Ascend 101

Lessons about building a one-person business, writing, and self-improvement

Everyone wants to monetize their personal brand nowadays. But so many people get lost looking for the perfect opportunity or the perfect business model.

It doesn’t help that almost everyone has contradicting advice, promoting their activities as the one and only method to monetize.

So here are 15 ways you can start monetizing your personal brand today (in no particular order).

15 Ways to monetize a personal brand

Digital product

Whether it’s an e-book, a notion doc, a video course, audio files, a checklist, templates, or a useful spreadsheet you made.

Anything that can be packaged up nicely in a digital format and solves 1 main problem can be sold as a digital product. There’s no limit to your imagination.

The best part is that once it’s made, there’s no marginal cost of reproduction. Meaning it doesn’t cost you a penny to sell extra copies.

You build it once and it can keep on making you money forever.

Exactly like I’m doing with my Ultimate Content Creator’s Toolkit.

Physical product

The same rules apply as they did with digital products. But it’s physical.

Think merchandise, supplements, make-up, books, planners, newsletters, or anything you could imagine.

You’ll need to think about shipping, returns, and storage. And physical products do have marginal costs of production.

Cohorts

A cohort is a group-coaching program that typically runs for anywhere between 14–90 days.

You have regular calls with the whole group and teach them how to solve a pain point or help them achieve their dream outcome.

You can re-use the same curriculum you used for your digital product or coaching sessions.

It’s 1-to-many selling, meaning it’s a high-leverage activity.

Coaching

One of the most profitable, most accessible, and easiest ways to start monetizing online is through coaching. You can coach people on everything you can imagine.

All you need is to tackle a common pain point that’s strong enough and you’ll be able to make it work.

Coaching often works in a 1-on-1 setting but can be done in small groups as well. You’ll work closely together with your clients and help them achieve a certain goal.

Consulting

Consulting is a lot like coaching, but more short-term, and less closely connected with your client. My Clarity Calls are a great example of consulting. They are one-off calls where I help you solve a particular problem you have with your business so you can keep moving forward.

You can also bundle a package of calls together like I offer with my 4-call consultation package.

Consulting is a great way to get a lot of experience quickly. And you can charge anywhere from $500 to $5,000 for a package depending on your experience and the problems you help people overcome.

Freelancing

Freelancing is the act of selling your skillset.

If you have a high-valuable skill such as funnel-building, email marketing, copywriting, ghostwriting, video editing, social media marketing, web design, … you can become a freelancer.

Simply help people with a project of theirs in exchange for a flat fee.

I know some people who charge $500 for designing Twitter banners.

Tutoring

Tutoring is the act of teaching someone a skill.

Let’s say you’re an experienced copywriter. You’ll then teach someone how to write copy. You’ll share the basics, give them homework, review their work, and give them pointers on how to improve their craft.

Every single skill you could use to freelance can also be used to tutor someone.

Paid community

Building and (especially) sustaining paid communities is difficult but certainly possible.

The most common approach is asking people for a monthly fee to get access to your community. This could be through Discord, Telegram, Circle, or any other medium you could imagine.

Regular calls, tasks, challenges, and newly updated courses play a big role in keeping the community alive.

Affiliate marketing

Probably the easiest one to start with.

You don’t need to create anything yourself. Simply take an offer you enjoy from someone else and affiliate for them.

Perfect for learning how to write copy, how to overcome objections, and how to sell.

All you need is to get a lot of eyes on your content, which is where having an audience comes in.

Paid newsletter

You create a structured (weekly) newsletter covering certain topics that inform people and/or help them solve a pain point they’re struggling with.

Paid newsletters are more and more digital nowadays. But there are still quite a few physical ones around that get printed and shipped to your house every month.

Some examples of those include Ben Settle’s Email Players and Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing.

Email list

Having an email list opens up a whole new avenue of money-making possibilities.

One of the easier ones is to simply get paid for showing ads and/or recommending other newsletters.

This works great if you have a lot of readers.

Ad revenue sharing

Many social media platforms have an option to get paid for the views you get.

Twitter (X) recently launched its own version of this and creators are getting monthly payouts ranging from $200 to $2,000 depending on their traffic.

RT selling

Although suffering from a bad reputation, if you’ve got a big (and engaged) audience on Twitter (or other platforms), you can always sell Retweets, shoutouts, or shares of other people’s posts.

People are always looking (and willing to pay) for opportunities to grow their audience.

It’s a win-win for both.

Agency

Instead of freelancing, you can go down the agency route and build a full-blown business around it.

Here you’ll take on many clients looking to outsource their work.

Depending on how many clients you want to take on you can start hiring employees to make the workload more bearable and scale your business.

There’s no cap on how big your agency can become.

Brick & Mortar promotions

If you’ve got a physical brick & mortar business, social media can be a great way to promote it.

With a big enough audience (or simply running ads) you’ll attract more people to your stores and increase your revenue.

P.S.

Whenever you’re ready. Here’s how I can help you:

Hop on a Clarity Call with me: Remove all of your uncertainty. Get clear on what you have to do, when you have to do it, and how. Let’s get you on the right track to achieving the freedom you deserve.
Work 1-on-1 with me: We’ll determine where you stand and where you want to go. Then we’ll devise a roadmap to get you from A to B that’ll get you there in the next 30–60 days.
Check out my products (free & paid): Ranging from every resource I ever read to everything I know about content creation. It’s all waiting for you to claim it. Start your journey to financial freedom the right way.

And if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this edition of Ascend 101.

Send me a quick message – I reply to every email!