The idea of monetizing your personal brand and message can feel uncomfortable. Being called a sellout or having people feel you're insincere is the last thing you want. While it's important to protect your reputation and never dilute the value of your message, it's also important that your day to day activities are generating revenue. 

Content Marketing is the foundation of a strong personal brand, and content is something you can monetize with passive selling. Every piece of content doesn't have to be a sales pitch for your products or services, but putting an option to make a purchase or transaction into the content, means that it has a revenue-generating option, for those who want to buy.

Give People the Option to Buy, They'll Make a Choice

Just giving your readers or viewers or listeners the option to buy is important. If you want to monetize, consider how you can do it in a way that also creates value for the audience. Here is a simple example for YouTube:

"Hey guys, a few of you have been asking me about the new Merch and Shirts over on Instagram, so I just wanted to show you 2 of the new designs real quick! They're available over in the store! My designer worked really hard on them, and we're super excited that we finally got these out. If any of you have bought them, tag me in your shots with them over in Instagram! I'd love to see them and I might feature some of the funniest ones at the end of an upcoming video here on the channel!"

What you'll notice about the above is that it's not an unsolicited sales pitch. If anything it's a very casual conversation, and an invitation to engage at a deeper level. There is also an opportunity for those who want more exposure on YouTube or Instagram. It also highlights that someone or a group within the overall audience asked for this specifically.

When you take approaches like this, monetizing won't feel uncomfortable.

There are people in your audience and that need resources and help too and if you have affiliate links, putting them in the sidebar of an article or in a resources page, or better yet as links in your YouTube video descriptions or the show notes of your Podcast, then your audience can benefit from things they want to buy while still adding revenue to your pipeline. If they are going to buy it at some point anyway, you getting value is a bonus.