In this article, we’ll break it down into ten steps: how to start a side hustle and grow it into a reliable income stream. We’ll also share a few side hustle ideas you can start today.

Let’s get started.

10 steps to start a side hustle and find success

Here are the steps to start your side hustle idea and become successful with it.

Step 1: Find problems you can solve

Most people approach this by googling ideas. A Google search can bring up a ton of side hustle ideas you can choose from. But here’s the issue: for the most part, the search results won’t paint the complete picture or tell the whole story.

For example, a post can only go as far as to tell you that “freelance writing” is an excellent side hustle that could earn good money. But it won’t go as deep into what it entails, such as content ideation, keyword research, SEO, distribution, and more.

Instead, you can check out resources from people who’ve already built a passive income. Then conduct an introspective analysis of your skills and the value you can bring to others.

Here are some resources you can start with:

• Side hustle ideas: Here’s our ultimate list of 13 side hustle ideas that you can easily implement. The post also includes unique success stories that illustrate what it looks like to reach your goals.

• Side Hustle Secrets: Discover unique resources for growing a side hustle, tips to help with your mind map, plus a checklist of side hustle secrets.
• Launching a Side Hustle When You’re Strapped For Cash: This is a video podcast by best-selling author Chris Guillebeau. Besides covering how to do a side hustle the right way, Guilleabeau also offers a free copy of his new book, The Money Tree.

As for assessing the value you can bring, it’s always best to find ideas that require skills you already have or ideas you’re passionate about (we’ll cover how to do this in step 3).

Step 2: Set clear expectations

It’s not just about the extra income; a side hustle can have many additional benefits. Here are the main benefits you can expect from a side hustle.

• Diversify your revenue streams: For the most part, a side hustle will help you earn money outside your salary.

• Learn new things: For example, creating an ecommerce site can be extremely rewarding if you plan to become a digital marketer. You can learn the basics and gain firsthand experience.

• Hone your skills: Let’s say you’re a freelance consultant. Working with different clients can become a catalyst for acquiring new business skills or developing existing ones.
• Become your own boss: Embarking on a side hustle can force you to step up, think creatively, and make decisions about your next moves. You can be the CEO of your own company.

So, be clear about what you expect from your side hustle. This will help you set key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones you want to hit. From there, these KPIs will help you make decisions about your next steps. For example, is the side hustle worth it? Should you allocate more time to it? Is it feasible to quit your job?

Step 3: Come up with side hustle ideas (that you’re passionate about)

At its core, a side hustle is something you do alongside your regular job, so you’re likely to quit it if it stresses you out. That’s why it’s essential to choose an idea that you’re passionate about.

Consider the pros and cons of each idea and make a list of the ones that you’re excited about and can reasonably execute.

To find the right side hustles for you, ask yourself:

• What skills do you have that you can channel into a side hustle?
• What kinds of things do your friends or colleagues usually seek your help with? Do they fit into any of your side hustle ideas?
• Hypothetically, which of the side businesses on your list would you do for free?
• What is one activity that, once immersed you’re in it, you lose track of time? Does it match up with one of the side businesses on your list?

Step 4: Figure out what you’ll invest in your side hustle before you can start 

You can easily sign up for a physical service side hustle, like Uber and TaskRabbit, and start making money. However, you can’t always do the same with side hustles like freelance writing and selling digital products. Plus, it requires even more investment if you want to cook up the idea from scratch.

Most side hustle ideas will require some form of investment before you can start and get something out of them. Here are investments you need to consider:

• Time: Whichever side hustle idea you choose, you’ll need to invest your time toward getting started and then actually doing the work. For some ideas, it might take months to learn or to start seeing results.
• Money: Some side businesses also require a minimum upfront investment. For instance, if you want to sell online products through dropshipping, you’ll have to invest in a website, advertisement, etc. Many folks may have to invest in additional knowledge (like buying online courses, playbooks, guides, etc).

Step 5: Do market research and define problems you want to solve

This does not apply to all side hustle ideas. If your side hustle idea is more of a physical service or does not require you to cook it up from scratch, you should be fine. This applies more if you have an idea that needs development to become a small business that people are interested in. Here’s how you should proceed.

1. From the side hustle ideas that you listed, identify the one that presents problems that you’re most enthusiastic about solving.
2. Make sure that there’s a target audience that actually needs this particular solution. You should verify that your idea meets the needs of a specific audience. Technically, a target market where your idea will sell.
3. Next, learn as much about the target market as you can. Answering these questions should help guide you:

• • Who are my potential customers? Find the people who can benefit most from your solution. Bonus: find the people who face the problems that you’re passionate about solving. This will help you define your ideal customer profile (ICP).
  • What are my customers’ buying habits? Identify trends in the target audience when it comes to purchasing products and services. You should consider both physical and mental factors. This will allow you to create marketing plans and materials that best align with them.
  • How large is my target market? This should be self-explanatory. Determine the size of your market and you can use this plan for product development and distribution.
  • How much are customers willing to pay for my product? Essentially, you need to determine the purchasing capacity of your audience. This will help you set ideal prices.
  • Who are my main competitors? It’s always a good idea to know who you are going up against. This lets you define the best strategies and come up with a unique value proposition that beats them.
  • What are my competitors’ strengths and weaknesses? The result of this analysis will help you understand how things are currently being done and what could use some improvement. It will also help you determine performance standards you need to meet for your audience.

Step 6: Come up with an MVP on your idea

Following your market research, here’s what you’ll need to do next:

• Formulate a minimal viable solution/product/offer: You’ll need to present your solution or idea in a way that is valuable to and suits your target audience. This is the state of your side hustle business as you take it into the actual world. Think about framing it from the audience’s perspective and make sure that the solution you offer actually quenches their thirst.
• Get it up and running: At this stage, you need to figure out a few things to get your side hustle up and running. These include components like a channel to deliver your solution (e.g., ecommerce site, wholesale, mobile app, etc.), a way to accept payments, and more.

Step 7: Validate your side hustle idea to ensure it’s viable

Now that you know the pros and cons of starting a side hustle, things to consider, and investments to make, it’s time to test your idea to see if it’s viable.

The best way to ensure you have a viable side hustle idea is to get the first customer. This is proof of concept for your idea and it indicates that your solution has been met with actual demand. To get your first sales:

• Use the results from your market research to choose a few of your target customers and reach out to them. This can be done via social media DMs, email, and more. Pitch and sell them your MVP.
• Additionally, look at your own network and contacts. You can call people you know who you might need the service or product you’re selling. Pitch and sell them your MVP.
• Ask these potential customers to give you feedback on how you can improve.
• Ask them to refer you to their friends.

Your goal here is to determine if your side hustle of choice is sustainable—both in the short and long term.

If your target audience has not shown any semblance of interest in your business during the whole trial period, then you should consider another side hustle idea.

However, if after the trial period you have either achieved your goals or made progress, then your side hustle is viable. You can now decide how much time you want to devote to it.

Step 8: Test multiple marketing channels and strategies

First question. How would you communicate with your target audience?

To answer this question, look into the marketing channel(s) you want to use for awareness, evaluation, purchase, delivery, and after-sales communications with your target audience.

Popular choices include email, website, and social media. But a website is, for the most part, mandatory. You should create one and use the other channels where the target audience spends time to push them to your website.

Ideally, the marketing channels you choose should be the places where it’s easier to talk to your target audience. Information from the market research you conducted will also help here.

Second question. How would you deliver your value proposition?

Now we’re talking marketing strategies.

These are the strategies you use to wrap your product or offering up in a neat bow. From there, you can target and convert your audience. Your goal is to get their attention, show them the value they can get from your solution, and get them to buy. Usually, your marketing channels help reflect the best marketing strategies you can leverage.

For example, if you rely on a website, consider content marketing through blog posts along with SEO. For social media, depending on the social platform you use, focus on creating specific content types, maintaining a steady publication cadence for the best results, or engaging in social media ads.

Step 9: Scale

Once your side hustle business starts to take off, make provisions for it to grow. Essentially, you should create systems that help you secure a consistent flow of customers.

Evaluate your initial goals: do you want to turn it into a full-time job or just keep it on the side? If your goal is to turn it into a full-time job, here are a few steps you’ll need to take:

• Create marketing funnels: The best way to scale your side hustle and ensure a consistent flow of customers is to optimize your marketing strategy to constantly bring in new customers. That’s the beauty of funnels. Marketing funnels allow you to walk your customers through the entire buying journey without having to be there 24/7.
• Use the right software and tech: Your small resources or one-person business structure will not limit your growth if you’re using high-quality software. With the right tools, even an increased workload won’t compromise your performance.
• Hire: Expand your team so you can delegate some tasks and focus on the more important ones. If you’re not ready to hire just yet, estimate the point at which you’ll reach workload capacity on your own. From there, create a timeline for hiring.
• Documentation: Build and document SOPs and business processes that work best for you.  This can help you set up a system to scale easily. Plus, your current and future employees can use it to quickly familiarize themselves with your business’s best practices and flatten the learning curve.
• Take the side hustle seriously and treat it like your full-time job.
• Deliver outstanding work and ask your clients to refer you to new businesses.

Step 10: Set clear goals and milestones

Growing a side hustle business is hard, and quitting a job is risky. You need to ensure that you don’t quit your job only to keep looking back out of regret. So first, you’ll have to create a schedule for yourself that accommodates both jobs seamlessly.

In the beginning, you don’t want to devote too much time to the side hustle at the expense of your full-time job. So, it’s best to start small to get a feel for what it’s like to do both jobs before you can (gradually) devote more time to your side hustle.

Next, you should set up clear goals, milestones, and KPIs that define what success means to you. After getting your first customers, you’ll be able to determine a performance level at which you can devote more time to the side hustle. The idea is to do it gradually—that’s why you need to have goals and milestones.

Depending on your expectations, the KPI can be your revenue, for example. Let’s say your side hustle generates almost as much or more than your full-time salary. From there, you can consider giving it more time or quitting your day job to sustain the side hustle and grow it into a fully-fledged business.

5 side hustle ideas you can start today

Here are a few side hustle ideas to get you started.

1. Become a freelancer

Working as a freelancer means being self-employed and working on your own terms. As a freelancer, you’ll lend your expertise or services to individuals or companies and charge them accordingly. The sky’s the limit when it comes to freelancing: you can become a freelance writer, designer, copywriter, virtual assistant, web developer, programmer, and much more.

To get your first few clients, consider signing up for freelance platforms like Upwork, Craigslist, Freelancer.com, and ProBlogger. You can start small, doing it only in your free time, and grow as you gain experience. Depending on the gigs you take on and the platform you use, you could make anywhere between $50 and $2,000 per month. In the big leagues, there are freelancers earning over $15K per month.

All things considered, freelancing is more demanding than many might think. Aside from being competitive, the barrier to entry can be high if you don’t have a strong portfolio. The good news? Constantly honing your skills and networking with peers can make all the difference. You can even get hired from social platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

There are countless freelancing success stories out there. Consider the journey of Kelly Vaughn. Kelly worked a tedious government job with basic benefits. One day, she found the courage to venture into the freelance industry as a web developer and quickly found success. Building up over 10 years of experience, she’s currently earning over $32,000 a month as of 2021.

Pros

• Self-employed
• Decide your own rates
• Many freelancing skills can be learned online
• Work on your own schedule
• Choose and control your workload
• Flexibility to work on a variety of projects and topics

Cons

• Inconsistent work and cash flow
• Mentally demanding
• Tough competition
• Fast-paced business area
• No paid time off

2. Provide physical services

If you’re physically inclined, you can help people with specific activities and charge for them.  What are some physical services you can do as a side hustle to earn good money? The list is nearly endless: furniture assembly, laundry, yard work, dog walking or pet sitting, lawn care, fitness coaching, moving, junk hauling, cleaning, being a referee for local sports, delivery, and so on.

Whatever physical activity you decide to sign up for will depend on what you can do and what your availability is. Keep in mind that some activities in this area may just be one-time engagements. You’ll need to constantly be on the lookout for clients or services to make this option viable in the long term. Luckily, there are specific platforms you can sign up for that can expedite the gig search for you.

For example, you can sign up for TaskRabbit, an app that connects users with local freelancers who can take on a wide range of physical services. For food delivery, check out platforms like UberEats, DoorDash, Postmates, etc. Wag! connects users with local dog walkers. Platforms like Trainerize and TrueCoach help you get paid as a fitness instructor.

Once you’re signed up for any of these platforms, you can start browsing physical services near you. Each platform has its own specificities, but for the most part, you can set your own rates. According to Viggiano, fully committed users can make up to $6,000 per month on TaskRabbit.

Pros

• Beneficial to people with many physical skills
• Perform several activities at once
• Many platforms and communities to help you find gigs

Cons

• Mostly one-off gigs

3. Create online courses

Are there any topics or skills you’ve mastered that you’re passionate about teaching to others? If so, you can create online courses, upload them to a teaching platform, share your skills, and get paid to do it. Once you grow, you can even collaborate with folks that have parallel expertise to create more impactful courses.

