Why Your Content Isn't Making Money

Speaker A00:00:00

Your content might be great, your audience might be growing, people are listening, people are watching, and people are engaging, but the income never shows up. That's not a content problem. It's a monetization design problem. Hi, I'm Ralph Estep Jr. I'm a licensed accountant with over 30 years in the business.I, I'm a business coach and I'm known as the content creators accountant. And I'm that guy that helps creators turn content into real income. Now, I'm not a marketer guessing at this.I'm the accountant who sees actually where the money leaks are. So let's get into the creator problem today. And I want you to be honest. This is frustrating, isn't it?You're doing everything they say, you're showing up consistently. You, you're improving your content, you're growing your audience, and still nothing changes financially. And those doubts creep in.You start to ask yourself, am I missing something? Is this even worth it? Why isn't this working? Well, let me tell you right now, you're not the problem. But I know what the problem is. It's your system.It's a design problem. See, most creators believe if content is good, if it's good enough, it will eventually make money. But I'm going to tell you something very bold here.You're not going to hear this everywhere. Content alone does not create income. And hear me on that. You can have the best content in the world, but that doesn't necessarily lead to income.Income is designed. Your content is working. It's your system that's not working. And that's the difference. So let's talk about that big term I mentioned at the beginning.What does monetization design actually mean? Monetization design means how your content connects to revenue. It's really that simple. It's not some pie in the sky idea. It's not rocket science.The problem is most creators never build that connection. You can create great content, but they never design the income side of this. They don't think about where it leads, what it sells and how it converts.See, there's two kinds of money in content creation. There's attention money and there's design money. Let's talk about attention money.That's those ad views, that's the tips like buy me a coffee and all those super chats, those small sponsorships. The problem with the tension money, it's fragile, it's thin. And basically what you're doing is you're buying rent by the click.But the other one is the designed money. And this is where you want to be and offer your audience actually once. And I love these because they're durable and they're usually far bigger.I'll give you a proof right now at the very top of this, Mr. Beast is one of the most watched creators on earth. But let me tell you something you probably don't know.His video business reportedly loses money every year, while his feastables, that's his snack brand. Guess what? It turned a profit of $20 million. So think about what he's put together. He's put together a plan.The content is debate, but the product actually pays the bills. So for Mr. Beast, the attention comes in, but for so many others, we get the attention, but the money never flows. So let's do a little creator audit.You know, I always do these on the show every week, and I think it's really something we can talk about. It's not just one client. This is a pattern I see over and over. And this may be you. You might be that creator. I could describe a hundred times.It's that creator who's a. Who sees a podcast growing steadily. Maybe 8,000 downloads per episode. Now you. And I might say, well, that's fantastic, that's great.The engagement is strong. They've got comments, they've got messages, they've got new followers. But revenue, nothing. Zero. So let's break it down.Like I said, the content is strong, the audience is growing. 8,000 Plus. But the problem underneath the hood here, the monetization design is missing. It's non existent.There's no offer, there's no system, there's no direction. So let me do the math for you. Think about it like this. 8,000 Downloads an episode. If just 1%, I'm talking about 1% bought.Even $1 50 thing, that's 80 people. 80 People at $50 each is $4,000 every single episode. That's $4,000 an episode. Walking out the door if you don't have it set up.And it's not because nobody's there. There are people there, but there's no cash register for them to do anything with. There's nowhere for them to buy. Do you see the problem?And here's the design failures I want to talk about. Here's the first thing. Step one. For most people, you haven't defined a clear problem. Your content is way too broad. There's no specific need.There's no reason for somebody to buy. And if you don't have a need, there's no reason for them to buy. Here's the second thing, no offer.You might have a great idea, you might have a pain point, but. But you're not offering any solution. There's nothing to monetize if you never offer a solution. Guess what? There's nothing that they can buy from you.But maybe you have that. But you don't have a path. That's step number three. There's no path. You didn't tell them what to do next.And if you don't tell people what to do next, guess what happens? They won't do anything. They'll do nothing. So let's talk about how do we fix this design? We're going to build what I call the monetization framework.I want to help you design a simple path. And I'm telling you, this is so very simple. It goes from content to problem, to offer and then to action. I want to say that again.Content, problem, offer, and action. And every episode's got to move people one step closer to that solution. That's the simple monetization design. So let's build it together.Let's go back to that 8000 download podcast and let's design this. Let's say that this particular show teaches people to grow their own podcast. It's a very common podcast in the podcasting market.Let's talk about the outcome. We gotta be specific here. It can't be like, I'll help you grow. That's never going to get anybody to do anything. Be very specific.So let's say in this case, I'm going to help you get your first 1000 downloads. We can see what that is. That's a number. It's specific, and it's there. Second piece, the offer.Start something simple, maybe a $50 mini course to build that first 1000 downloads. And then you build the path and see every episode ends with grab it at the link below. You understand the consistency.You understand you're giving them the path, and then you've given them an action. It's very simple. There's one link, there's one offer every single episode. There's no question marks. They get to the end.They're like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. I need to build those thousand downloads. It's going to cost me $50. Here's what I need to do. And think about what we just did to the math.That same 80 buyers, that's just 1% at $50 per purchase is $4,000 an episode. It's the same