How to become a content creator? 8 questions you should answer

We live in a gig economy – there are around 1.5 billion freelancers in the world (these include content creators). And if the estimates prove right, their number will continue to grow year over year. It’s hardly surprising given how much freedom and excitement being a freelance content creator can give.

Does it mean you should quit your full-time job and go all-in? Perhaps, but before you make some life-changing decisions, here are some questions you should answer to see how to become a content creator and check if you’re ready.

Becoming a successful content creator – eight questions you should answer

1. What is your niche?

Your niche can be larger or smaller. It can be as wide as career development or health and fitness – not necessarily extra-specific from Day One, like “training for women planning to run the half-marathon”.
To choose your area of focus it’s worth starting with things like your background, abilities, past experiences, or even hobbies.

For example, someone with a degree in finance and experience in banking could decide to become a personal finance writer, because they already have the expertise. Plus, they might also get a motivational boost after seeing that there aren’t too many competitors in their market.

On the other end of the spectrum, there could be someone who picked up knitting during COVID to counter boredom. Four years later, they ended up selling online courses and ebooks with knitting patterns.
As you see, these two content creator career paths are quite different.

2. Do you know what products or services you’d like to sell?

Do you know what you’d like to offer?

The most successful content creators focus on their core skills. Instead of trying to sell a dozen services like social media management, writing blog posts, SEO optimization, etc., they pick one or two areas they’re truly good at.

Choosing an area of expertise will help you become an authority in that field. For example, if someone is looking for an SEO expert, they might immediately think of Brian Dean who is widely known and respected by the marketing community.

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By regularly sharing educational SEO content he became a brand himself and built a significant following.

On top of gaining authority, it will also be simpler for you to come up with an effective process for working with clients and creating your content.
Also, there’s the case of choosing the type of content you’re going to produce – there are different types of content creators, like:

• Social media influencers
• Content writers, including bloggers
• Audio content creators, including podcasters and musicians
• Video content creators, for example, YouTubers
• Visual creators, such as graphic designers and photographers.

Being more focused on a specific field – and knowing what type of content you’d like to produce – will make defining your target audience easier.

3. Who is your target audience?

An important part of becoming a successful content creator is figuring out who your target audience is. Knowing exactly whom you’d like to reach will shape every aspect of your content creation gig. From what you offer and its format to where you’ll sell it and at what price. The more information you have, the higher the chances of succeeding and increasing online sales.
How do you collect that information? There are many ways:

• Dive into social media, check various groups on Facebook and Slack. Pick those relevant to your field.
• Visit forums like Quora and Reddit.
• Understand who your competitors are, visit their website and social media profiles to see what they offer.
• Talk to people who might potentially be interested in what you’re selling and ask for feedback.

Doing this will help you figure out what problems your prospects have, what their expectations are regarding potential solutions, as well as what their preferred communication channel is. If most of them are active on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram then these are your potential sales channels.

Identifying your target audience takes time, you won’t be able to collect all information at once. And the assumptions you’ve had in the beginning could change, and so could your target audience – that’s perfectly fine. Just make sure to regularly revisit your customer persona.

4. How do I want to set myself apart from other creators in my niche?

In the marketing jargon, this is called the “unique selling proposition”. It’s a mix of what you’re great at, what your target customers want, and what your competitors aren't offering.

Getting it right will probably take a while – unless you’re selling something completely new, either in a fresh product category or in a market where you don’t have competitors.

To give you a real-life example, a while back we consulted an IT specialist who wanted to launch their own software business. They knew what services they wanted to offer, but had a hard time answering the question: “why should a customer work with you instead of similar experts”? After a lot of brainstorming, we reached a eureka moment – they were proactive and willing to offer extra advice free of charge. And most of their competition charged for every minute.

Your USP could be something like “the only video editing course with unlimited access to online mentorship via Slack”. To put it simply, offer something that makes competitors pale in comparison to you.