The best thing about online courses is that the hardest part is creating the course itself. After that initial hurdle, you don’t necessarily have to be there for people to sign up or buy your course. This gives you the flexibility to create other courses and make a passive income 24/7. All you need to do is focus on promoting the courses and your audience will soon follow.

To master this, you can target a specific subject or age group. This will help make your expertise more valuable. People in a niche will be much more likely to trust and engage with your teaching materials. Popular teaching platforms you can leverage include Podia, Kajabi, UpCoach, and Mighty Networks. These platforms will provide you with the best arsenal to create, market, and sell online courses.

Jacques Hopkins was an engineer with a knack for piano. So, he started with a side hustle, creating an online piano course to help adults learn to play the piano as fast as possible: Piano In 21 Days. Today, Hopkins has grown his course into a full-time business with four employees, earning over $40K/month.

Pros

• Teach your expertise
• Make money discussing topics you love
• Many platforms and communities to help you find gigs
• Work from home
• Create your own schedule
• Small classes
• No formal education required

Cons

• You may have to pay for certain teaching platforms and tools
• Building a course can be mentally demanding

4. Create and sell digital products

Creating and selling digital products on Etsy or Shopify can be a worthwhile side hustle. For example, templates help businesses, students, and freelancers save time and facilitate work. So you can create downloadable or printable templates in your free time and sell them on Etsy.

Shopify and Etsy’s potential for these types of products is immense. For example, one downloadable digital product helped Alissa Rose generate over $25,000 in sales.

Artistically inclined? Casual crafters can turn their hobby into a business. You can create and sell handmade goods like jewelry, pottery, cards, or anything else.

Pros

• Self-employed
• Earn money out of hobbies and crafts
• Charge your own rates
• Flexibility to sell almost anything you can create

Cons

• High competition
• Requires digital marketing knowledge
• Need to market your products constantly

5. Start an ecommerce site

Enterprising sellers can make millions through ecommerce products. The success stories are countless. Creating an ecommerce business (aka dropshipping) has become one of the go-to and most lucrative side hustle ideas of our time.

The idea is simple. You set up your ecommerce site, research and find the bestselling products from a third-party manufacturer, list and price the products (with your own profit margins) on your site, engage in digital marketing strategies to market the products, and get people to buy them. As people buy, the third-party manufacturers will ship the product on your behalf and you’ll collect the profit.

The most challenging aspect of setting up a successful ecommerce site is always having an eye for which products sell best. Before you start off, you’ll need to take the time to familiarize yourself with the ecommerce space, build your knowledge, and learn from others’ successes as well as failures.

Pros

• Self-employed
• Charge your own rates
• Flexibility to sell almost anything
• Easy to find products
• Easy to get started
• No need to buy inventory upfront or store it
• Low overhead costs
• Easy to grow and scale

Cons

• High competition
• Can be more expensive than traditional retail.
• Need to market your products constantly
• Requires digital marketing knowledge
• Requires major ad investment.
• Limited control over quality and branding

Start now, make passive income

Starting a side hustle can be daunting, but it’s without a doubt one of the best paths toward a sustainable passive income.

The tips above will help you start just about any side hustle idea. However, note that most success stories or side hustle idea lists won’t paint the full picture. You’ll have to do a lot of research and take action to see how it goes for yourself.

Ultimately, a great approach is to start small and figure it out along the way. In the beginning, you should keep an eye on what you can manage as a side hustle while holding onto your day job.

Want to learn more about side hustle ideas and strategies to find success? Get more exclusive content on side hustles in the AppSumo store. Check it out.

In this article, we discuss 13 side hustle ideas you can start easily, earn good money from, and have fun doing. We’ve also added unique success stories to inspire you along the way.

What is a side hustle?

A “side hustle” is a project you do outside of your day job to earn extra money.

Some people use the extra income to pursue their investment and saving goals while some use it for taxes. According to DollarSprout, over 41% of Americans with a side hustle rely on the extra income to cover regular monthly bills and expenses.

Side hustling is also a way for some people to earn enough money independent of their main job so they can quit afterwards. For example, 18% of side hustlers in the U.S. hope to turn their activity into a full-time business, likely motivated by a desire for more control and freedom.

Top side hustle ideas that will earn you good money

If you’ve always wanted to get into a side hustle, here’s our pick of the best side hustle ideas to pursue.

1. Freelance food delivery person

Doing food delivery as a side hustle is a mainstream activity. The online food delivery industry is changing the way people buy, and it’s soon to be a 200 billion-dollar industry, according to Forbes.

You’ll find anyone from students to retired people doing food delivery, and it guarantees a solid stream of income. This side hustle is particularly profitable because people love the convenience of food and grocery deliveries. So, companies like UberEats, DoorDash, Postmates, GrubHub, etc., are constantly on the lookout and pay a good sum to people willing to deliver food.

For example, Chase Anderson, an MBA graduate, embarked on doing food delivery for Postmates to earn extra money. He was making $100 a day. He described the job as rewarding and liberating. Eventually, he added GrubHub and DoorDash to his delivery plate and made $1000 per week.

As long as you have a phone to install the food delivery apps, a car or a bike or scooter, and live in a big enough town to sustain it, you have all it takes to become a freelance food delivery agent.

You can do this side-hustle on weeknights and weekends. If you enjoy  riding/driving around town, you’ll likely have more fun with food delivery. Keep in mind that time management is an essential component of the job—the faster you deliver, the more money you can make.

Resources to get you started:

1. How to start a food delivery business
2. How to Earn $4000 a MONTH With This Strategy!

2. Retail arbitrage—buy and resell items for profit

Ryan Grant, a retail arbitrage entrepreneur, has made over 2 million dollars in annual recurring revenue since 2013, buying products from Walmart and reselling them on Amazon.

True story, we had to beg Noah to keep being our CEO at AppSumo after he discovered the side hustle and its money-making potential.

The idea is buying cheaper products at local stores like Walmart, Costco, (and the likes) and reselling them at a higher price on another platform like Amazon.

As you go to the local stores and find products, you can use the Amazon Seller App to take photos and get their price tag on Amazon. If the price appears to be higher, that’s where you win.

You can then list the items in your Amazon stores, buy them, and resell them at a higher price. You can even get creative and only purchase items that are rare or hard to come by on the market. Then buy them and resell them at your self-fixed-yet-reasonable higher price.

Resources to get you started:

1. The Ultimate Guide to Buying and Selling Online Businesses
2. Retail Arbitrage 2023 – The Ultimate Beginners Guide

3. Uber and Lyft driver during weekends 

Being a chauffeur for Uber and Lyft is a country-spinning side hustle idea. Chances are, some of your friends have already done this. But for the sake of being thorough, we’d still like to paint the whole picture to show how it works.

The idea is to make money out of rideshare driving. You must have a car, some free time, and be willing to chauffeur people around town—pick up and drop off passengers.

Next, you’ll install the Lyft or Uber app, sign up, check a few requirements and get in business.

Using the apps, you’ll find people needing a ride, and depending on your geographical situation, you can pick them up, drop them off, and get paid for it.

You can make anywhere between $5 and $20 per hour with Uber and $5 to $25 per hour with Lyft, according to SideHusl.com.

Case in point, Clarke Bowman, a Miami driver, registered at both Lyft and Uber, only worked on weekends and told Business Insider that he makes $257 for less than 14 hours of work—which is quite reasonable.

But Clarke enjoys more than the pay.

Here’s his take on the job, “A flexible job where you can make money and work whenever you want, with no minimum hours, no required uniform, and no angry boss.”

Here again, you need to be in a big city to sustain your side hustle. Cities with a smaller population and effective public transportation are likely to prefer public transportation, and it’ll be hard to find people to ride with you.

Resources to get you started:

1. How to Diversify Your Income in 2020
2. 7 Brilliant Hacks to Help You Make More Money Driving for Uber

4. Join a focus group

A focus group is a group of people assembled to participate in a discussion about a product before it is launched or to provide feedback on a political campaign, television series, etc.

Companies, especially small businesses and startups, are constantly looking for customer insights and opinions about their products before launching them. The company’s goal is to be clear on who their best customers are, their needs, and their interests—making it easy for them to create products people want.

Based on your niche and expertise, you can sign up for focus groups. The payout depends on whether it’s done online or in person, how long it takes, and the niche or demographic they’re shooting for.

YouTuber Graham Stephen told his story about being part of focus groups, and he earned anywhere between $5 to $500 depending on how much time it took.

You can sign up for platforms like FocusGroup.com, Survey Junkie, and Experience Dynamic to get started.

Resources to get you started:

1. Surveys For Money: The Best Sites To Take Online Surveys
2. Online Focus Groups: Up to $100/hr Paid Research Studies

5. Make money flipping items

You probably have many things in your house that you no longer need or use. You’ve probably packed them away in a box or stored them on a shelf.

What if, instead, you sold them and made a few bucks on the side? You can keep the stuff you’re emotionally attached to and sell the rest.

Want to go bigger? The real flipping business is when you go out on a quest or Craigslist, buy no-longer-needed items from people, and resell them for profit on eBay or Amazon.

Take pictures or short videos of the products you bought, list them with their descriptions, and ship them as people buy. Noah Kagan and Gary Vee are two of the biggest enthusiasts of this side hustle idea. Watch Gary Vee do it here.

People often list those items and sell them from their garage (as seen in the video), and you can purchase and resell them.

Anthony Frye has been making good money flipping items. He specializes in buying electronics and reselling them for profit on eBay. He reported that he makes up to $100 in profit per item and makes over $1,000 per month. So, this is a perfect side hustle you can do in your free time or on weekends.

Resources to get you started:

1. The 28 Best Items to Flip for a Profit: $50-5,000 a Month Part-Time
2. 40+ Easiest Things to Flip for Profit – Vital Dollar

6. User testing

Big software companies are constantly looking for people to test their apps or websites as part of their customer/product research and pay them for it. In most instances, they want to test the functionalities of the app or website, its responsiveness, or overall performance.

Now, you can make it a side hustle being part of user testing platforms and doing testings for businesses when they reach out.

Usertesting.com is a user testing platform you can sign up to be on. The platform pays testers anywhere between $4 to $120 per test. Specifically, they pay $4 for every 5-minute test, $10 for every 20-minute test, and $30 to $120 for live interviews.

Ted Rivers, a tester on Usertesting.com, shared an incredible story on Medium, reporting that he made more than $300 per month testing websites for businesses as a side hustle. The only skill they require is sharing unbiased thoughts on the tested product and providing actionable feedback. So, you can sign up and start today.

Resources to get you started:

1. 21 Sites That Will Pay You to Test Out Websites
2. How and Where You Can Make Money Testing Websites

7. Field Agent—Become an in-store field agent for brands

Field Agent is a retail-success platform that lets brands audit stores, conduct trials, and gather insights to improve the user experience using the Field Agent app.

The app lets you sign up as a shopper and guides you to complete instructions, such as trying new products, asking sellers questions in stores, test-eating foods, etc., and report back.

For example, the most popular types of jobs on Field Agent are in the audit section. There, you may be required to check the status of a product and how it is displayed in a specific store. You may have to take photos and answer questions about products’ availability and location in the store.

They pay you based on the task and how hard it is to complete. You can expect payments from $3 to as high as $30. You can also get free items.

Charlie Lake, an agent using the app, wrote in a review article that he was able to get up to $22 for a single task along with free perks, and tasks generally took minutes to complete.

Resources to get you started:

1. 
2. Field Agent App Review: Make Money Doing Easy Online Jobs from Your Phone

8. TaskRabbit—Doing physical freelancing jobs

The  TaskRabbit App connects users with local contractors in different fields. There are several freelancing jobs available such as cleaning, delivering, laundry, yard work, moving, furniture assembling, and more. Not surprisingly, the app was purchased by IKEA.

So, if you’re a handy person, this is the app for the perfect side hustle jobs. Sign up, enter your information and start browsing freelance physical jobs. The platform lets taskers set their own rates. Jamie Viggiano, CMO at TaskRabbit reports that fully committed users make $6,000 to $7,000 per month on the platform.

Case in point, Brian Schrier lives in San Francisco and joined the platform, thanks to a friend. He told Money.com that he was once paid $70 an hour to fold t-shirts for a startup company. He learned the potential of the platform and began taking it more seriously.

For the first few weeks, his earnings averaged ​​$1,500, and now he is fully committed and makes between $6,000 to $7,000 per month.

Resources to get you started:

1. How to Make Money With TaskRabbit Jobs
2. This Mistake Killed My TaskRabbit Business (AVOID THIS)

9. Become a ​​DJ

Amani Roberts started DJ-ing while working in Corporate America but then turned it into a full-time job. Interestingly, he started with almost no skills, only DJ-ed in his time off work but focused heavily on building the skills and networking in the space. He was able to earn half his 9-5 salary and decided to quit.

