Transcription
On October 11th, 1994, I was. It's dumb to start off with a joke, bro. I'm not that old, bro. Come on. I'm I'm 24. I am unknown in some circles, but in this circle, I'm not.
On October 11th, 2023, I hit 200,000 followers on Instagram. Somehow, I found a way to convince 200,000 people to click the follow button, which to me is still absolutely incredible cuz why would you follow me, bro? Like, besides the fact that I'm handsome and like handsome.
But in all seriousness, this felt like a bigger accomplishment than graduating college. I'm not even joking. One of my friends even made me this chocolate cake to celebrate. It was a magnet cake. It was nice.
But even though I had hit this insane accomplishment, there was something very, very wrong. I wasn't making any money. I was a brokie, bro. No bread to my name. I had done a few brand deals at the time. I did one for like a desk for like $400. But for the most part, I thought that if you had 200,000 followers on any platform, you should be making a lot more money than I was making.
So, I decided to do a thing that a lot of creatives, I think, are very afraid to do, but want to, and that is switch the niche that you're in for another niche, and it and it worked. It worked very well. Obviously, spoiler, I'm sorry. And because I switched out of my old niche, I'm now able to do brand deals in the six. I wish I could say seven, but in the six and five figure range, which is incredible considering, again, I was only making a few thousand in my previous niche.
So, in this video, I want to go over how it is I determined the correct niche I want to be a part of, what it actually looks like to successfully transition from one niche to another, and some tips that you can use cuz I know you need it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like I'm just trying to be truthful. Like I that's why you're here. Some tips that you can use if you want to transition out of the niche that you're in into something different. Maybe not even for monetary reasons, but to something different.
Hello, my name is Joel. I'm a content creator. I've been doing content online for a long time now, which is crazy because that only means like 2 or 3 years in this industry. And I posted a video on one of my second accounts about pivoting niches that a lot of people were interested in because I pivoted successfully. So, I just want to share how I did that with you guys here.
Now, the first thing is determining what niche I actually want to switch into. Back to the story I was telling you originally, I had hit 200,000 followers. Fantastic. And at the time, I was making fitness content. Now, for whatever reason, at this time, motivation was at an all-time high. I don't know if it was because we were past COVID and people were just motivated to do something with their life, but the content at that time was extremely tailored around personal growth, branding, building yourself up as a person. My content stood out in this space because it was made with an actual camera, and I tried to make my content look as cinematic as possible. This allowed me to grow insanely fast. I'm talking at one point, I think I grew a 100,000 followers in one month. It was ridiculous how fast this content let my account grow. But this is something I've learned very unfortunately. Not all followers are created equal.
Now, before I move on, I want to be extremely clear. This video is about monetizing through brand sponsorship. Specifically, brands trying to put their content on your page in some way to give to your audience. The reason I say that is because there are a whole bunch of monetization strategies that you can use. But I believed at that time and I still believe now that this form of monetization, brand deal specifically, is not only a growing industry, but currently they are paying out insane quantities of money because they really need this content from their creators. So that's why I want to focus on this strategy specifically. If I wanted to do something like fitness coaching, which I don't want to do, and I had my fitness page, that could be a very good means of promoting that service, but it's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to get into making my account more applicable for brands who want to sponsor stuff on my page and collaborate with me. Understand? Yes. Okay, cool. Now we can move on.
So, taking a look at my page, I wanted to identify why my strategy didn't work. Even though I had so many followers, I was really, really good. My page had very, very good visuals. My page also had very, very good engagement. By the way, engagement is one of the most important things that you're going to use as a metric for a brand to show them that you actually are worth someone sponsoring. If you have a post with a million views, but you have no one who's reposting or sharing or liking or commenting or saving the video, what is the purpose of the video? No one is actually engaging with that content, which means no brand is going to want to actually be a part of it. That's why you should not use bots to increase your your clout online. It's not going to work. And you also look dumb, too. You look stupid.
Now, even though I had good engagement and I had good visuals, it was very clear that my page was in a niche that only a few brands could capitalize from. At the time, I had two brand deals that were pretty much the biggest ones that I remember having at the time. One was ASRV. It's a clothing company. If you look at my page, you can see a whole bunch of content I did for ASRV. They were great to work with, by the way, just to be very clear. The other page was C4, which makes energy drinks. Also great, and I was making $1,000 a month for a few months with them. Okay, so $4,000 a month with this account that has over 200,000 followers. That is not good. That is not good.
