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Jay Heinrichs@jayheinrichs
How to make a living in
CONTENT
Let’s talk Katy Perry.
How much does she
get paid to perform in
the Super Bowl
halftime? Zero. Katy
Perry makes content.
Music. But she’s not
getting paid for it.
Why? Because she
benefits from the
audience. That’s true
of content in general
today: The value
doesn’t come from the
content. It comes from
the audience’s
attention.
$1 $1
This explains why Henry James made $1/word
writing for magazines in 1865, and why Kate
Silver makes $1/word today. Henry James’s dollar
was worth at least 21 times as much. The
difference is in the completely changed business
model of media. Used to be, media gathered the
audience and then paid for the content.
Advertising paid the bills. Today, marketers are
shifting their budgets away from advertising. And
most media no longer can afford to gather
audiences themselves.
McKinsey & Co: “Marketing Disruption”
MARKETERS WHO WILL KEEP THINGS THE SAME.
19% 81%
MARKETERS WHO PLAN TO SHIFT BUDGETS TO
CONTENT AND NEW CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCES.
Where are the marketing dollars
going? Toward content: blogs, videos,
social media. Stuff created by
individuals who gather their own
audiences.
Clicks, Sweeps
Entry, Votes,
Comments
Click to e-
commerce,
Conversion
AWAREN
ESS
Reach (total
impressions), Views
Sharing, Likes or
Follows, Contest
Entries, Samples
CONSIDE
RATION
PREFER
ENCE
PURCHA
SE
LOYALTYReferrals, User-
Generated Content
DECISION
“JOURNEY”
Marketers are all talking
about the decision journey:
the path a consumer takes
from awareness of a product
to brand advocates.
Increase brand awareness
Get people to try a new product
Drive traffic to a brand site
Drive users to social media channels
Get more followers
Drive engagement with a promotion
Capture email addresses
Get content to feed social channels
Increase sales
Build relationship with influencers
KPIs
Key Performance
Indicators
Here’s where you come in.
1. Become an
influencer.
I’m going to suggest 15 ideas. All
of them come down to this.
InfluencerMarket reach
Independence
Frequency of impact
Expertise
Persuasiveness
Role throughout Decision Journey
This is what an influencer looks like to a marketer. She
has gathered her own audience and reaches them
daily. They see her as an expert in their passion, and
they’ll follow her opinion. Plus, she influences them to
buy products and become brand loyalists.
Razorfish used influencers to market a new
model of Mercedes even before the car came out.
The agency created cargo mats, the same shape
as the car storage space, and sent them to top
people on Instagram.
The Instagrammers created visual stories of
adventures they would take with the car.
Razorfish (and Mercedes) paid them to do
this, because they were talented, yeah, but
mostly because they had gathered their
own big audiences.
Influencer Pay
$200
$200,000
Marketers will pay top pinners on Pinterest up to
$200,000 to promote a brand. You probably won’t
make anything like that. Still, it shows you’re
responsible for your own audience.
I like to experiment with ways to attract audiences.
Here’s a recent one, psychomixology.com. I create
cocktails that celebrate individuals, and serve them at
parties to raise money for a local charity.
If I wanted, I could profile top bartenders and show consumers
how to create their own amazing drinks. Say I gathered an
audience of 200,000 drinkers. I could approach a distiller like
Seagram’s and offer to use its booze in my drinks. Or I could
offer to do special blog posts for destinations that want to attract
tourists, such as city convention and visitors bureaus. I’m just
doing the site for fun. But you can use your journalistic skills and
creativity to carve a niche.
2. Find a tiny niche.
The Self
PublisherDan Poynter
Dan Poynter self-published a manual on
hang gliding in 1973. It sold 130,000
copies. In 1979, he published a manual on
self-publishing. Starting with a small
audience, he made himself into a multi-
millionaire.
3. Gain legitimacy
with a book.
Writing a book helps you gain
expertise, and it makes others
think of you as an expert.
I did this with my own book on rhetoric, the art of
persuasion, and sold it to Random House. The book has
sold more than 175,000 copies so far. I’m not making
anything near what Dan Poynter made by self-publishing.
But people see me as an expert on persuasion, and that
makes me money.
3. Collaborate.
But you yourself don’t have to be
the expert. You’re an expert
writer. Partner with an expert who
can’t write.
The
CollaboratorLou Schuler
A former Men’s Health editor, Lou Schuler paired
with a top fitness trainer to writes a series of
books called The New Rules of Lifting. Lou self-
published them. He has since gotten certified as
a trainer himself. But he still works with his
partner.
5. Start a publishing
company.
Self-publishing is getting easier all the time.
You can have books printed and sold in
Barnes & Noble; you can have physical books
and ebooks sold on Amazon, without using a
traditional publisher.
The PublisherBrad Herzog
Brad Herzog started out publishing his own
books, then branched out into publishing other
people’s books—including his own son’s. Once
you learn how to self-publish, you have a
marketable skill. You can charge an author to get
a book into print, or take a cut of the sales.