Now back to you. How do you feel about warming up the crowds? You can quickly build your brand, create a website to look more professional, and focus on honing your skills using DJ Apps and music mixing platforms.

After that, you can focus on networking in the space using social media. If you do well and get noticed, you’ll get invited to many events (corporate events, weddings, private parties, video making).  Just be sure to charge what you’re worth.

Resources to get you started:

1. EMP DJ | Discover products
2. Mixing for Music Producers

10. Start a consulting business

If you’re an expert in a field or have a day job specializing in a business area, you probably have insights that may be valuable to someone out there. So, starting a consulting business in your area of expertise can be an excellent way to capitalize on your knowledge, for good money too.

You may have to create a professional website and leave your contact information. Then build awareness through your connections and social media. People will hop on phone (consultation) calls to discuss ideas and get insights from you.

David Kelly, our General Manager at AppSumo Originals, does this very well. He created a quick landing page that showcases his area and level of expertise in startup marketing and charges $80 for 30 minutes of consulting and $160 for an hour.

Resources to get you started:

1. AppSumo’s Freelancing and Consulting as a Side Hustle 
2. The Elite Freelancer and Consultant Package

11. Become a private tutor

Let’s take math, for example.

Are you good at math?

Yes?

OK!

Can you teach math?

If you can replace math with any activity(ies) people will be willing to pay to learn and answer yes to both questions, then you can promote yourself as a private tutor, teach your skills in your free time, and get paid for it.

You can embark on freelance tutoring online and even get clients on the international level (teaching a language for example) and work with them through platforms like Zoom or Skype. Or, if you prefer, you can sign up with companies like VIPKID or Brainfuse to help you get clients. The only catch is that they pay you by the hour or per contract.

Trevor Klee is a student who has an incredible success tutoring online. He is a GMAT, GRE, and LSAT tutor in Boston. His tutoring business started as a side hustle, but eventually, he was able to turn it into a full-time business that earns more than $90,000 a year. At that point, he was working 2-4 hours a day, seven days a week.

You can start with a few hours a week and see how it goes.

Resources to get you started:

1. Build Your Own Tutor Service Booking Website
2. Learn How to Create Your Own Online Classes

12. Rover—Be a pet sitter

Do you love dogs or cats? Then sign up for Rover and get paid to hang out with your favorite pet animal.

Rover is an app that connects busy people looking for people to watch their dogs or cats. Most pet-sitting gigs on the platform are priced between $15 and $35. So it can be a well-paying side hustle, and you can easily sign up to be one of the pet sitters.

Ragan Riley was a senior in college who started pet sitting on Rover as a side hustle. It took her a few weeks to begin making clients on the platform. She made a video about her experience on Rover.

She lowered the price to be competitive and asked for reviews in exchange. Today, her Rover side hustle makes her over $400 a month. Melanie Lewis also had a fantastic experience, and she was even able to turn it into a full-time business.

Resources to get you started:

1. Ultimate Guide to Earning Money with Rover [2023]
2. How to Make Money on Rover: How Much Can You Really Earn?

13. Sell templates and downloadables online

Etsy is popular for anyone with a handy skill to create a product of their own, market, and sell it. A good idea for a side hustle on the platform is to create templates and printables and get people to buy them.

Companies, students, freelancers, and many people are constantly looking for templates to facilitate their work process and save time. Choose a niche and create your templates. Next, shoot breath-taking pictures of your product and list them on your Etsy store.

Alissa Rose made over $25 000, selling only one digital downloadable product. So, the potential on Etsy is huge. She made a video about it.

Resources to get you started:

1. ​​How To Make Money Selling Printables On Etsy | I Made 86K On PASSIVE INCOME & You Can Too!
2. Passive Income With Printables

4 tips to help you choose the best side hustle for yourself

Here are a few tips you can use to choose and focus on the right side hustle for you.

1. Decide how much time you can dedicate to it

Ask yourself a few questions. Do you want to do the side hustle only at night or during weekends? Can you afford to do it every day? How much time do you want to dedicate to it?

No two side hustlers are alike. Some of your friends may spend just a few hours a week to make their sidle hustle work while yours may require entire weekends and weeknights. So be sure to choose a side hustle that work with your current availability.

2. Decide how much money you want to make from your side hustle

Knowing what you want to do with your side hustle money will help you decide how much money to aim for.

Do you want to cover your monthly groceries with it? Your utility bills? Do you want it to meet your goal of investing $200 a month?

Only after setting these expectations can you estimate how much you want your side hustle to generate.

3. Make sure you’re comfortable doing the side hustle

There’s no reason to keep doing something that doesn’t make you feel good. So ask yourself the following questions:

1. Am I comfortable doing this job?
2. Do I feel OK when people see me do [insert side hustle]?
3. Is it a great use of my time?

If you answer YES to these three questions, then you can keep doing that side hustle.

4. Follow your passion

The idea behind following your passion is that you are always motivated to get the job done. You’ll also find it fun to earn money doing something you enjoy.

Take the job of a pet sitter, for example. If you love animals, then just by signing up for Rover, you’ll find people who are ready to pay you large sums of money to do something that you would have done for free because you love it.

Start making money hustling!

There you have it. Everything you need to find, choose, make money pursuing a side hustle idea. If you still want to explore more side hustle ideas, here is a YouTube video by Noah Kagan you might find helpful.

Meanwhile, we encourage you to check out the resources we’ve provided to help facilitate your onboarding process and make it feel less like hustling.

This article details the core components of a marketing process and an example to inspire your own.

What is the marketing process?

The marketing process describes a series of actions a company takes to identify customer needs, study market trends and opportunities, and create marketing materials to reach and sell to its target audience.

The marketing process is generally an umbrella framework covering all company activities and strategies. It typically includes everything from the mission statement, market analysis, research, marketing planning, strategy formulation, allocation, and budgeting to monitoring and auditing.

6 crucial steps to nail your marketing process

Here are the different steps a marketer must follow to establish an effective marketing process.

Step 1: Be clear on your mission and objectives

Marketing processes work best when marketing team members understand how their work is connected with the company’s overall success. That’s why the first step in designing a successful marketing process is to ensure that the company’s mission and goals are clearly stated.

Here are a few examples from leading companies to show you what a good mission statement looks like.

• Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
• JetBlue: “To inspire humanity—both in the air and on the ground.”
• Lego: “To inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.”

Identifying your core mission and making a clear mission statement gives your entire company a common outcome to work toward. All the departments and teams involved can now create marketing campaigns and processes that push the company towards attaining its objectives and fulfilling the mission.

Step 2: Conduct a situation analysis for industry positioning

A good marketing process also requires that you and your marketing team have a clear idea of where your company stands in relation to your market and competitors. For this, you will need to conduct:

1. Market analysis to obtain information about your total addressable market, potential growth, and evolving trends.
2. Competitive analysis to discover the products already available to your customers, your competitors’ offerings, the strengths, and weaknesses of existing products, etc.

Doing this will provide real insights into your market, and you can determine how to position your marketing endeavors to ensure success. Here are two ways you can run a situational analysis effectively.

Method 1: SWOT Analysis

The SWOT framework reveals your company’s internal strengths and weaknesses as well as its external opportunities and threats. This highlights the internal and external factors influencing your current process and how you can use these insights to set up a seamless marketing process.

Here’s how a SWOT analysis works.

Source

Internal factors

  Strengths: Find out what your company does well and take notice of the process that enables you to do it so well.

  Weaknesses: Find out what your company struggles with the most. What are the biggest barriers to growth? What could be improved to ensure a better marketing process?

External factors

  Opportunities: What are the things in your industry that can help you create an effective marketing process? In other words, what market trends or events can you take advantage of?

  Threats: Which things outside of your control (politically, economically, or socially) can potentially hurt your marketing? How do you stack up against other companies in the industry market?

Method 2: 5C’s Analysis

The 5Cs stand for company, collaborators, competitors, climate, and customers. This system is an alternative to conducting a SWOT analysis. Here’s how it works.

Source

1. Company

Conduct an internal audit of your company to determine your goals, missions, and visions.

Based on your audit, identify your strengths and weaknesses. For example, what strategies are helping you achieve your goals and vision? Are there any obstacles to your success?

2. Collaborators

Find companies with whom you are moving in the same direction. Essentially, companies with whom you share visions, goals, and interests. Here are a few questions you can answer to figure this out.

Which companies (new and established) can you work with to ensure a win-win for both parties? Which partner companies are making valuable contributions to your current marketing strategy?

3. Competitors

Determine who your competitors are and how they are currently performing? Who are your most significant competitors? What are their recent wins, and what keeps them from growing?

This will be helpful in defining KPIs and benchmark metrics to evaluate your current marketing strategy. Above all, you will discover how to engage your target audience and better appeal to them.

4. Climate

Analyze the external factors that can impact your company. These may be cultural, political, social, or technological factors. With this analysis, you will be able to make projections on your company’s future and potentially discover best practices to improve your marketing strategy.

5. Customers

Finally, you must clearly understand your target market’s value expectations. To do this, your analysis needs to pinpoint what your customers want from you, what practices and processes are best suited to them, and essentially how to win their hearts.

Step 3: Develop a marketing strategy

So far, the situation analysis has given you a clear idea of your company’s position in the industry. Now it’s time to use these insights to develop a customer-driven marketing strategy.

1. Define your target audience

Defining your target audience is the first step in creating a solid marketing strategy. Knowing your target demographic and what their pain points are helps you better understand how to assist them. More importantly, it enables you to craft a marketing strategy that resonates with them.

Here are a few elements to consider when defining your target audience.

Source

• Demographics let you categorize your buyers based on common patterns and traits. This is important because no two buyers are the same. Are you targeting Gen Z’s, Millennials, or Boomers? Are your buyers C-level executives or individual contributors? How much do they earn per year?
• Behaviors teach you how your customers act. What are their buying and spending habits, and how do they interact with products like yours?
• Psychographics teach about your target audience’s beliefs, interests and lifestyles. This information makes it easy for you to create marketing messaging that your audience can relate to.
• Geographic lets categorize the target audience by the places they live, frequent, and their economics.

2. Set S.M.A.R.T. marketing goals

Your marketing goals should be tied to your company’s overall goal. Also, each of these objectives should be guided by the insights gained from your situation analysis. That’s why your goals have to be:

• Specific. You should have a clear idea of what it takes and what you need to do to achieve that goal.
• Measurable. You need to be able to measure the return on investment of each marketing activity you undertake. How does each task contribute to hitting your target?
• Attainable. Are your goals realistic?
• Relevant. Are your goals relevant to your company’s overall goal? Do these goals tie to your business’ growth?
• Time-bound. Make sure they are achievable over a specified period of time. Can you achieve these goals within the time frame of your marketing strategy?

Source

3. Define channels for marketing strategy

Decide which marketing  channel(s) can help you achieve the company’s goals?

The information you gathered about your target audience can help you easily determine which channel is more appropriate to target them. For example, if your audience is young, you can leverage social media marketing to connect with them. If it’s an older audience, direct mail might be more appropriate.

4. Develop a marketing mix for decision-making using the 4Ps

After developing a strategy, decide which tactics will be most effective in achieving the strategy’s goals. To do this, you need to rely on four elements—namely, product, price, place, and promotion—to understand the best customer approach to achieve your goals.

Source

The 4Ps will guide how you communicate the value of your product to your audience.

Product: Decide which feature of your product to prioritize. You have to know what problem your product solves and why your solution is unique.

Here are some questions that will help:

1. What is the product or service?
2. What features does the customer care most about this product?
3. What type of needs does it satisfy? Is it a perception need or a subsistence need?
4. In what context will the customer use your product?
5. What is the difference between your solution and the competition’s?

Price: The price is the sum your target market is willing to pay for your product. The value of this money is not necessarily related to the manufacturing or marketing costs. It can be influenced by such subjective elements as the perceived value of your product. For example, this is part of what makes the difference between a $10,000 car and a luxury car costing several hundred thousand dollars.

Promotion: How will you get your product in front of customers? When is the best time to advertise, and how do you beat the competition in marketing?

Place: Where is your product/service produced, and how will customers find it? Where is it stored? Where and how is it transported? What are your distribution channels? What are the outlet locations? Where are your competitors reaching customers? You’ll need to figure these out for this part of the mix.

5. Implement your marketing process (Across your different marketing strategies)

The next step is to put everything you’ve built up to use. Reach out to your prospects or potential customers with your marketing materials to try and convert them.

Here are a few things you need to be doing:

• Setting up the necessary staff and budget to market your product
• Designing a marketing calendar
• Assigning work to the right people
• Setting up KPIs to measure progress

6. Analyze the results, Improve, Repeat

After implementing your marketing strategy, you need to analyze the results, take note of the progress, and make changes where necessary. Understand that it is nearly impossible to establish the best process for your business the first time around. Instead, be aggressive about regularly measuring and evaluating the results of your process.