Now, these brands worked out really well because they were so closely tied to the fitness niche, but you can see why it was difficult for any other company to want to be a part of it. I didn't really have very much except for providing motivation as my product to my audience, and anything outside of that my audience really wasn't interested in. So, I had to make a change.
At this point in my life, I was planning to move from the smallest state in the US, Rhode Island, to Charlotte, North Carolina. Literally, just to to to change things up, bro. I had to move out of my house. And during this time, I thought it was a good idea to also change my content strategy cuz why not? Why not change the thing that is making me money for something that could potentially make me lose everything that I have? Because progress, you got to take the risk to you got to take a you have to take a risk cuz risks you have to take a risk in life to win the biscuit. I don't know what I'm saying.
Now, you can imagine me sitting down in North Carolina thinking, how do I make this transition happen? Let's determine what niche we should even be in. Now, there are, of course, a lot of profitable niches that already exist, but it's very important not to just do the thing that you think will make the most amount of money. The reason being, it's not going to be fun if you're just doing something for the money. I I strongly stand on that and I fortunately think that I live a life that reflects that. If I'm doing something just because it makes the most amount of money, what makes it any different from me working my engineering job? Because engineering is a great discipline that makes a lot of money. I I don't I I don't really see very much of a difference, so we're not going to do that here.
So, after some thinking, I decided I'm going to do the thing that I see a lot of people who do seem like they enjoy their lives a little bit more do, and that's make the niche yourself. And I think that this is one of the biggest cheat codes that you can get if you're trying to create content online. I want to build a personal brand around a few things that I'm extremely extremely interested in and then take the things that I was really good at before and integrate them into this new content. So, I'm really good with cameras and I'm really good with filming. So, I knew that going forward in whatever content I do, my camera skills and my editing skills were going to have to be an integral part of that content. And since I wanted to make this niche myself, which we can call lifestyle, it opens up the door to so many more brand deals because everything that I use in the world is made by some brand. And if it's made by some brand, that brand probably has a marketing connect. And if that brand has a marketing connect, I think you can see where we're going with this as well.
Now, making this new type of content was obviously very different for me. So, I needed to figure out what things I should absolutely include to give me the highest chance of success with this whole new endeavor. And I noticed three things from a bunch of accounts that I followed who I thought were doing very well in the space. One, they use their face. Two, they use their voice. And three, they're always telling some kind of story. And to me, this makes sense on like a very human level. The best ways that we're able to connect with people are by talking to them directly. And the best ways we're able to remember information is through a story. I'm pretty much using human psychology for our benefit. You should be doing that, too. And if you're going to be using your face in your content, you're going to want to make sure that you look good. And that's why this video is sponsored by Panasonic and the Arc 6 and AR 5 shaver. Look at that. The Panasonic R 6 has some of the most advanced technology you can have in a shaver. It has six blades that are forged from hypoallergenic steel. That's crazy already. Because I have thicker skin, I normally have problems when shaving, but the R 6 gives you a smooth shave every time. Smooth and stubble-free even after 8 hours. That's a full workday. And unlike this reviewer here who complains about the battery life, this thing can go multiple days on the same battery. And compared to the Ark 5, the Ark 6 gives a much closer shave and will continue to give you the same shave you received day one after 5 years. That's a whole 5 years. So, if you're ready to upgrade your shaver, shop the Ark 6 and feel the difference.
Now, back to the video. So, like I was saying, face, voice, and storytelling. And everybody loves a good story. And that's why this video is sponsored by I'm just I'm joking. We already did the Panasonic one. Thank you, Panasonic. You guys are too serious.
So, with all this information, I decided to make a 30-day posting challenge where I was going to film my life cinematically. And I wanted to use a cinematic because that is again something I knew that my previous audience was very interested in. And it was bad. I lost a whole bunch of followers. My viewer count was absolutely it's like it was cut in half. It was very clear that my audience was not as receptive to this new type of content as I would have hoped. And guess what? That's okay. There's no way that you thought this was going to be easy. Of course, 200,000 people who expect fitness content are going to be surprised when I move over to lifestyle. It's just how it is.
