Monetize Your Platform: How to Grow Sales With Your Online Platform

Have you built your own platform?

Are you wondering how to monetize it?

To learn how you can use your platform to generate real revenue for your business, I interview David Siteman Garland for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview David Siteman Garland, who is the host of The Rise To The Top podcast. His video and audio podcasts are focused on equipping bloggers, podcasters and YouTubers to grow a sustainable business with their platforms. He also wrote the book Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business.

David shares how he grew his platform and the various ways he has monetized it.

You'll learn how to get started generating revenue and the price points you need to look at.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Platform Monetization
Why people struggle to make money with their platform

David says it's a classic problem for most people. The platform space falls into two different categories.

The first one is when it's a hobby. Here people have great content but don't know what to do with it.

The second one is where you have the classic "Internet marketers" who have figured out how to make money but their content isn't great.

David's advice to those who have great content but struggle to make money is you have to remember that you're positioned extremely well. If you have great content that's a side hobby, you can turn it into a legitimate six-figure–plus business.

David started out the exact same way. What he and his friends have achieved shows that it's very attainable.

You'll discover why it's a good position to be in if you're a blogger, podcaster or YouTuber.

A lot of the time, people lack strategy on how to generate revenue. In David's eyes, the hard part is building your audience, community and trust. Once you have all this in place, the monetization angle can be brought in pretty easily.

The hardest challenge is to start with no platform and no product. If you already have the platform, then you are 50% of the way there.

Listen to the show to find out how you can use technology to accomplish what traditionally businesses had to pay a lot of money for.

What is the platform you have built?

David started his platform The Rise To The Top in 2008, when it was a simple interview show for entrepreneurs. His show now focuses primarily on what he calls mediapreneurs, who are people with a platform.

He currently has over 7 million community members.

When David was on the journey of building his platform, he realized he was pretty good at creating content, building his audience and getting out there. The main struggle for him was how to turn it into a sustainable, long-term business.

There are many ways to monetize a platform. It doesn't come down to which one will be best, it's more about which one you are really excited about and want to do. You have to feel comfortable with it.

You'll discover the many ways you can monetize your platform.

From a content perspective, David publishes two brand-new shows every week on his platform. One is an interview and the other is a video for his The Rise To The Top and DSG TV YouTube channel. You'll discover what both of these involve and the areas he focuses on and why.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDv4DsRy_ys

Listen to the show to find out how David discovered the options he went with.

What you should do before you monetize your platform