Based on your goal and marketing strategy, you can track marketing KPIs and metrics such as revenue, sales, shares, comments, customer satisfaction, click-through rates, website views, email opens, engagement rates, conversions, or other data to measure your success.

A marketing process example to learn from

Here’s an example of a fictitious marketing process to get inspired by.

Mission: Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.

Situation Analysis: Tesla’s competitive advantage lies in its commitment to understanding our world’s environmental problems, focusing on products central to its mission, and fostering a sustainable world.

Marketing Strategy: Tesla is typically the first to market with new products, and the company relies on the brand loyalty of existing customers as a strategy for launching new products. On the side, they also leverage the influence of Elon Musk, founder of Tesla.

Marketing Mix: Although Tesla offers a range of products, it focuses on high-end pricing and relies on seamless, fast-food-style distribution.

Implementation: Tesla’s products operate within the same ecosystem. You can manage them using your phone or your car’s dashboard—all interconnected.

Develop your marketing process today!

This is, in a nutshell, everything you need to create or update your marketing processes. The steps listed will ensure an efficient marketing process.

That said, to plan, manage and measure the impact of your marketing efforts, you need access to the best tools. At AppSumo, we offer you not only the best tools but also the most affordable ones. Here are a few:

• WorxQ: This tool is designed to help businesses and their different teams be more effective and get more done. WorxQ allows companies to plan, capture, manage, automate, and report on work across the organization, enabling them to progress more quickly and achieve more results. Companies get to manage all sides of the business on the platform, going from marketing and H.R. activities to customer support.
• GoFlow: This tool empowers companies to automate their routine business processes with a few clicks and boost productivity. It is a tool that simplifies and streamlines your processes by allowing you to automate and manage leads, clients, employees, and more all in one place. The tool also provides advanced fields and filters for tracking performance metrics.

That’s why some experts recommend writing in-depth articles like content pillars to get the most out of your content efforts.

In this article, you will learn what a content pillar is, how to create one and how to get the most of it.

What is a content pillar?

A content pillar is an in-depth, informative, and authoritative piece of content on a topic that covers all the essentials of the topic.

You can create a content pillar as part of a content cluster/hub where it is the central article that links to other articles that delve into specific sub-clustering articles.

For example, if a pillar content is about the Paleo Diet, the sub-clustering pages will cover topics such as “what is a paleo diet?” or “how to maintain a paleo diet”.

Here is a real-life content cluster illustration from BuzzSumo.

If your content pillar is a standalone blog post, it’s usually an informative guide on a particular topic. In this case, it strives to explore the topic broadly and comprehensively and provides more immersive information.

It can be presented in an eBook, PDF, or a blog post divided into several headings and subheadings. Here’s a real-world example by Drift about chatbots.

What are the most common types of content pillars?

These are some of the most popular content pillar types:

• The what is: A detailed explanation of a complex subject broken down into chapters and segments.
• The how-to guide: A step-by-step article that provides your audience with detailed information about implementing something.
• The ultimate guide: A comprehensive time-bound analysis of every aspect of a topic.
• The listicle: A complete article covering all possible points about a single subject.

Why is a content pillar important in a content strategy?

Content pillars are important in a content marketing strategy because they benefit both the audience and the business in many ways.

It guarantees better engagement

Having a structured and resourceful piece of content that speak to your audience’s pain points will increase their perceived value of your business/website.

In turn, your bounce rate decreases and you get direct traffic. That combined with the on-page engagement your content gets pushes search engines to give your website better ranking.

It helps you stay on top of your business niche

Content pillars, in most cases, are driven by high-volume keywords.

These types of content are generally positioned to answer every question the reader might have, exploring the topic inside out.

Addressing topics at this scope helps you set yourself as knowledgeable. And because the content is extensive and broad, it addresses most of the beginner or newbie type of questions searchers may have.

After reading your content, most readers will automatically perceive you as an industry leader. For example, when a reader who’s new to sales and wants to learn more discovers Hubspot’s Ultimate Guide to Sales, reads the entire material, and finds it beneficial, they’ll automatically  perceive Hubspot as the go-to place for all things sales.

It helps you build a solid SEO asset for your business

According to Backlinko, content pillars have higher chances of getting first-page Google search rankings than regular posts. In a study, BuzzSumo found that content pillars are a natural fit for backlinks. Also, given their long-form nature, they keep visitors longer on your website, which increases your site’s dwell time, indicating quality content to the Google algorithms.

Even more interesting, they become an asset you can always link to in your other blog posts (i.e., internal liking). This, in return, contributes to building a semantic relationship between content on your website. You can easily build topical authority, which is one of the top-ranking factors on Google. This also means that Google will see your site as authoritative for your particular topic.

How to create a content pillar to fuel your content marketing

Here are the different steps you need to follow to create outstanding content pillars.

Step 1: Determine what business goals you want to achieve with your content pillar

This should be the foundation of every action you take in the rest of the steps. What goals fo you want your content pillar to accomplish?

Do you want to:

• Increase brand awareness?
• Educate your visitors?
• Create interest or desire?
• Deepen your relationship with customers?
• Encourage or increase free trial signups?
• Convert leads into paying customers?

Once you figure that out, you can easily define your key performance indicators and how to measure success or lack thereof. It’ll also help you determine the information you need to cover, who to share it with, etc.

Step 2: Understand your target audience

Creating a content pillar is a huge undertaking. You want to make sure your target audience finds it useful, engages with it, and bookmarks it or shares it.

As such, you need to spend some time studying who your audience is, what pain points they have, and why they want to solve that problem.

Strong customer research is invaluable here.  Your audience research should provide answers to questions like:

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• Who is our solution for?
• What does our audience know about this topic and what they don’t?
• What would they like to read in a content like this?
• What other content on search engines are talking about and why can’t it help searchers improve their situation?

Answering these questions will help you decide what to include in your content pillar—making it easy to create content that’s impactful.

At this point, you should be able to tell what keywords you want to target based on customer research insights.

For instance, if your audience’s main goal is to learn how to close deals during cold calls, you know you should create content around “cold calls closing.” If they are struggling to find tools that’ll helps them automate sales, you know you have to create content around “sales automation tools.”

If you still struggle to determine what keywords to target, you can use an SEO tool like the Ahrefs Keywords Explorer to do it.

Enter a broad keyword related to your niche, then look at the phrase match report. Know that this only applies when you want to create your content pillar around your core business topic.

For example, if you sell bags online, search for “backpacks.”

Then take inspiration from the keyword suggestions.

Remember that not all the topics or keywords you come up with are suitable for a content pillar. Choose a keyword that is substantial enough to build a content pillar. To do this, ensure that your keywords or topic follow these criteria.

• Informational intent: Keywords that suggest that the person has information needs, needs to understand, needs to have your opinion on the subject, or needs to learn how to do something.
• Traffic potential: A keyword with a high search volume in your industry.
• Broad enough: A keyword you can quickly expand into subheadings and segments to easily build your content pillar.

Step 4: Map out the subtopics or subheadings to cover

After you choose your preferred topic and keywords,  outline your content pillar. Here is how to do this perfectly.

1. Do keyword research

There are two ways you can implement keyword research effectively. Either way, your goal is to find phrases and keywords people search for that you can elaborate on in your content pillar.

The first way is to use AnswerThePublic. AnswerThePublic is a keyword tool that brainstorms Google searches and brings you the most sought-after phrases and keywords. These are basically questions that people ask about that particular keyword on Google. All you need to do is type in your root keyword or topic. Here is the report for the keyword “vegan”.

You can scroll down the page to get more results.

The second way is to use an SEO tool like Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer or SEMrush. Let’s use SEMrush for the sake of example. Let’s assume your topic here is “podcasting.” Type in your keyword and wait for the keyword overview report.

Now, the results you’re most interested in are keyword variations, people also ask questions, and related keywords.

2. Leverage top-ranking pages to pull out subtopics

Besides doing keyword research, also factor in what the top ranking pages for your target keywords are doing.

Skim through the top-ranking articles on your topic to pull out subtopics or headings you can elaborate on in your content pillar.

You can simply Google it and go through the first-ranking articles. If you want to be more thorough, use an SEO tool to find these articles. You can use Ahrefs SERP Checker and BuzzSumo for this.

Ahrefs SERP Checker is a SERP analysis tool that’ll help you find the top-ranking articles for your keyword, as well as their analytics so you can make informed decisions.

Suppose your keyword or topic is “content marketing.” Using Ahrefs’ SERP Checker, you can see what the top ranking pages for this keyword is.

You can also expand the SERP features like “people also ask” to find further results.

Now you know what subtopics you have to cover (people are interested in) regarding “content marketing.”

BuzzSumo helps you find the articles with the most social shares. Using this data, you can replicate the patterns triggering the engagement and social shares in your content pillar.

Simply type in your keyword and wait for the results. Again, here are the results for the “content marketing” keyword.

Analyze the results and take each page as a basis for building your outline.

Interestingly, the research box also suggests some keywords you’ll find helpful. You might also want to include those into your pillar content.

3. Be opinionated

Chances are, you will not be the only website on Google striving to attract traffic to the same topic. Your competitors will be there, too. So, you need to come up with unique and fresh angles/perspectives that make your content pillar unique.

Stand out from the crowd by sharing your opinion, analyzing the topic from different perspectives, using unique examples, presenting a contrarian view, or referencing popular culture.

Step 5: Write your content pillar

Now, it’s time to write your content pillar. This resource on content creation tactics can help you get started. But to be more specific, here are a few things you need to keep in mind.

• Add a clickable table of contents.
• Format the post for easy and convenient reading.
• Use short sentences and paragraphs.
• Set up headings to follow a logical structure that is easy to understand and scannable.
• Make sure the examples are topical and relevant so readers can grasp concepts more quickly.
• Each section should provide a comprehensive explanation of the idea.
• Maintain a smooth transition between paragraphs.
• Make it look beautiful by breaking up the text with images, videos, and infographics.

Do not take the post for granted. Invest in the look and UX. If necessary, hire a designer. It will be worth your investment in the long run.

Step 6: Interlink

Interlinking your content pillar to other articles on your website comes down to building a cluster. The essence of a content cluster in a content marketing strategy is to create a coherent set of complementary contents around your core business topic, a given issue, or to provide comprehensive information about a new offer you are launching.

With that said, interlinking is how you keep all the contents together as one hub. In the hub, the content pillar is the fulcrum, the most detailed and holding it all together. Now, this structure allows search engines to properly crawl your site because of the links between the sub articles and the content pillar. It also improves the visitor experience, as visitors can easily navigate the linked articles and find relevant content that complements each other.

But even if you’re building a standalone content pillar, it’s still a good practice to link to other articles on your website. For example, you can perform a content audit on your site and find articles that fall in the same ballpark (based on keywords or topic) as your content pillar and link to them.

Step 7: Optimize your content pillar for SEO

After creating your content pillar, you have to optimize it to rank on Google. This is, in general, one of the main motives for creating long-form content. So you need to be sure your content pillar is up to par.

Here are a few SEO practices you can leverage.

• Practice on-page SEO to avoid pitfalls and Google penalties. Use keywords in your title and heading tags effectively.
• Write a great meta description.
• Leverage FAQ schema mark-ups to answer specific questions with your content.
• Optimize all images by adding alt text and using keywords.
• Keep an eye on page speed to improve the user experience.
• Optimize for both mobile and desktop.

Step 8: Distribute your pillar content

By this time, your content pillar is ready, well-optimized, and posted on your site. Now you need to make sure you get it out there to your target audience.

Your goal is to drive as many eyeballs as possible to it. So, you need to start by devising a content distribution strategy.

You can consider organically sharing it through your social media accounts, sharing it in online communities, or even paid promotion to ensure maximum reach. Always ensure you share to places your target audience will see it and engage with it.

Step 9 (bonus): Repurpose your content pillar

Your content pillar is a resourceful asset you can use across multiple platforms, so leverage it at scale through content repurposing.

Consider turning your content pillar into a video for YouTube and social media. You can create Twitter threads, Quora, and Reddit questions and answers. You can create Slideshares out of tips and strategies, etc.

Step 10 (bonus): Get backlinks

Backlinks are tokens of confidence from other sites indicating the quality of your content to Google. If your content pillar is excellent enough, you can get backlinks organically from people reading your content. The more backlinks you have, the more your Domain Authority (DA) will grow and the more your content pillar will rank.

If you decide to get backlinks by publicity outreach campaigns, be sure to only get backlinks from sites with higher DA than yours.

Here are the top two strategies you can use for this.

• Guest blogging: That’s where you reach out to websites with a similar target audience as you, create content on their blog, and link it back to your site. You can link to your content pillar if it fits into the points you are making or explores the topic deeper.  Read our post about guest blogging to learn more.
• Blogger outreach: This is where you reach out to other blogs that you know will find value in linking to your content pillar and suggest them to do so. Read our post about blogger outreach to learn more.