audience you had from the beginning, but now there's a Register.You haven't changed anything about the audience, but you change the design. And think about that. If you're doing a weekly show and you can derive $4,000 a week, that's $16,000 a month.Now, I'm going to tell you about proof here. I know a creator who designed the path and these people aren't lottery winners. I'm going to give you some real names here.We did some research for today's show. They built the path on purpose. They built all four of those same pieces. They built the content, the problem, the offer and the action.Let's start with Justin Welsh, what I call the solo path. Now, Justin writes short content on LinkedIn. He's got a newsletter to over 200,000 subscribers. This fellow has no employees and no ads.He built one offer, two simple digital courses. Now this is by his own reporting, he claims that he's gotten $3.3 million in course sales. What's the lesson here? He didn't get bigger, it's just him.He got designed. Do you see the difference? Let's look at Ali Abdaal. This is the offer path. This is what Doctor who taught productivity and studying on YouTube.And this doctor spotted a specific problem. How do I grow on YouTube too, man? You can see these are all over YouTube. So they built an offer, what they called the part time YouTuber Academy.And that course is his biggest single income stream. It's bigger than his YouTube ad money. Did you hear what I just said? It's bigger than his YouTube ad money.See, everybody on YouTube's chasing after that ad money. But what did this person prove? Build something that somebody will buy. The lesson here is the audience named the problem and he built a solution.Let's talk about Amy Porterfield. This is how the person can build the path itself. She teaches course creation and every piece of content points to one next step.And for her it's join the email list and then she launches offers to that list. A business built on the list and launches is not about ad views and she has been super successful in it.Because the lesson here is the email list is the path from listen to buy. As soon as you hear her podcast, you see her show. What is she telling you to do? Go get me your email.Once she's got you on the email list, she's built the path. Once she's built the path, she just takes you along that path. Well, let's talk about Mr. Beast, the biggest attention person on the planet.And like I said earlier, they say his video business reportedly lost $80 million in a year. You heard me right. Lost 80 million. But his snack brand Feastables turned a $20 million profit. What does that teach us?The big lesson here is attention alone will bleed money. If you're listening to me right now, you're watching this, you know, attention bleeds money. It's the offer that actually pays.It's the offer that generates revenue. And what can we learn from all of these? Every one of them designed the road. I love, love this part because it leads you to. I bought this.Now, some of you might be saying, wait a second, Ralph, you're telling me I'm going to sell out? I'm going to be one of those guys that sells out.I don't want to be salesy or you know, Ralph, my audience, they love me, but they're not going to pay for anything. Want to tell you right now, designing a path isn't selling out. It's finishing the job. You've already given them the value. They're coming back to you.They're building that interest in you. You're actually doing them a service. You're telling them where to get more of it.And in order to do all of these things, you've got to build intentional content. It's one thing to put out content. Content shouldn't just inform people. It should lead them to something.Every episode needs to answer one simple question. What is the moving my listener towards getting? What is it leading them to do? If your content answer is, it's not leading them to anything.That's your problem. Think about Amy Porterfield. Her whole engine is one answer. Get on my list. What's your one next step? Your content can't just inform people.It's got to lead them to somewhere. Now maybe right now you're thinking, Ralph, the truth is my content doesn't work at all. But. But income doesn't work either, friend.I'm telling you right now, you don't need a better content. You need better design. And I'd love to talk to you. You can do what I call a content monetization audit.You can go to https://contentcreatorsaccountant.com/audit we'll put a link in the show notes, but again, that's https://contentcreatorsaccountant.com/audit and I'm going to show you one on one. We'll talk about where your design is broken, we'll talk about what's mixing, and best of all, I'll show you how to fix it.All right, so now I'm going to give you the action steps. I'M going to give you the receipts that you came for. Here's the first thing you've got to do.You've got to define the outcome that fixes that first failure. Define what result your audience actually wants and be specific about it. In Ali's case, the audience wanted one thing. They wanted to grow on YouTube.Here's the second step. You got to build the offer. What can you create that delivers that result that. That one? You're going to get them to.You're trying to get into a result. Start simple. Justin sold two courses, not 20. A lot of people say, well, I'm going to build this and I'm build that. Focus on one or two things.Build what they want, build what's going to get them to them and design the path. There's got to be a what's next? They can't just come and listen and go, what do I do now? Click a link, join a list, book a call.If there's no path, there's no cash register. If there's no path, there's no conversion. Think about Amy's path, the email list.And then once you do all of those things and it sounds like a lot, but it's really not, then you've got to align your content. Listen to me. Every episode has to be in alignment. Every episode needs to reinforce the problem, the solution, the.And your expertise that will move the needle. And then you won't have to say, why is my content not making money? Because your content isn't the problem, it's the design.You can have great content, but without monetization design, it always feels like it's not working. Think about Mr. Beast. Think about Justin and Ally and Amy. They all design the path on purpose. If you fix the design, everything changes.Stop leaving $4,000 an episode on the table. Listen to me. You can make $4,000 an episode with just a little bit of effort. So apply for that content monetization audit today. Do it now.As soon as you're done listening to this, go to https://contentcreatorsaccountant.com/audit again. That's https://contentcreatorsaccountant.com/audit. And let's turn that content that you work so hard for into income. Because in the end, this is what I do.I'm Ralph Estep Jr. And I am the content creator's accountant. And I'll see you on the next episode.