5. Do you have examples of previous work in the field?

If you’re nodding your head, then take a piece of paper and write down all the successful projects you could show off. Why were they successful, and what did customers say about them? Do you have any numbers with results? Or, best of all, did you receive any emails from happy clients that you could use as testimonials?

If you’re selling ebooks or are a video content creator, your examples will be very “tangible”. You’d just have to select the examples you want to share and add links to them as a portfolio on your site and other channels.

Not all types of content creators will have it this easy. If you’ve spent years offering a service like writing blog posts but can’t show any examples because of an NDA, then you could still add something like “I have [X] years of experience doing [A], [B], [C]” in your bio to boost credibility.

6. Do you know how to sell your products?

There are a lot of channels to choose from – from your website and social media like TikTok and Instagram to platforms like Coursera or Teachable.
Each of these options requires a different approach to get more eyes on your content, so instead of going for multiple channels, find the one where your target client hangs out the most.

Tip: Even if you don’t want to find clients through Google Search, having your own website will still pay off for you as a creator, big time. You’ll have a place to redirect traffic to from all other channels and will maintain independence.

A great example is Adriene Mischler, who runs a popular YouTube channel, “Yoga with Adriene”, which gets millions of hits each month. She has a free thirty-day challenge, which helps her audience catch the ‘Yoga bug’ and become interested in her premium content. She then redirects YouTubers to her site, where they can subscribe for the full experience.

7. How would you like to monetize your work as a content creator?

The type of content creator you become will dictate how you’re going to monetize your work. Here are a few ideas:

• One-off purchases – if you sell digital downloads, like ebooks, Excel templates, graphics, posters, etc. You can sell them via a marketplace, social media, or your own website.
• Subscriptions – for a monthly fee, you can grant your customers recurring access to your library of resources including courses, videos, podcasts etc.
• Affiliate marketing – if you love writing blog posts, and your domain has decent traffic, then you might be able to earn some extra cash by letting other brands advertise their products on it. The same applies to social media influencers with a good following.
• Selling directly to clients – if you also sell services on top of products, you might want to offer them to clients directly, for example, through cold outreach via email or social media.

Easycart is another alternative you can consider, which will fit most of these and other monetization strategies. You can use it to quickly convert your website into an online store by adding a “buy now” button or even sell through your social media profiles. All it takes is adding a link that will take your customer to a one-page shopping experience.

8. How much time do you want to invest?

Before we became full-time content creators, we treated it as a side gig. Only after realizing how much potential offering content marketing services to brands had, we decided to say farewell to our startups jobs and started freelancing full-time. However, we were quite certain that we could find clients quickly as we continuously received LinkedIn messages about potential cooperation.

It’s up to you to decide how much time you’d like to dedicate to creating content, and if you want to focus on it entirely or treat it as a side gig. You could do what we did, and hold on to your full-time job until you’re sure you can find customers that will keep you afloat.

Tip: Being a content creator, irrespective of whether you do it full-time or not, is time-consuming. So it’s best to pick the right tool stack that will allow you to focus on delivering quality work instead of performing tasks that could be automated.

Of course, in 2024, “the right tool stack” means more than just your favorite text editor. You can optimize a lot of your tasks with the help of AI. You can go with the free version of ChatGPT or another tool of your choice to speed up research, edit your text, create images, and visualize your data. As AI isn’t as good at writing content as humans, leave the writing part to yourself – and don’t worry that technology will take your work in the foreseeable future.

How to become a content creator? It’s about timing and preparation

One thing you’ll have to figure out early on is what you’re good at – without this you won’t be able to start.

As for what you’re going to sell exactly; this will become clear as you dive into your go-to niche. Take it from us – when we first became content creators, we started off with writing SEO blog posts, and then, as we got more clients, began offering content marketing strategy services, too.

Start small and don’t stress out! There will be a lot of things you’ll learn along the way. And if you come across another idea, test the grounds and see if it’s worth developing. Good luck, and hope you love your content creator career as much as we do.