Content pillars support your site

A content pillar is not an ordinary post, and it does not come as easily. It takes good planning, investment (time, knowledge resources, and budget), and execution to create one. Before you start creating one, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Ensure it has a unique design

Your content pillar needs to be different from the other articles in the cluster or on your blog. You need to make it clear that it is particularly resourceful content. And this starts with its visual appeal.

Hiring graphic designers will ensure that the images, infographics, charts, data, and quotes have a top-notch design in the content pillar.

2. Make sure it’s value-driven

While keyword research might indicate the phrases people are searching for on SERP, you may also want to consider talking to a few of your customers to get real insights into what truly interests them. It’s one thing to provide information, and it’s another thing to provide information that your target audience truly values and cares about.

Before you leave, here are some content tools you can use to create a solid pillar content.

Don’t panic. We’ve scoured the web to find the most successful content marketing tactics and made a list of 10 content marketing tips that will help you reach your goals.

1. Align your content plan with your business goals

Benefit: Getting the BEST customer insights to write amazing articles that speak to your readers.

Within a business, content marketing can be used by many departments, including marketing, sales, product, and customer success team. It can even be used to raise funds or position your business as a industry leader.

So when developing your content strategy, make sure it ties in with the different departments and verticals of your business. To start, you need to clearly understand your company’s ambitions and who the different stakeholders are.

Then, speak:

• To the customer success team to learn from your current customers and the type of content that resonates most with them.
• To the product team to understand what aspect of the company’s product customers like or struggle with the most.
• To the sales team to find out what type of content you need to create the most to double the number of Monthly Qualified Leads (MQLs).

Doing so allows you to craft a marketing message that addresses the pain points of your potential customers.

2. Design shareable assets

Benefit: Increasing social media engagement and building a solid backlink profile.

Non-text content like images, infographics, videos, charts, or flyers, are essential to good content marketing as they make your content shareable. These types of content easily grab the attention of internet users, are easy to digest, and are easily shared on social media.

After analyzing more than a million articles, BuzzSumo found that articles with an image every 75 to 100 words received twice as many shares on social media as articles with fewer images.

Shareable assets can also strengthen your backlinks, help you establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and generate leads. For example, let’s say you create an infographic that covers relevant and current issues in your industry. It can quickly become the go-to resource in your industry, get widely shared and receive tons of backlinks.

3. Use the principles of the content marketing funnel

Benefit: Feeding your prospects with the right content at the right time to seamlessly move them through the decision process.

The buyer’s journey consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and conversion. In light of this, there are three types of content you can create to help move buyers through the different stages together.

Top of The Funnel (TOFU) – Awareness

This type of content is geared towards generating brand awareness, getting the word about your product and business. At this point, your content is aimed at people who have a generic problem and are looking for solutions/resources.

For example,someone who wants to learn about email marketing and comes across your article “The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing.”

Middle of The Funnel (MOFU) – Consideration

At this point, your content is aimed at an audience that is pain-aware and actively seeking solutions. This type of content positions your product as one of the potential solutions to be considered. Your goal is to generate interest and trigger consideration from your leads.

For example, someone is looking for ways to improve their web traffic and finds your article entitled, “How to Find Keywords With Traffic Potential.” In the article, they learn about how they can do it using your software.

Bottom of The Funnel (BOFU) – Conversion

Here, your content aims to help the prospect make the purchasing decision. Usually, prospects at this stage of the buyer’s journey explore several solutions like yours but struggle to decide. So your goal is to convince them that your software is the best.

For example, someone is looking for alternatives to Hubspot and comes across your article entitled, “7 Best Hubspot Alternatives.” In this article, you place your software at the top of the list and write about all the features that make you a better alternative.

4. Create pain-point-related content

Benefit: Creating content that drives sales, user signups, trials, etc.

Most companies pursue traffic thinking it will help them increase leads.

So, for instance, based on this logic, if you have a task management tool like Asana or Trello, your goal would be to have 30,000 monthly visitors, hoping that it will get you 500 new leads per month.

So you create content like:

• “What a task management tool is and how it works”
• “The Beginner’s Guide to Task Management”

The problem with this type of content is that it is vague and does not address the reader’s actual problem. It will undoubtedly bring in new organic traffic but very few new leads. Besides, this type of article is not useful unless you’re creating an entirely new category.

Creating pain point related articles means taking a keyword and writing an article with an angle that speaks more to the reader’s intent.

For example, someone who Googles “Task Management Tool,” is probably looking for alternatives to Trello or is looking at all the options available to them. It would be absurd to target them with an article like, “What a task management tool is and how it works.”

You have a better chance of bringing in new deals by writing articles like:

• 7 Task Management Tools to Improve Your Team’s Productivity
• Task Management Tools: How to Choose The Right One

5. Create content clusters

Benefit: Building topical authority, dominating the SERP, and keeping a well-organized blog.

Source

Content clusters are groups of interrelated content that collectively cover a broad topic. The topic cluster model is based on a hub and spoke structure. Each cluster has three essential elements:

• A general-purpose pillar page
• Several in-depth cluster pages
• Strategically placed internal links.

Here are real-life examples from Drift about Chatbot marketing and DietDoctor about keto dieting.

• Chatbot Learning Centre — By Drift
• Keto for Beginners — By DietDoctor

According to Jonas Sickler of Terakeet, the interest of creating content clusters is that they provide contextual support for other pages within a group. They also create a strong internal linking framework to help users—and search engines—find your content.

6. Use video content as part of your content marketing strategy

Benefit: Boosting engagement with visual content and diversifying content mediums.

Video content is taking off as a marketing strategy. In fact, video marketing is all the rage in digital marketing right now, and the statistics couldn’t be more convincing.

• Nine out of ten people want more brands to make videos (Hubspot)
• 83% of marketers report that videos help them find more qualified leads (Wyzowl)
• A marketing strategy that incorporates video can grow revenue 49% faster than a strategy that doesn’t (Wordstream)

Source

In conclusion, there has never been a better time to start using videos in your marketing strategy.

Here is how to tie your video content to your content strategy.

• In your TOFU content strategy: You can use explainer videos, brand videos, company culture videos, etc.
• In your MOFU content strategy: You can use product videos, how-to videos, overview videos, demo videos, walkthrough videos, event videos, etc.
• In your BOFU content strategy: You can use testimonial videos, sales videos, personalized videos, training videos, case study videos, etc.

7. Collaborate with other industry players

Benefit: Building authority and winning new audiences.

Collaborating with other players in your industry is called collaborative marketing. It can help widen your content’s reach and provide authenticity to your brand. You can easily increase brand awareness, gain new customers and leads, and drive more conversions and revenue.

For all the marketers collaborating, it helps create a pool of recommended and trusted businesses.

Databox is one of the companies that find success with this strategy. They bring out like-minded marketers from different companies (with whom they can work effectively) to share their views and tips on achieving something specific the audience pool cares about. Here is an article exemplifying this.

8. Always match the 3 Cs of search intent

Benefit: Keeping your content in the good graces of Google and matching searchers’ intent.

No matter what type of content you create, you want to be sure Google keeps your website and content in its good books and that your content gets the traffic it deserves. The first step to achieving this is to nail down the three Cs of search intent.

• Content-type
• Content format
• Content angle

Google strives to suggest the most relevant answers to every search query, which means it matches the search intent behind every keyword. Here’s how.

Content-type

The most found content types on SERP include blog posts, videos, products, or landing pages. When creating content, your job consists of finding the most suited content type for your specific keyword.

For example, the most suited content type for the keyword “how to maintain a keto lifestyle” is a blog post.

Meanwhile, for “how to shoot a video,” Google suggested a video.

So, always factor in the content type when targeting a given keyword.

Content format

Content format usually falls into categories such as how-to articles, listicles, news articles, or opinion articles.

For example, the results for “content marketing tips” are mostly listicles:

At the same time, the results for “grasshopper vs ringcentral” are mostly opinion articles.

Thus, when writing about “Content Marketing Tips,” it’s bestto shoot for a format Google suggests is the best.

Content angle

The content angle refers to the unique value of your content. Ideally, you need to develop your content angle on your own. But it’s not a bad idea to look into the SERP before you do.

Here are the top results for “podcast mics.” Notice how each of the highlighted top-ranking posts takes a different angle.

Overall, the three Cs of search intent help you match your content with the preferences of Google and make it unique.

9. Build a content distribution strategy and stick to it

Benefit: Ensuring maximum engagement to your content.

We don’t talk enough about content distribution. Though, it remains the most effective way to ensure optimal engagement to your content. There is no point in creating content if it will not be distributed.

Effective content distribution can dramatically increase the exposure of your content, placing it in the places your target audience frequents. It also allows you to pick up some new readers and fans in the process.

Here are a few distribution strategies you can use.

• SEO for SERP: SEO is more of a distribution strategy than it is a content strategy. To get the most out of your SEO, follow best practices, such as placing the keyword in your titles, in metadata and title tags, and in your alt texts. This will increase your chances of ranking and getting organic traffic.
• Social media: Regularly post your new content on your social media accounts. Make sure though that you double down on the platforms that matter the most. If you sell a direct-to-consumer product, platforms like Facebook and Twitter make more sense to leverage. However, if you are targeting businesses, LinkedIn seems to be the ideal social platform.
• Paid promotion: Most of the time, the organic reach of your posts is not enough to attract many eyeballs to your content. This is where paid distribution comes into play. Basically, it stipulates that you pay for maximum reach. Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram are all platforms you can use for your paid promotion.
• Repurpose your content:  Repurposing content entails the use of one content across multiple platforms. For example, you can turn an article into a Twitter thread, a video into a blog post, a video into a Slideshare, a podcast into a blog article, answer questions on Quora and Reddit, etc.

10. Create thought leadership content 

Benefit: Standing out from the competition and building authority, trust, and credibility.

There are over 7 million blog posts created on a daily basis. And as you look closely, you’ll realize that the content created across industries is similar, if not a copy of each other.

In a digital world full of sameness, it takes thought leadership content to stand out.

According to a study by Edelman and LinkedIn, 48% of B2B buyers awarded a deal to the organization responsible for the thought leadership content they consumed. And 42% of survey respondents invited a company to bid on a project (even when that company was not part of their initial selection criteria) because of thought leadership content.

Thought leadership influences brand perception, motivates decision-makers to act, and allows your target audience to determine your company’s trustworthiness, competence, and credibility.

Most importantly, thought leadership content helps you challenge the status quo and position yourself as the single source of truth in the industry.

Now, over to you

Know that there can be as many content marketing strategies and tips as marketers. The tips we share may not all apply to your content strategy. It’s up to you to choose which will work for you and implement them. You will need to consider your content marketing objectives, the current state of your content marketing strategy, and your business model.

While you’re at it, always be mindful of your target audience and the value you’re offering through your content marketing. After all, that is what it comes down to. Strive to be a solution people love, not a product they buy.

If you liked these tips and want to get to the next level by implementing some of them, here are some content strategy templates to start with.

While it may seem complicated, the early struggles are the same for everyone. Even famous YouTubers like PewDiePie and MrBeast’s channels had zero subscribers and zero views at one point. So if you’re looking to build a YouTube career but don’t know where to start, this is the article to save the day.

So let’s get started.

What does it mean to do YouTube as a career?

There are several types of YouTubers: side hustlers and full timers. Choosing YouTube as a career means that your job is to create content on the platform full time and that it’s your main source of income.

So what skills do you need to be a professional YouTuber? Being a professional YouTuber requires being skilled in several areas and wearing multiple hats.

For example, you need to know about graphic design, script and screenwriting, production direction, video editing, marketing, community management, and more.

Interestingly, some creators even strive to turn their channel into a full-fledged business. They set strict work schedules, work from offices, and strive to meet their deadlines to remain consistent in their creations and maintain audience interest.

Take MKBHD, for example, the professional technology product reviewer with over 15 million subscribers.

He has managed to turn what started in a room with blurry shots into a business with over eight employees, a billiard table, Mac the office dog, and more.

The perks of being a YouTuber

Getting on YouTube has never been easier. Nearly anyone can record and upload a YouTube video, so if you’ve been considering it, it’s worth trying. Plus, there are many advantages to being a professional YouTuber. Let’s look at a few.

You’re your own boss

When you run a YouTube channel, you can organize and work as you see fit. You have creative and executive authority over everything done on your channel.

You define your schedule, how often to produce videos, your ideation and content creation strategy, who you partner with, which products you promote, etc. You get to decide whether you’ll work with a video production company or not, whether you’ll hire help or do everything yourself. All decisions related to the work lie with you.

You can just start

The second thing you’ll love about the idea of becoming a professional YouTuber is that you don’t need much to start. The YouTube platform is accessible to almost anyone with a camera. You will not be interviewed, there is no age limit, and literally, you can start it anywhere, anytime without any specific capital or partners.