Now, the good news is, and this is kind of weird to say, so understand me, not all followers are created equal in how they interact with your page. Because even though it's scary to see people unfollowing you, the people who are unfollowing me were not going to be in support of the content that I wanted to produce anyways. So, it's okay if they leave. And even though people were unfollowing me, there were many people who stayed around because they still liked my content, and even more people who saw the videos and decided to follow me from it. The important thing here is we need to reframe our definition of success. Success is not the amount of followers that you have. It's the quality of the followers that you have. And it's not to say that the people who used to follow me were bad quality, but for what I'm trying to achieve, I need a certain type of person who's interested in more than just receiving motivational content from my previous life. I say this because this process took 6 months. It's an exhausting process to see your follower kind of go up and down and to not really know if you're doing the correct thing. But I'm a very strong proponent that if you are able to stay consistent on some things, you will begin to see the results even if they take a little bit of time to see. Do you believe that? Cuz you you're going to have to believe that if you're trying to switch out of your niche. I'm just letting you know.
So instead of focusing on the metrics too much, I now have to focus on how I can continue to get better with the content that I'm posting every single day. This means getting better at telling stories. This means getting better at speaking to the camera. This means getting better at choosing what shots to use as B-roll that tell the story better. And it was late in the summer that I started to see this actually pay off. I got a brand deal for a laptop. I got a brand deal for Cologne. I got a brand deal for a projector, for Cash App, for Patreon. I started getting these brand deals that I would absolutely have never gotten, and I mean never would have gotten if I was in that previous niche, because it wouldn't make sense to be on my page. But now it makes a lot more sense since I'm able to tell stories to my audience and because they're receptive to those stories. This is the funny part about this whole thing. I was getting hundreds of thousands of views on my previous post, yet I was making way more money with less views on my current post. Like I said, the retraining of my brain to focus on the metrics that actually matter did so much better for me in the long run than being worried about getting the most amount of views on my page. And this is the way that you're gonna have to do it as well.
Now, more recently, it seems like I'm focused on making more tech content, which also happens to be one of those huge niches. And I'm not doing it for the money. I'm just a nerd. There's something wrong with me, cuz sometimes I buy more stuff than I buy clothes. But I know y'all like this sweater, so I still can dress.
All right, I want to leave you with some tips that you can use if you are trying to shift into another niche. Firstly, I would extremely extremely consider creating a personal brand. I don't think that there's ever been a better time in history to make videos about your life and get paid for it. So much of the stress and pressure gets taken away when you can create videos about your life. Now, there is a trade-off with this in that you lose some of your privacy. But again, I think this is the best strategy, at least for me, for long-term growth on social media. And a way you can start doing this easily is just identifying the things that you really are strangely obsessed with that other people might not find that interesting and then talk about that.
Number two, if you can take your existing strengths and bring them over to this new content, for me, that's my editing ability, like I said, and my camera quality. Bringing that part over and not just showing up with an iPhone one day and starting to create content made that transition a lot smoother than I think it could have been. So, make sure you're bringing something along with you that your audience is still familiar with.
Like I said before, use your face and your voice in your content. For whatever reason, I've been asked on brand deals to make sure that I'm using my face and my voice. I don't think this is ever going to go away regardless of what niche you're in. It establishes your personal brand. It makes people feel like they're talking to someone. And that's going to be very appealing when some brand is trying to collaborate with you. And on the same token, tell stories and learn how to tell a good story. It doesn't have to be a long drawn out thing, but know how to keep your audience engaged with a nice story.
And last but not least for this, change your definition of success. You don't have to have a million views on every video to be successful online. You need the right audience. So, if we can focus on getting you the right audience, then we can focus on pointing you in the right direction. That sound good? Yes. You want to like the video now? Cuz I didn't say it until the end of the video, which I always keep forgetting. But if you're still here, you're just a real one. You should like the video, though. Like, actually, it would help me out a lot. I'm I'm not even joking with you. I hope you guys did enjoy this video. If you have more questions on things that you think that I might have missed, leave them in the comment section. Anyways, I hope this really helped you out, and I'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye.