Social Media for Side Income. Is it the “get rich quick” scheme that… | by Joydeep Chatterjee | Jun, 2023

Is it the “get rich quick” scheme that it’s cracked up to be?

The idea of a “side hustle” in not a novel concept. Individuals and businesses and even nonprofit organization and governments have dabbled in economic activities outside their primary line of work or mission to be able to supplement their primary sources of income.

Whether it is a wage slave selling personally made trinkets to survive, a salaried professional chauffeuring or delivering take-out food to build savings, a charity operating a pawn shop to support its philanthropic activities, or an entire government nationalizing industries to supplement tax revenue; the notion of participating in an unrelated business activity to compensate for shortfalls in revenue from primary sources has been around since the dawn of our species.

In the past two decades, the adoption of the internet created the demand for media content to consume. However, unlike the prior media or print, radio, and television; this medium allowed both established institutions as well as private individuals to freely create and distribute content.

The first wave of this democratically generated user content in the 1990s was in the form of personal websites requiring HTML coding.

The second wave in the 2000s was powered by the rise of commercially available blogging platforms such as Xanga, MySpace, and LiveJournal as well as vlogging platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo.

The third wave in the 2010s was the evolution of “social media”, which was burgeoning during the second wave but finally became a serious medium of both individual and organizational communication during this time was heralded by Facebook and LinkedIn for even more visually-oriented and less text-heavy user generated content and eventually by Twitter and Instagram taking that trend even further.

During the aforementioned decade, social media went from just a niche activity among a reclusive group of netizens to a primary mode of communication for literally every other normal person and their grandmother. Social media platforms during that decade developed features to buy and sell goods and services as well as request and pay donations to make them significant means of commerce as well.

It was during that decade that businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies harnessed the power of social media to engage with current and prospective customers, members, donors, and citizens as a critical line of communication more powerful and more interactive than print, radio, and video had ever been.

According to Neal Schaffer, the author of “The Age of Influence” (2020), an influencer is:

“… a person who has the power to affect another person’s buying decision based on their online presence and their interactions with their followers.”

Traditionally, individuals would achieve fame and wealth for demonstrating talent in the arts or entertainment or athletics, innovating, or making a difference in the world. Newspapers, radio channels, and television networks would seek out such special individuals to increase their circulation or viewership by providing quality content.

However, the growth of the internet and democratically generated user content more directly engaged with audiences resulted in phenomena such as the “viral video” (the Internet equivalent the “one hit wonder”) providing widespread yet fleeting moments of fame for the creators and distributors of such videos. The “Star Wars Kid” is a prime example of such videos that began as harmless recordings that were edited by a third party and then circulated around so rapidly as to affect the direct life of the subject of the video.

Eventually, such accidental moments of fame gave way to more deliberate actors creating large cult-like followings (such as YouTube vlogger LonelyGirl15) and homegrown celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, who could be considered the first “influencer”. Originally rising to widespread attention for an infamous sex tape with Ray J, the cousin of actual talented celebrity Brandy, Kardashian simply leveraged her personal connections to celebrities in the Hollywood social scene through her father Robert Kardashian, the talented lawyer of the infamous but talented celebrity O.J. Simpson, to have the seeds planted (no pun intended) to grow a billion-dollar media and business empire riding the waves of that widespread attention.

She would go on to inspire many other untalented and semi-talented individuals with the time or money to produce visual content of usually cleaner nature and learn how to hack social media in their own right to gain widespread online attention and ultimately wealth through monetizing on their widely distributed content.

Due to this Cambrian explosion in ordinary individuals able to produce widely circulated content more engaging and effective than advertising agencies have ever imagined, large organizations recognized the power of “influencer marketing”.

There are now advertising agencies literally contracting professional influencers savvy in social media engagement willing to function as hired guns for any product or cause that businesses or non-profit organizations are willing to pay them to promote on their own channels. Likewise, organizations themselves have attempted to become their own influencers utilizing their in-house staff employed specifically for this purpose but due to the individualized nature of social media content production, cannot match the efficiency of professional influencers.

As opposed to directly selling a product or promoting a cause, the goal of social media monetization is to earn revenue through third parties advertising as influencers themselves through paid advertising or affiliate marketing schemes. Ultimately, the greater the followers and/or engagement on the social media account, the owner of the account shall stand to earn revenue paid by such third parties to maintain such advertising on their content indirectly as a form of passive income.

Common Methods of Social Media Monetization

1. Joining an affiliate marketing program
2. Partnering with brands (becoming an influencer)
3. Creating an online course and selling its contents
4. Running an online course and diverting traffic to it
5. Offering paid consulting services in a domain area
6. Selling leads to consultants within the network
7. Utilizing creator funds provided by social media platforms

While individuals can reap more benefits from monetizing from social media, large organizations that need to focus on their product, cause, or mission need to be aware of the benefits that can enhance their outreach as well as the drawbacks that can ruin it.