• No initial investment needed: YouTube does not require creators to pay any fee before they can start producing content on the platform. But admittedly, you’ll need some equipment and maybe a video editing tool.
• No prior experience needed: All you need is hard work, dedication, and the necessary skill to create your videos and keep your audience engaged. No prior experience is mandatory for this and you can learn as you go..
• No degrees needed: There is no required training to become a professional YouTuber.

It lets you follow your passion

As a YouTuber, you can also talk about the subjects you enjoy. Got an idea? Just write the script, scribble the storyboard, roll out the camera, shoot it and post it. YouTube allows you to follow your passion, be creative and do what you love.

Take Mr Beast, for example, he makes a living making fun YouTube videos.

Mr. Beast makes videos about extreme stunts and challenges. He obviously loves this niche he has chosen and he makes a living out of it.

The disadvantages of being a YouTuber

Before you start creating a YouTube account, keep in mind that choosing YouTuber as a career is not all roses. While it had upsides, there are also a few things you might resent about the job.

It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme

If you think that all you have to do is create an account, shoot a video or two, generate tons of views immediately, and start cashing in, you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s always hard to rank or get found on the platform since nobody knows you in your early days. This is also why you’ll need to distribute your content on platforms outside of YouTube.

Success happens when you’re finally able to get hundreds of thousands or millions of viewers organically, and it takes time. It usually comes after several months or even years of consistent hard work.

It takes a thick skin

Even the most brilliant minds get spit on sometimes. On YouTube, it’s even a daily routine. While it may be meant as constructive criticism, some feedback may strike you differently.

Unfortunately, you cannot always stop people from criticizing your work or leaving mean comments. Check this example showing people posting bad YouTube comments about Dan Lok.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. What matters is your ability to deal with negative criticism, and this demands resilience. Also, you might find your ideas copied or, worse, your account canceled for a reason you can’t necessarily grasp.

These challenges are common to YouTubers and can test your determination to continue a career as a YouTuber The best thing you can do is prepare for issues and know how to respond or act accordingly.

Privacy issues

If you do become successful on YouTube, being a micro YouTube celebrity also comes with unique privacy issues.

Many YouTubers have described dealing with the privacy violations such asof fans finding their homes asking for photos. Others are harassed in their buildings after their floor and apartment numbers are leaked.

You can prepare yourself and make sure your privacy is protected from the start. But there is still a chance that fans will recognize you on the street. Ideally, you should consider this part of the experience and always be prepared for it.

How to build a YouTube career or business

Still here?

Awesome. We knew no cons could stop you.

Now that we’re clear on the pros and cons of choosing  youtuber as a career. Let’s saddle you up for building a top-notch YouTube career.

1. Be clear about your mission and goal

Before jumping into anything, make sure you understand what success would mean for your career. Almost anybody wanting to work online associates success with money, but it’s more than that. You need to figure out what your mission is as a professional YouTuber. It’ll help you decide on the content you create and the people you share it with.

Ask yourself: what am I trying to accomplish? How do I want to be perceived as a content creator?

Answering the above questions will help you determine what your mission is.

2. Decide what kind of content you will create

Hopefully, by this time, you know why you’re creating a channel, what you want to talk about, and the target audience.

Choosing a niche means focusing on one pillar theme or topic. Niching down helps you stay relevant to a specific target audience. Let’s say you want to talk about automobiles. Now, do you want to focus on supercars? Electric cars? Luxury cars? Sport cars? Engines? Tyres? Car design?

It’s wise to choose one field and own it. Plus, it’s more likely to become famous for one thing than many things at once.

A few examples:

• PewDiePie is known for being a gaming YouTuber
• MKBHD is tech guy that breaks everything down for the average person to make sound choice
• Noah Kagan is the channel for internet entrepreneurship and how to start and run a business.

3.  Create your YouTube channel

After you figure out what your mission is, you can create your YouTube channel. The process here is pretty simple.

• Create a new and dedicated Google account for your business channel on YouTube.
• Go to the YouTube Homepage and set the name of your professional channel.
• Provide the information about your business account.
• Set up your channel’s icon and graphics.
• Fill in the description of your channel.
• Set up featured channels and activities.

After you complete this, you can start producing your first video.

4.  Brand yourself

Create a unique and recognizable identity for yourself through your videos. Consistency is key in this regard. Case in point, 70% of marketers say that consistent branding is key when communicating with existing customers.

Your logo, colors, message style and tone, channel banner, intros and outros, and everything else that goes into your videos and channel should be unique and reflect you. Here is how Noah Kagan does it.

Doing this makes your content recognizable at first glance. People associate the branding elements to your personality and whenever they stumble upon something you created, they know it’s you.

With branding, you also need to ensure consistency across all platforms. That means even outside of YouTube and everywhere.

4. Have a video distribution strategy

It makes no sense to create videos, upload them to YouTube, and cross your fingers, hoping people watch them. You need a video distribution strategy to ensure you drive eyeballs to your videos and build a solid viewership around your channel.

For example, after you upload a video, you can share it across your other social media accounts with the YouTube link to drive traffic to it. Case in point, Twitter sharing works amazingly great for Marques Brownlee.

You can also repurpose your YouTube content into other content materials like slides, blog articles, eBooks, etc., for other platforms and link back to your video as the original content.  There are lots of ways you can distribute your videos. Run a survey or ask viewers to comment on what types of videos they enjoy the most. Then double down on that.

5. Signup for the YouTube Partner Program

This is your first step to getting paid by YouTube. The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) provides creators with more access to YouTube resources and features such as a support team, tools, and monetization features.

It also allows creators to earn revenue from ads shared on their content. Keep in mind that not every creator can access the program. We’ll expand on this as we discuss how people make money on YouTube below.

Understand how to make money on YouTube 

There is a complete science behind YouTube money-making. And it’s not based on the number of subscribers or views. It’s different for every creator, but we can classify them into a few buckets for every creator on YouTube.

1. The Google AdSense program

AdSense is a free Google advertising program. When you sign up, you can link your account to your YouTube channel. It then displays ad material next to your videos on the platform, and you get paid for it. That’s YouTube’s business model and most considerable revenue stream. It’s also how they pay most content creators on the platform.

In this example, you can see how Shopify advertises their platform on a creator’s YouTube video.

Here is how it works.

First, you must be signed up on your YouTube Partner Program and then link your AdSense account to it.

Suppose a company wants to display or share its ads on YouTube. They will pay YouTube to show their ads during YouTube videos. YouTube will then split that payment with the uploaders of the videos the ad will be displayed on.

You can only subscribe to the program after you pass their verification criteria. YouTube Partners must have a minimum of 1000 subscribers, 4000 hours worth of views in the last 12 months.

2. Selling ads as a creator (aka influencer marketing)

The second way to make money as a creator on YouTube is to sell ads, promoting products for companies. This is an organic way of advertising for companies, and it’s pretty simple.

Here is an example of a YouTuber who promotes other brands at the beginning of his videos.

Companies reach out to creators based on their relevance to their business and ask them to advertise/promote a specific product or service for them. The creator, in the video, will then talk about the product/service and recommend it to the audience.

This amounts to creating sponsored content through brand deals, and you can think of it as influencer marketing. This way of advertisement works better and lets companies tailor their products to specific audiences with better marketing results. It also means that as creators, it’s up to you to set your payment standards and charge.

3. Getting affiliate partnerships with companies

As a YouTuber, you can also earn a lot through affiliate marketing. Basically, you recommend products or services to your viewers and leave the product/service link (maybe in your video description), and you get a commission each time they buy something. Here, the commission can mean money, points, or anything else that the two parties agree upon.

In this video example from MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel, he talks about his e-commerce tech stack and share affiliate links in the description section. Can you see how each of these links are tied to his brand? That’s proof that for each purchase you make using any of these links, he gets a commission.

4. Selling your own product

One of the ways you can also earn money on YouTube is to build your product and promote it to your YouTube channel. This is the same as influencer marketing, except you’re doing it for your own business. You can sell any product you want. You can sell digital products (eBooks, PDFs, services) and hard products. All you have to do is show your product’s value through your videos and then recommend it.

In this example from MKBHD, you can see how he directs his viewers to his shop where they can get the T-Shirt he wore for the video.

What it takes to be a professional YouTuber

There are certain things you need to get right to make it as a professional YouTuber. We break them down below.

Having a sound understanding of the platform

Knowing how the YouTube platform operates is essential to your success, especially at the beginning. You will need this to ensure your video is well optimized for the platform and that you abide by YouTube’s guidelines.

You’ll also need to understand how the YouTube algorithms work, what great content means on the platform, and how to attract the right audience to your videos. This will help you create videos that both the YouTube algorithms and your target audience can understand.

Video editing skills

Chances are, you know this was coming anyway. You can’t be a professional YouTuber without video editing skills. Hiring a professional video editor or using an a-class video editing tool is an excellent way to go about this.

But the truth is, you’ll still need the basics of video editing skills. This will help you perform better behind the camera, and you’ll be able to create professional-looking and high-quality video content.

Content research skills

This mainly has to do with your content ideation and strategy. You’ll need to build a value-driven and time-bound content agenda, and that takes content research skills.

To create content that your audience wants, you need to do research. And if you want to sound convincing, you need to do some research to back your claims with facts and statistics.

A good grasp of video SEO

YouTube SEO is also part of the successful YouTuber’s knowledge stack. It’s actually part of helping the YouTube algorithms understand what your content is about and what’s happening in your channel. Video SEO ensures your videos and channel perform well on the YouTube SERP.

You will need to categorize your channel, attach your videos with the relevant keywords, add meta descriptions, and more. If you do it right, you’ll be able to attract the right audience to your content. YouTube will present your content to users interested in your topics and video types. Here is a YouTube SEO playbook you can always use to optimize your content.

Moreover, this isn’t just beneficial for YouTube. Google also displays portions of videos on its SERP that answer specific search queries. This means that you can drive Google traffic to your videos as well. Here is an example.

Consistency

Consistency means you should define a publishing frequency for your channel from the start and stick to it. Whether you publish every week or once a month, the key is to stick to this publishing frequency.

First, it gives your viewership a reason to anticipate your next video. Second, YouTube algorithms track the activity on YouTube channels. Frequent and consistent posting will indicate a routine publication pattern to the algorithms, and they will keep your channel in their good books.

Networking and building a community

Networking on YouTube is a great way to get exposure to other viewers and gain visibility. For example, you can comment on videos from other YouTubers in your field. This gives you a presence with an audience that might like your content.

You can also collaborate with other YouTubers in your field of interest to create videos together. This will allow you to share your audiences, and everyone can gain a few more fans.

Networking on YouTube is also about interacting with your audience. For example, you can respond to their comments, tell them you value their feedback, get content ideas from them, etc. This will send the message that you care about them and strive to produce valuable content for them. In return, you will always have good engagement in your videos.

Go little rockstar!

Choosing to be a YouTuber as a career is a great business idea. It’s highly doable, gratifying, and it’s never been easier to get started.

Still, it can take months or even years of constant struggle before you become a prominent and super famous creator on the platform. So, keep at it and do not despair.

Remember that everyone starts their YouTube channel with the same chance of success. It’s your content and efforts that will make you a professional Youtuber and define how fast you become one.

In this article, you will learn from the best mission statement examples to create your own. But first, let’s kick things off by discussing how a great mission statement impacts your company’s growth. We’ll also review some common mistakes you need to look out for while crafting a mission statement.

Why is a mission statement important for your business?

From stakeholders to customers, the content and value of a company’s mission statement impact virtually every facet of your business. It serves your company well if your audience understands how your mission statement ties to their work and overall success.

Here are the top reasons every company should have a clear and strong mission statement.

It provides a unique sailing path for the entire company

Having a clear mission statement gives your company a single purpose. Different departments can align their efforts to serve the company’s unique mission.

Your mission statement establishes a foundation for decision-making and fosters unity, support, and collaboration among stakeholders and staff. Thus, it creates a solid brand identity and helps distinguish the company from its competitors.

It fosters a long-term vision

A company’s mission statement makes it easier for employees to work and for company leaders to organize. It shows teams how to do things and make the right decisions.

Your mission statement provides meaning to efforts by highlighting clear reasons why daily tasks serve or benefit a greater good. It motivates people to focus on the positive aspects of their daily work, which builds a growth spirit and inspires long-term commitment to the workplace culture.

It shapes company culture

Here is a quote from Nike expressing how they feel about their mission to understand the mission’s impact on company culture.

A company’s mission statement helps establish the values, norms, and beliefs necessary to create a unique culture-first environment. It guides your company’s philosophy and work environment and shapes the core business principles that inspire the actions and initiatives of the organization.

10 examples of mission statements done right

Here are 10 examples of company mission statements from several business sectors. You can emulate these to inspire and create your own.

1. Lego

Lego’s mission: “To inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.”

What it does: Giving hope to parents about the future of their kids

At first glance, one might say that Lego simply produces children’s toys and entertainment tools. But their mission statement ties the company to a larger purpose..

