If you’re an influencer and managed to rack up 1,000 subscribers, you are definitely on your way to earning good money. Actually, if you want to make money with a website, then 1k subscribers is more than enough to make you money.
Even if you run a successful membership site, you may be overlooking ways to monetize your subscribers. But, can 1K subscribers make money?
In this article, we take a look at some different strategies you can use to turn your subscribers into cold hard cash.
Can 1K Subscribers Make You Money?
Yes, 1K subscribers can make you money, good money, even, but you will need to charge for your products or services and use a combination of strategies to boost your earnings.
In the world of YouTube or Instagram stardom, 1,000 subscribers aren’t that many… but what matters is how much they’re into your message. Are they raving fans, or do they not really care about your content?
If you have 1,000 fans, rather than 1,000 passive viewers, then you can make good money even with that low follower count.
But, subscribers alone don’t automatically translate into income. Making money will depend on how you monetize your audience. And, how you do that will really depend on what niche you’re in.
Here, we give you some different strategies that you can use to make some money with a relatively small subscriber base.
Sell Your Products Or Services
First things first, if you have a product or service to offer, you need to offer these to your subscribers for a price.
Think about your subscribers as a list of warm prospects. Let’s say that you’re in the photography niche discussing how to do landscape photography. Your 1k follower count should be seen as a list of 1,000 followers who are really into landscape photography and warm prospects that you can offer a paid product or service.
Whether you are offering physical products, digital products, or some kind of service, your subscriber base is a valuable starting point for selling your products. This strategy should be your first focus, even with a smaller audience.
Create A Paid Newsletter Or Offer Premium Content
If you are offering quality, free content that your subscribers love, consider offering access to a paid newsletter or exclusive content. This could be in the form of pay-walled articles, high-quality videos, or courses that are only available to paying subscribers.
This would involve bringing people off your preferred social platform to visit your own website. These days, there are many different membership platforms, like Wix, that have made it easier to create different tiers of memberships or subscriptions.
Keeping with the landscape photography niche, you could encourage your subscribers to visit your website to sign up for behind the scenes content, landscape photography articles, etc, in a type of e-magazine.
Online Communities
By creating an exclusive online community, you can turn your free members into paying subscribers. You will need to offer specific areas, like private forums or private access areas, where your subscribers can connect with each other and share comments, ideas, or advice. Membership plug-ins like MemberPress can help you build a thriving community.
A landscape photographer here could set up a membership where you offer to critique the work of budding photographers, in order to help them improve their craft. Membership meetups and trips could be an important part of building community and bringing in a significant amount of cash.
Accept Donations
If you’re an artist or a creator, then platforms like Buy Me A Coffee allow your subscribers to support you financially on a once-off or monthly basis. If your content provides value, some of your subscribers may be willing to ‘buy you a coffee’ or contribute a tip in appreciation of your work. This model works well if you have a strong relationship with your audience. Even if only 10% of your 1K subscribers give you $3 per month it’s a start to making money.
$300 per month is not much, but it is still $300 you wouldn’t have otherwise. But, to make the big bucks, you’ll have to think of a more involved offering that you can sell your 1k strong list of warm leads on. 1k subscribers can make you money, but how much you make will depend on how much work you want to do to bring in that cash.
Advertising and Affiliate Marketing
Another low-effort, low-income, way to make money is to advertise on whatever social media platform you built up your audience on. Ads do not typically provide much in the way of revenue. A better way to go is to sell products on your channel as an affiliate marketer. You can make much more money doing this, but note that Google hates affiliate marketing websites so has ravaged the industry recently. If you go this route on YouTube, for example, there’s a chance that Google will take action against your channel at some point.
Another consideration is that you can also make far more money with a subscription or membership website than you can with affiliate marketing, and the level of work is about the same to achieve those results.
While 1K subscribers might not seem like a lot, they can be highly valuable if you know how to monetize them effectively. The key is understanding what your audience values and what they are willing to pay for. There are several avenues you can use to generate income with a small base, however, your success depends on the perceived value you provide, and not just on the number of your subscribers.
Read next: Why Start A Membership Business?
