Start Working With Big Brands as a Small Creator.

No inflating numbers or selling your soul.

Making money as a small creator has been thought of as tough in the past. Sponsorship opportunities were less accessible, making it challenging. 

And for good reason.

It actually is really hard.

But with more and more platforms emerging daily with better and always-improving incentives and partnership programs, if done correctly, a small creator can easily make 4–5 figures a month online.

I’ve structured this list by being most accessible to smaller creators as they grow and expand their needs in this department.

You’ll find as you grow, all the moving parts can get quite difficult (and boring, let’s be honest) to handle all on your own. This is where you’ll start to look into expanding your team.

But we’ll get there. For now;

1. Get a Well-Made EPK

An EPK or Electronic Press Kit is essentially an interactive resume and guide to your content. Consider it a crucial component in securing sponsorship deals.

As a graphic designer, I have to emphasize the representation of ‘well-made’ in this summary because it doesn’t matter if your press kit is beautifully designed; if it doesn’t work properly, you may not get the click-through you are hoping for. Literally.

You can’t depend on the fact that whoever sees your kit first will think you’re interesting enough to first, look into you further, and second, have to hunt you down cause your links aren’t working.

It’s not only unprofessional looking, it could cost you a partnership.

Select a 5-star seller on Fiverr who specializes in EPKs and be very forthcoming with any and all existing branding and imagery. You’ll no doubt get an amazing kit ready to blast into the cybersphere.

2. Fish, Fish, Fish.

Once you have an eye-catching, clickable EPK, it’s time to get it out there.

You can apply for major partnerships or affiliate programs most of the time directly through the company’s websites, easing your path toward sponsorship opportunities.

If you have ever wondered if a brand has an affiliate program, simply Google the company name + ‘partner program’ or ‘affiliate program’ and if one exists, you should be led directly to an application.

Some brands are under umbrella troops that maintain several companies, creators can choose from, and often those structures are how I’ve come across some of my favourite, more lucrative partners.

If you’re having trouble finding what you need that way, your best bet is to reach out through the website’s contact page. Sometimes marketing emails or business inquiries will be directed towards a certain email address, but you may just have to start by filling out the contact forms if that’s all that’s available.

Beyond that, you can hunt down people who work directly for the companies you’re going after. Professionally, through social media, of course, don’t be a weirdo about it.

3. Fake it till you make it — Kinda

There are partner programs all over the interwebs offering up amazing compensation for absolutely no qualifications.

Megacorps like Adobe and Amazon have free and available access to affiliate programs that you can use as a building block, not only to start making money through your content, but to show your desired brands what you can offer if they were to work with you.

Put effort into these little ad clips as if a real company was paying you for a 1-minute spot.

While doing these quote-on-quote free ad spots won’t pay you nearly the amount as a paid partnership, the hope is to generate at least a small amount of affiliate dollars from your audience clicking through to learn more.

Furthermore, these can act as audition tapes for any potential partners interested in you. If they see you can follow a script and successfully pitch a product and/or service, you’re already a step ahead of your fellow up-and-coming competition in securing sponsorships.

4. Sign with Management

It’s true, by far the best and most direct way to access the PR department is through the well-known associates that are in their inboxes every single day.

These are managers. The ones that handle all the legwork between you, getting a job, and getting paid for said job.

They’ll negotiate absolutely everything on your behalf and often have large networks of companies they already work with, they can easily integrate you with.

Earning can often come quicker and in bigger waves, but being represented also means you share a cut of your profits and may have limited creative control, but it’s important to weigh out the pros and cons and how they fit with your specific business model, especially when sponsorship deals are part of the mix.

Overall, consistency is key.

And I know that’s a broken record statement by content creators for content creators at this point, but I think the repeated sentiment further drives home the point.

Your audience likes to know what to expect, and so do investors, making sponsorships a goal worth pursuing consistently.

Well, that’s all I got for you for now. I hope this has helped out on your journey to monetization.

Thanks for hanging out,

Half Pint.