brand.

[00:26:14] So a wellness blogger might release a branded yoga mat or water bottle while a finance podcaster could create a budgeting app or premium spreadsheet templates like Notion templates or Excel templates. E-commerce platforms, Shopify, Gumroad, Payhip make sales pretty straightforward. You can experiment with finding products on an Alibaba, contact the factory, brand them. This is something that Pat Flynn did for his tripod that he sold.

[00:26:43] There's a lot of different ways to do this and then sell it as your own merch, right? Just, you know, Printify with t-shirts or with anything. Not hard to do. In fact, you could sell it on your TikTok shop. On the AI side, you can use sentiment analysis tools or quick surveys to refine product concepts, test features, engage audience demand. Now, the minimum requirement here is being able to identify a real pain point your product solves that your community has been talking about plus obviously

[00:27:13] having a community that's going to trust your recommendations. starting small or running a pre-order campaign is a good strategy to validate demand before diving into large-scale production. So, putting this all together is simpler than it may seem. I know this is a very, very long episode that I've been talking a lot and I know that there are a lot of prerequisites to being successful on a lot of these monetization opportunities but it doesn't mean you can't get started. So, we begin by assessing where you are.

[00:27:43] Look at your analytics and engagement levels. Are you mostly relying on brand deals or do you already have multiple revenue streams? Then, pick one or two monetization methods that you're going to focus on. Don't spread yourself too thin. Maybe experiment with launching a digital membership this quarter then try affiliate marketing next quarter for instance. We also want to use AI strategically. SparkToro, social listening tools like Brand24 for audience insights. That's ChatGPT for content generation

[00:28:13] and sentiment analysis for product validation and obviously feeding your social media analytics data as well as Google Analytics data into ChatGPT to help analyze that as well. And then, PDCA, right? Plan, do, check, action. Measure, tweak, repeat. Track what's working. When a revenue stream takes off, lean into it. If one stagnates, pivot or fine tune your approach. So, my final thoughts on this are that brand sponsorships are still a powerful pillar

[00:28:42] in monetizing your personal brand, but AI opens the door to a variety of additional opportunities. The more revenue streams you cultivate, each aligned with your niche and audience, the more resilient and profitable your brand becomes and the better you can mitigate the risks of only monetizing through one revenue stream or with one brand partner. If this episode sparked some new ideas, please share it with fellow creators who might also benefit from more aggressively integrating AI

[00:29:11] into their monetization strategies. And if you're testing any of these approaches, tag me on LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever you see me on social media. I'd love to see what you're building. And if you want to see one of these monetization methods in action, go to neilshafer.com slash membership and check out the details regarding my own group coaching membership community to inspire your own. Obviously, if you're interested in joining, we'd love to have you there as well. These are the types of things that we talk about in every one of our weekly Zooms.

[00:29:42] So if this content is right down your alley and you want a little bit of help with monetization, I and our other group members would love to help you. Well, all that's left to say is thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. If you have not subscribed yet, I hope you hit that subscribe button and I look forward to seeing you succeed in this post-AI era of personal branding. This is your Digital Marketing Coach, Neil Schafer, signing off. You've been listening to Your Digital

[00:30:11] Marketing Coach. Questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast.neilshafer.com Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilshafer.com to tap in to the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First Group Coaching Membership Community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time

[00:30:40] on Your Digital Marketing Coach.