In one sentence, the company helps you envision how they are helping to shape your children for a better future. This articulates the values of their products and what the company is really doing—unlocking your child’s potential while making them have fun.

Key takeaways: Take a deep look at what your company does and showcase how this results in the betterment of your target audience. Using this as a mission statement can validate your business’ value and show users/customers what it truly does for them.

2. JetBlue

JetBlue’s mission: “To inspire humanity–both in the air and on the ground.”

What it does: Inspiring people and companies to take actions that make the world a better place.

You may be wondering how this mission statement really ties to an airline company. Well, we must note that the company takes its goals beyond an airline.

JetBlue bills itself as a group dedicated to “bringing humanity back to air travel.” The airline pushes for initiatives such as charitable partnerships and influence programs, all of which are represented in the one-line mission statement.

So, the language perfectly mirrors the company’s brand and identity.

Key takeaway: Your mission statement doesn’t have to be necessarily about your business to be effective. If you serve a more significant cause than selling your product or service, you can always make your mission statement about it.

3. Kickstarter

Kickstarter’s mission: “To bring creative projects to life.”

What it does: Helping people bring their wildest dreams to life.

Each person in a crowdfunding community has a clear goal: getting their projects funded and brought to life through community support and donations. Kickstarter understands this very well and has designed its mission statement to provide the exact answer.

The mission statement is quite simple and describes the premise behind the company. It is effective in that the company lives by its mission and measures its success on that basis.

Key takeaway: It’s always best to keep things simple when possible. You don’t need fancy words to make your mission statement powerful. It’s OK to keep it at what your company does.

4. Spotify

Spotify’s mission: “To unlock the potential of human creativity — by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their arts and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.”

What it does: Showing how they bring value to their audiences

Spotify is one of the leading music platforms. The company’s mission statement articulates how it empowers creators’ creativity and brings joy to fans with their tools. More so, it shows how the company makes artists’ life easier and offers fans the opportunity to discover and share.

This mission statement is great because it speaks to both audiences and spells out exactly what the company does, and why.

Key takeaway: Figure out how your product or service brings value to your customers and their customers and leverage it to create a unique company mission.

5. Tesla

Tesla’s mission: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

What it does: Solving a worldwide ever-going issue.

Tesla’s mission statement goes beyond the quality of its product and the value it brings to its customers. With over 1.3 million Teslas sold just in 2022, the Model 3/Y, Model X/S are among the most popular Electric Cars in the world for a reason. This statement shows the clear difference between Tesla’s goals and those of other automotive companies.

Tesla shows its commitment to green energy and protecting our world and its environment. This is a shared goal between Tesla and its customers, and it makes the company’s mission relatable to their audience and valuable to the greater world.

Key takeaway: Figure where the world wants to be and how your company fits into reaching there. Then craft a clear and relatable mission out of it.

6. PayPal

PayPal’s mission: “To democratize financial services to ensure that everyone, regardless of background or economic standing, has access to affordable, convenient and secure products and services to take control of their financial lives.”

What it does: Democratizing access to financial institutions.

It’s hard to come by a financial solution that doesn’t make its customers resent their transactions. PayPal positions itself as the perfect modern financial solution and has designed a mission statement that stresses this effectively.

PayPal decentralizes financial services and helps you to really control your money. The statement mentions all the ways the company serves its customers and states what makes it unique.

Key takeaway: What is your unique selling proposition? What makes you different from competitors? Figure this out and use it as your mission statement.

7. Nike

Nike’s mission: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

What it does: Standing for the cause of athletes and what they stand for.

Every Nike action leads us to think that the company encourages people to practice sports more than it encourages them to buy its products.

Indeed, the company’s entire marketing strategy revolves around its contribution to the sports sector.

The company’s influence in sports helps to stimulate and transform athletes into their best selves. That’s why the mission statement describes the company as the ideal friend that every athlete needs.

Key takeaway: Understand what your customer’s deepest desire is and make it your mission to facilitate that with your solution.

8. IKEA

IKEA’s mission: “To offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.”

What it does: Cost-consciousness and caring for people.

IKEA’s mission statement is the simplest on the list. This statement allows them to reiterate to their audience why they started the company in the first place. It highlights what they bring to their customers’ lives as a company. It also shows the value that the company brings to the table over the competition — which is discounted prices.

Key takeaway: State exactly what your company does and add what makes you unique.

9. McDonald’s

McDonald’s Mission: “To make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone.”

What it does: Making it about the moment rather than the food.

This mission statement emphasizes the importance of the eating moment and that everyone should enjoy it. McDonald’s sees itself as the ideal company to achieve this objective. Hence, fast food at a reasonably low price. So whether you’re sitting on a park bench, pacing up and down, or driving, you can have a “feel-good” moment regardless of who you are.

Key takeaway: Think about how your product/solution makes your customers feel and use that as your mission statement.

10. Honest Tea

Honest Tea’s Mission: “To create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages. We strive to grow our business with the same honesty and integrity we use to craft our recipes, with sustainability and great taste for all.”

What it does: Bring healthy drinks to people in a highly industrialized society.

Honest Tea begins its mission statement by explaining its product’s natural and healthy properties to the audience. In turn, it opens the door to winning the hearts of their target audience, who have grown tired of artificially enhanced products on the market.

The second sentence takes it a step further and depicts the company’s drive to be the most unique and natural in the eyes of its target audience. The goal is to show the audience that they’re transparent about their business practices and live up to their mission. On the flip side, it also helps to articulate the company’s name “Honest Tea.”

Key takeaway: It’s OK for your mission statement to just be the translation/explanation of your brand’s name.

5 steps to come up with an iconic mission statement

Now that you’ve seen enough examples of mission statements, here is how to create your own.

1. Describe what your company does

First things first, your company’s mission statement needs to incorporate what your company does. Focus on the basics (i.e., what your product does and whom you’re selling to), and don’t get carried away with the fancy stuff (i.e., Like telling a story about when your CEO went on a sabbatical in India).

2. Describe how your company does what it does

Describing your company’s product or service may bring up many things, so you need to keep it at the core value. It’s best to think of something that makes you unique or gives you an edge on the competition from a given perspective.

So, what is it that makes your company so valuable? Perhaps you provide natural quality products like Honest Tea or perhaps you produce supercars with a keen eye on sustainable energies like Tesla. Figure out what yours is and move on to the next step.

3. Describe why your company does what it does the way it does

What’s your company’s main goal? Think of your company’s core purpose and state it clearly. Now, you will need to take this a step ahead to figure this out. Take IKEA, for example. The company’s purpose is to offer low-price home furnishing products.

You need to ask yourself why it offers low-price home furnishing products to truly answer the question. In the latter case, the answer is to allow as many people as possible to be able to afford them. You can portray a more significant and more relatable purpose to your company by doing this.

4. Describe how your products or services make the world better

This may be an answer to the question, “why are you in business?” What are you looking for as far as your company, people, employees, and, most importantly, your customers are concerned?

For example, Lego strives to build the builders of tomorrow. Take a more profound look at your purpose and mirror it to the world as a whole, and describe how your company’s product or service empowers human beings.

5. Combine and condense

By now, you have all the components you need to create your mission statement. All that’s left is to weave them together into one combined and condensed mission statement. Be sure to keep it as short and meaningful as possible.

Your turn to create a mission statement for your company

A company mission statement consists of the company’s vision and values. It serves as a tool for internal and external communication. It motivates employees and gives them direction.

The mission statement sets the tone for the your company’s goals and prioritiesIn a nutshell, formulating your company’s mission is the best way to make it real and sustainable over your business’s entire life.

Do you want some hand-holding to create your mission statement? Head over to the AppSumo Marketplace to get the resources you need to nail your mission statement.

According to Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), “[Businesses] need to create a content strategy. That means saying no to many channels and content types, and focusing on where they can build an asset, an audience, over time.”

Why is a content strategy important for your business?

Companies primarily use a content strategy to get the word out about their business and market their products or services. And they do so for a good reason.

A content strategy helps businesses to be more visible on search engines, generate valuable traffic on their website, and win leads.

From a marketing perspective, your content strategy makes your content production more meaningful and successful. It gives you a way to measure success, provides insights into your failure to succeed, and keeps you on track with the plan you’ve designed. Interestingly, CoSchedule observed that marketers who document their strategy are 313% more likely to succeed.

Also, from a manager or business owner standpoint, having a content strategy helps you eliminate the guesswork and do things that matter. It ensures that everyone on your team is aligned and in sync. It also helps identify the goals, the effort that needs to be put in, the people who need input, and everything that needs to be done to achieve those goals.

10 steps for creating a killer content strategy

Now that you know why a content strategy is essential for your business, here is a step-by-step guide to creating a content strategy that delivers results.

Step 1: Know your business 

Knowing your brand inside and out is the key to a successful content strategy. Here are the things you need to consider to pull this off perfectly.

Your business goals and missions 

What is your company hoping to accomplish? Where would your company want to get to if you were stripped of your envy to sell or make money? You need to understand those and figure out what content and how it can get you there.

Your brand’s reputation 

You need to know how your brand is perceived—what’s great about it and what needs changing. More importantly, think of how you want the world to perceive your company and define the type of content, voice, style, and messaging that’ll help you get there.

Are you using the right marketing channels? 

Is your brand using the right marketing channel? What other channels are you missing out on? Analyze the channels your brand is using depending on your offering and how your customers access it. This will help you uncover content opportunities and plan the right process for effective execution. It’ll also contribute to specifying the company’s target audience and how to best reach them.

Who are your competitors, and what are they doing?

You’ll also need competitive insights to position your business as the best. You must know who your competitors are and what kind of content they are using. Thought leadership? Case studies?

Once you figure that out, you’ll have a clear idea of what direction you should take with your content for it to make the most impact. More importantly, you’ll discover outgrowth opportunities in your content strategy that you’ve probably never thought of.

What is your USP?

What is your unique selling proposition (USP)? Figure out why your customers choose you over your competitors.

One way to find out is to ask your customers—during the onboarding process—why they chose your brand over others. It could be cost, quality or features. You could also think about why you started your company in the first place, the problem you’re solving. Then, highlight that USP in your overall strategy and brand messaging.

Step 2: Understand the target audience

A content strategy must take into account the needs and problems of your audience before it works. Content shouldn’t just promote your product. It should help your audience solve some of their problems—and use your product if it happens to be the right tool to solve said problem.

So it’s important to first understand what their problem is and then create content to help them solve it.

Here are a few points to help you.

Know their demographics 

You must identify who your audience is and determine their demographics. This goes down to answering questions like:

• Who is your ideal client?
• What is their age range?
• What roles do they work in?
• What are their expectations?
• What information are they looking for when they land on your website?

Understand their psychographics

You need to understand how your target audience thinks, their hobbies, and the type of content they prefer. Understanding your target audience’s psychographics also implies knowing how they process information, the places they hang out on the web, and their decision-making power within their company or as individuals.

Figure out their pain points

Now, you want to figure out their issues, fears, challenges, and everything they might need your help with. That is, everything that pushes them to look for your solution or that of your competitor. Your job is to position your content to answer those specific challenges and your service to alleviate the pain.

Step 3: Determine your specific objectives

Not all business goals are related to marketing. Start by assessing your overarching business goals and determine how content marketing fits into each. Set realistic and measurable expectations. The best way to do this is to set SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based.

You can create three main types of content according to the content marketing funnel. Each content you put out should push your audience further in the buying process.

Top of the funnel

Top-of-the-funnel content is generally informative and directed to a broader audience. In this context, your objectives can be the following:

• Ranking better on Google
• Driving more traffic to your website
• Improving brand awareness

Middle of the funnel

This stage involves transforming visitors into qualified leads. What you want here is to win your audience’s heart and elicit buying intent or action. Your content goal here can include:

• Boosting credibility
• Encouraging the prospect to consider your product
• Warming leads for the sales’ team
• Generating more qualified leads
• Providing excellent prior-to-purchase customer service

Bottom of the funnel

Your sales team primarily uses bottom-of-the-funnel content to fuel conversion. This type of content helps you highlight the solution you are selling and position it as a far better alternative to your competitors’. Your objectives here include the following:

• Increasing revenue
• Boosting customer lifetime value
• Reducing churn
• Providing great customer service
• Building a community

Step 4: Understand and determine content formats

Once you have defined your target audience and objectives, everything becomes easier. Now you need to determine the content format adapted to your goals and audience.

Here is a list of content formats you can choose from.

• Blog posts
• Email
• Videos
• Social media content
• Print materials (magazines, brochures, etc.)
• eBooks and white papers
• Research reports
• Visual content (infographics)

Keep in mind that blog posts are the most common format and are an excellent choice for the foundation of an effective content strategy.

Step 5: Keep your strategy consistent with your brand

Set content guidelines and style guides to ensure consistency across different platforms. Having a consistent style across the board also makes your brand unique and memorable.