Advantages of Social Media Monetization for Organizations

1. Building trust with customers or members, stakeholders, and the public
2. Promoting events more efficiently across multiple channels
3. Expanding reach to current and prospective customers or members
4. Facilitating transactions directly on platforms or indirectly

Disadvantages of Social Media Monetization for Organizations

1. Having to scale efforts with potentially irrelevant and distracting paid advertising or affiliate marketing
2. Making measuring success difficult without correlating advertising with actual revenue being generated
3. Creating the potential for spam

To realize the full benefits of social media monetization, it is critical for an individual to become an influencer or for organizations to either be their own influencer or hire a professional one due to the highly personalized nature of social media itself. The Internet is already saturated with individuals seeking to garner attention and monetize on it due to the low investment or time, energy, and money to get started on this scheme.

However, before being lost in the online crowd of aspiring celebrities, it is important to first define what content distinguishes the individual in terms of content of value to present to audiences that will maintain their long-term interest. Whether producing cosmetics tutorials emulating famous film and television characters like Michelle Pham or walkthroughs of luxurious NYC penthouses like Erik Conover, finding a speciality that distinguishes the individual from the hoi polloi posting an infinite amount of garbage without a purpose. It is then that the right platforms can be selected and then strategies for delivering the content to attract the followers to be engaged further to pave the way for social media monetization as a supplement to one’s actual content rather than the content itself.

Steps Required to Become an Influencer (in Proper Order)

1. Finding a niche
2. Choosing a social media channel
3. Developing a content strategy
4. Distributing content properly
5. Growing the community
6. Engaging and making friends with the followers

It is critical to find the right networks to concentrate engagement efforts on to maximize monetization.

Facebook

Ideal for streaming live videos, broadcasting events, and sharing text and visual content without any drawbacks.

To learn more how to maximize Facebook, click here.

Twitter

Ideal for sharing quick updates, linking to the main website, starting discussion with followers, and using #hashtags to raise awareness or start a conversation. The main drawback is that it requires concise text posts due to the character limit.

To learn more how to maximize this platform, click here.

LinkedIn

Ideal for providing opportunities for professional networking, posting more in-depth text content, streaming live videos, and hosting panel discussions and events without any drawbacks.

To learn more how to maximize this platform, click here.

Instagram

Ideal for sharing photos and videos, but poorly suited for text-heavy content.

To learn more how to maximize this platform, click here.

Social media monetization holds great potential to generate large amounts of passive income for individuals and organizations alike, but it isn’t necessarily a “get rich quick” scheme. Depending on the financial goals of the entity which seeks to harness it, the followers of the social media platforms being utilized needs to be grown to see the benefits, which multiply exponentially when scaled.

The following are the descriptions of the known tiers of influencers and their respective rates of revenue generation and scale of annual income:

Nano (1,000–9,999 Followers)

These are individuals that can earn a partial or full livelihood, but still financially unstable at this point.

Typical Rates:

Instagram: $10 — $99 per post
Twitter: $2 — $19 per tweet
Facebook: $25 — $249 per post

Typical Annual Revenue:
$30,000 — $60,000

Micro (10,000–49,999 Followers)

These are individuals that can earn a full livelihood and have an established practice and strategy to keep growing further.

Typical Rates:

Instagram: $100 — $499 per post
Twitter: $20 — $99 per tweet
Facebook: $250 — $1,249 per post

Typical Annual Revenue:
$40,000 — $100,000

Macro (50,000–999,999 Followers)

These are individuals who are semi-celebrities by now and are at liberty to expand into other forms of content or business activities. Also, this is the tier in which small businesses and nonprofit organizations can generate a significant supplemental income to be worth the investment.

Typical Rates:

Instagram: $5,000 — $9,999 per post
Twitter: $1,000 — $1,999 per tweet
Facebook: $1,250 — $24,999 per post

Typical Annual Revenue:
$250,000 — $750,000

Mega (1 Million+ Followers)

These are individuals who are already celebrities capitalizing on their already existing fame. Also, large businesses, nonprofit organizations, and possibly even government agencies that wish to make social media monetization a substantial source of revenue should be in this tier.

Typical Rates:

Instagram: $10,000+ per post
Twitter: $2,000+ per tweet
Facebook: $25,000+ per post

Typical Annual Revenue:
$1 Million+

While developing and presenting content to followers, the additional task of having to manage multiple social media accounts can be cumbersome. Fortunately, there are commercially available online services to coordinate content across multiple platforms.

These prove more critical for organizations that have to add social media management on top of their regular work or faced with hiring professional social media managers to unnecessarily increase their budget.

Online Software for Managing Social Media Accounts

1. Hootsuite
2. Buffer
3. Airtable

While social media monetization has become a major source of income for many individual and organizations, there is a specific discipline to approaching social media as both a tool to promote a business or cause as well as generate revenue from it directly. Many have tried and failed for various reasons. At the core of it, delivering valuable content to audiences through social media is no different from doing so in print, radio, video, and online writing and an unwillingness to take it seriously will prevent many from realizing its power. However, the pioneers that have done so have achieved a level of fame and wealth unimaginable in times past.

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