6. Form a network.
The most successful influencers
leverage the audiences of
colleagues.
The Networker
K.J. Dell’Antonia
K.J. Dell’Antonia runs the parenting blog for
the NY Times, “The Mother Lode.” She has
developed a network for the leading
parenting bloggers, attracting a huge
audience of neurotic mothers.
7. Become a remora.
This means taking the gleanings
of rich people in need of your
editorial skills.
Every fund manager writes a newsletter for
investors. And every fund manager wishes he
could write like Warren Buffet, a witty guy. You
can charge good money, not just editing the
letters but teaching the managers how to write
more like Buffet.
8. Pursue an issue.
You’re a journalist, not an entrepreneur.
What if you just want to write stories?
One solution: go deep into an issue with
a big potential market.
The JournalistMegan Feldman
Megan Feldman wrote an amazing story for me, about a
murder. The father of the victim got together with the
grandfather of the shooter, and they now teach forgiveness
around the country. Megan went on to find other forgiveness
stories around the world, and she sold a big book, The Heart
of Forgiveness, to Penguin. She shows how forgiveness can
help you, and can help save the world. It’s coming out soon
and will be a bestseller. And people will consider Megan an
expert on forgiveness.
9. Become a speaker.
Once you become an authority,
people will pay you to speak.
The SpeakerRegina Barecca
Gina Barecca, a literature professor at the University
of Connecticut, wrote a hilarious book on women’s
strategic use of humor, They Used to Call Me Snow
White (But I Drifted). Companies pay her to speak
about ways to avoid gender conflict. And she makes
them laugh. A good speaker can make $20,000 a
speech.
10. Pursue your
passion (and work a
real job).
There’s something to be said for writing
what you want, and earning a living
some other way.
The PoetSarah Lindsay
Sarah Lindsay is one of the nation’s leading poets.
One of her books got nominated for a National
Magazine Award. What does she do for a living?
She’s a copy editor for Pace Communications,
working on the Verizon account. She writes amazing
poetry in her spare time. Of all the people I’m talking
about, I admire Sarah the most.
11. Teach.
Also not very lucrative: Teaching.
The TeacherLisa Jones
Lisa Jones writes for the Smithsonian, and she
published a wonderful nonfiction book, Broken,
about a horse whisperer/Indian shaman. She just
drafted a terrific novel. Lisa teaches writing
workshops in Denver. She gets paid for it, but she
told me that the teaching makes her a better
writer.
12. Gather a video
audience.
The VloggerNatalie Tran
Natalie Tran is a terrific writer. She
used her skill to gather a huge
audience on YouTube, doing a
series of funny videos about her
life.
523,000,000 views
$150,000 annual income
Besides the money from YouTube, Natalie got
Lonely Planet to send her around the world making
videos of cool places. She and her boyfriend just
started a video production company, which will
make more money. You can start with your
smartphone. One of the scarcest skills in online
video is writing. You can write.
13. Diversify.
I love to experiment with stupid projects. Some years ago I wrote
a story about self-publishing for the Southwest Airlines
magazine. To prove how easy it was, I conceived, wrote and
published a book in two hours. It’s called Sniff It First, And 15
Other Things I Learned From My Cat.
It’s a terrible book, and I said so in the story. The point
was to prove the concept. But two weeks after the story
came out, blurb.com sent me an email saying several
thousand people had bought the book. The automatic
markup was $2/copy. That’s the most money I ever
made per hour. The moral: it pays to experiment.
14. Work for karma.
Even more important, it pays to work for
free. For instance, I did this talk for
ASJA for free. Somehow, good things
will come from it.
Writing
Content
Persuasion
Speakin
gWriting
Content
Persuasion
Speakin
g
Other
Income Mix Time Mix
Other: Study, video, new
skills, rhetoric classes, silly
projects
Here’s a breakdown of my income streams (left) and how
I spend my day (right). I spend more than half my time on
things that don’t actually make me money—yet. I’m my
own laboratory.
15. Find your one
great story.
Not that you should give up writing stories. But if you ever
plant to pitch to me, be warned: I’m not looking for “a”
story. I’m looking for your one story, the one that will turn
into a book and make you famous. That will break people’s
hearts and make them want to dedicate their lives to
serving humanity. Narrative features are the one place an
editor doesn’t have to serve the consumer decision
journey. Let’s not waste it.
Show me a story better than this one. It’s by Kate Silver, and it’s the
best story we’ve run in Southwest: The Magazine. May is a service
dog trained by prisoners at the Bedford Women’s Prison. Jacob is
an Iraq War veteran with PTSD. May literally saved Jacob’s life. (My
friend Tyler Stableford photographed the piece.) People still talk
about it. It’s told with heart, and it’s why we became storytellers in
the first place. There are easier ways to make money. But if you
think you can beat this story, I’m all ears.
JayHeinrichs.com