Here are the main points you need to consider:

Messaging and language

How would you like to keep your brand voice and tone? Based on your audience, which voice and tone will be more effective? You should have a unique foundational language that you use across your content materials.

For example, you can be conversational, casual, fun, or formal. It’s worth noting that the same brand voice could vary in tone depending on the channel (i.e. social media vs. official site announcements).

Syntax and readability

What type of words do you use in your content? For example, at AppSumo, we recommend our writers always use simpler, accessible language where possible. For example, we’d rather choose the word “use” over “utilize”. Do you prefer long or short sentences? Active or passive voice? How do you feel about the different punctuations?

Step 6: Have a content editorial process and calendar

Having a content calendar means planning the topics to be covered in the next few weeks or months.

It’ll allow all the stakeholders involved in your content strategy (internal or external) to move in the same direction. Also, as the content strategist or manager, it will put you in control, and you can get a 360-degree view of how your content is coming along.

So, having a content editorial process and calendar means defining and preparing all the elements  in your content strategy, from ideation to publication. In this way, your content will always align with your objective, be produced on time and within budget. Here are a few things you will need to include in the process:

• Content-type
• Content description
• Audience
• Content goal
• Distribution channel
• Publication date
• Writer/Creator
• Approver
• Status
• Etc.

Here’s an example of what we used back in 2019 here at AppSumo.

It shows who needs to take a given action, when the content will go live, and what type of content it is.

Step 7: Keep SEO at the heart of your content plan

Creating a content editorial process is not enough. You need an SEO strategy to establish a keyword and topic agenda. This ensures that your strategy works.

SEO does not just apply to written content but videos and images. There’s a whole world of SEO knowledge out there, but we’ll set you up with the basics:

Follow SEO best practices

This includes internal linking, adding meta descriptions to content, using image alt tags, link-building, etc.

Improve your site’s performance

SEO issues can hurt your site’s performance. Your site may have technical problems that are causing crawling or ranking issues. It could also be that you’re seeing a high churn rate because your site takes ages to load. A site audit will tell you everything that’s wrong with your site and what needs doing.

Find content and keyword gaps

Finding keywords and content gaps involves searching for keywords your potential customers are using to find your solution but that you, for some reason, are not covering.

Plan content based on content analytics

This involves studying what works and what does not and using it to your advantage. Analyze data from your site’s Google Search Console or Google Analytics and see what type of content is getting the most engagement. Then, create content that matches that ideal.

For example, what does the data say about the following dilemmas:

• Should your article be short or long to be effective?
• Is it best to make a video or a blog article for “this keyword?”
• Is it more effective to place the CTA somewhere around the introduction or at the bottom of the content?

Step 8: Create a solid content distribution strategy 

Your content is only as good as its readership. You need to use the right communication channels to share it as much as possible. Here are the main distribution channels you can consider.

Social media

Build an effective social media strategy to pull this off with perfection. Think of it as a blueprint that you implement every time you produce new content. For example, for one article, you can create a LinkedIn post, an Instagram story, a Twitter thread, and possibly a TikTok video.

Email newsletter

This may not work for all businesses, but email newsletters can be a highly valuable marketing channel.

First, though, you need to have an audience. If you do, sharing your content through email is quite simple. Stir your readers’ curiosity with your subject line, and make sure you get straight to the point in the email body. Always end with a call to action.

Repurposing old content

Repurposing content means that you change the format of a content to republish it on another platform. You can use one piece of content and turn it into different materials and have them perform well. For example, you can turn a YouTube video into a podcast or a blog post.

Step 9: Know how to measure success

Now that your content is published and distributed, what does success mean to you? What KPIs do you use to measure the effectiveness of your content efforts? Common metrics marketers track include the following:

• SEO position rankings and visibility
• Traffic to the website
• Average time on site
• Bounce rates
• Social media engagement (likes, shares, comments, clicks)
• User sign-ups

Step 10: Build your content strategy tools stack

Obviously, you will need help to complete your workflow smoothly and seamlessly. Depending on the different activities you may have to perform, here are the different tools you may need.

CMS

A content management system allows you and your team to plan and execute as one in the creation, editing, and production of digital content such as web pages, blog posts, etc. Top examples include Sitecake, My Digital CMO, and SEO CMS.

Analytics and SEO tool

SEO tools provide data and analytics on the overall health of your website. Discover room for improvement, identify weaknesses or problems and improve visibility in the SERPs. The best SEO tools include Ahrefs, TrueRanker, Blogely, SEMrush, and Moz.

Social media scheduling tool

These tools help you schedule and automate posts for your social media accounts. Excellent examples include Social Web Suite, Socialkia, and Publer.

Project management tool

These tools help you manage your content projects and tasks effectively. You can create multiple boards, to-dos, add your team members and work together as one. These are also the tools to develop and monitor your content calendar and editorial process. The best project management tools include Planarty, Tugas, Airtable, Workload, Asana, etc.

5 content strategy templates you can use to grow your business

Developing a content strategy isn’t an easy task. It takes time, expertise, and niche experience to create one that works. But as with most things, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Here are some content strategy templates you can start with.

1. The 7 Pillar “Plug and Play” Content System

This content strategy helps you build a consistent content system for your business. It enables you to create content that engages your audience and walks your prospects through the sales funnel before they are ready to buy.

2. TikTok Content Calendar Template

If you’re struggling to create content that attracts views and builds you a solid audience on TikTok, this is the template for you. This template helps you determine the right content style and identify best practices to win on TikTok.

3. The Ultimate Marketing Template Kit

This is a collection of templates to help you conduct your marketing activities for various purposes. The goal is to help small business owners or marketers start their businesses with as little stress as possible. The kit contains five templates, all with a guide page with instructions on using the documents.

• Content Audit Template
• Marketing Campaign Planning Template
• Editorial Calendar Template
• UTM Creation Template
• Marketing Analysis Dashboard

4. Social Media Strategy Workbook

Building a solid social media strategy that ensures a high engagement can be challenging. This template helps you do just that without too much effort. It offers a content calendar for consistent social media posts, a way to build a strong presence and engage with the people.

5. The Content OS: Strategy, Planning, Creation & Performance

It’s a content framework to help you scale up your content production and get a clear view of your content performance. It offers a consolidated system with all the steps of a content production process. You can also track your audience’s behavior in the same workspace and make sense of all the data.

Upgrade your content strategy template

A solid content strategy will facilitate your efforts and allow you to maximize the reach of your online business. You’ll produce more accurate content, properly brief your content creators, assign tasks to your team members, and solve your target audience’s pain points.

Here are the characteristics of a good content strategy.

• It tells you who will be engaging with your content
• It clearly states the problems you will be solving for your audience
• It makes your process and your content unique
• It shapes your creative vision and forms a content plan
• It lets you know what content formats you will focus on
• It breaks down the channels you will publish your content on
• It helps you manage content creation and publication seamlessly

Now that you know what a killer content strategy looks like and have some templates to start with, head over to our AppSumo Marketplace to get some great deals on software that will help you implement your strategy.

And that’s where splash pages come in!

Here is a guide that will help you better understand splash pages, their benefits, and, most importantly, how to create one.

What is a splash page?

A splash page is a company’s introductory page to its actual website page. It is a simple page or a pop-up with a single message, used for promotional purposes or to fulfill business needs.

A splash page differs from a landing page or a homepage in that it (usually) only contains a tiny piece of content. It only serves as an entry point to the website, and it is designed to come before the homepage, landing page, or content page of a website.

Why is having a splash page a good idea?

First of all, having a splash page on your website may seem like a bad idea, as it prevents visitors from going directly to the page they clicked to open. And in that sense, it could be annoying.

That’s a valid point.

But the reality is that visitors will only need one more click to get to the page they want, and the benefits of a splash page ultimately outweigh any disadvantages you may imagine.

Showcase

In most cases, a splash page is used to showcase a company-related animation, product, logo, or even a simple click to enter the site.

You can also use it for special occasions like New Year’s Eve wishes, Black Friday offers, or to advertise for other sites, as is the case for news sites. You can also display an announcement to release a service/product or simply talk about yourself and your business.

Here is an example from Yulu Moreau.

This is a great example of a splash page showcasing what the website is about, where he lives, and the message he wants to get across.

Grab visitors’ attention

Splash pages are generally positioned to appear before the user can enter the site and view other pages. Think of it as The Time Square on your site displaying a unique offer or call to action you want visitors to act on before accessing your site.

This is what makes it ideal for drawing visitors’ attention to warnings, disclaimers, time-sensitive announcements, etc. Here is an excellent example from Canva.

This splash page from Canva is the perfect example of how you get visitors’ attention using a colorful and scannable splash page.

Provide visitors with content they deserve

For some sites, having a splash page can be mandatory as it may be a required screening to give visitors the experience they deserve. This could include language, age, gender, content type, a display mode, etc. Here is an example from Patron Tequilla.

Additionally, a splash page is also an excellent tool to make your visitors choose their preferred navigation options. Doing so will help you match your site’s content to your visitors’ preferences and ensure they enjoy a pleasant experience right from the start.

Here is an excellent example of this from H&M.

3 elements of a great splash page

A splash is not a landing page. So, it does not require as many components to be perfect. You only need to weave together three key elements to come up with a great splash page.

1. A high-quality image or animation

Create eye-catching visuals for your splash page. One of the main features of a splash page is that it should be easy to skip. And the first step to prevent visitors from immediately skipping the page as it loads is to use a captivating image.

You can include a photograph of a product, a background image, a video, or an animation. Just make sure that whatever you include doesn’t hurt your page’s loading time.

2. A clear and succinct message

The second element is the copy. Often, the fewer words you use, the better. Visitors should not have to read paragraphs before reaching your site.

Keep the text short, with as few words as possible. It can be one sentence or two, but either way, make sure the message is clear and action-driven.

3. A clear exit option (plus a call to action)

Remember that the splash page is not the visitor’s priority. So, you need to add a clear exit button that takes them to the page they wanted to land on in the first place. The button copy can be anything like:

• Continue to page
• Scroll to site
• Take me to the page
• Close/Skip

While you’re at it, add a call to action to your splash page. Again, keep in mind that visitors’ priority is to get to the content they came in for. So, your CTA should aim at getting them to perform a quick action and getting back to what they came for. This will depend on your needs and goals.

With that in mind, here are some potential goals your CTA can circle:

• An announcement (for a new product or a limited offer)
• A verification requirement (age, gender, location, etc.)
• A quick tip for a better experience (saving the page, running on a specific browser, looking in the camera, etc.)
• An opt-in form to collect user data (email, name, etc.)
• A warning (sensitive consent, etc.)
• A quick ad

4 splash page best practices 

Designing and adding a homepage to your website is one thing. Creating a page that hits the mark and brings you great results is another.

We’ve put together five best practices to help you design unique splash pages that drive results.

Make it light

The time your splash page takes to load can be the difference between a great splash and a hurtful one. Websites usually take anywhere between two to five seconds to load. This means that your splash page has to beat this load time to be effective.

A splash page with a poor loading speed will make even the most patient people leave a page. Get insights into how the elements in your splash page affect its overall load time (especially the visual elements) to keep it light by eliminating unnecessary components.

Use light overlays and pop-ups

You can display your splash page as a lightbox overlay or pop-up window above the visitor’s desired page. This strategy allows visitors to know that they are on the right page even when their screen is occupied by your splash page.

On the other hand, you can make the pop-up window appear 3 seconds after the visitor lands on your website. This way, they know they are in the right place and just need to shut the pop-up to access the desired content.

Make it aesthetically appealing

One undeniable truth about splash pages is that they’re impossible to miss. In most cases, visitors aren’t expecting a splash page, so sending the wrong impression at first glance can be a costly mistake.

Make sure you adhere to image design and layout principles to ensure a good visual hierarchy. Consider the size and placement of each element. Make sure the design is cohesive and presented in a well-organized and efficient manner.

Keep it consistent with your brand

Like many companies, you probably have a unique logo, color, messaging, tone, and voice. Ensure your splash page is well-aligned with your brand to reinforce your branding efforts and make you memorable to visitors.

Bonus tip: Keep an eye on analytics

Analytics lets you know how visitors are engaging with your splash page and thus how it is performing. This will provide you insights into what you need to improve for a better engagement or whether you should take the splash page down altogether.

Here are some analytic metrics to focus on:

• Bounce rate
• Time spent on page
• Click-through rate
• Form submissions

Keep in mind that the metrics you track depend on your goal with the splash page. For example, if your call to action intends to verify visitors’ age, language or get them to sign up for their email addresses, you should track form submissions.

On the flip side, if your CTA links to your portfolio or an ad link, track the click-through rate.

4 amazing splash pages examples

Here are four outstanding splash page examples to help you see it in action and inspire your own.

1. Forbes

Source

Purpose: Advertisement

What we love about this: Forbes uses its colossal traffic potential to display splash page ads for other businesses. What’s interesting is that the ad is displayed as a welcome mat. The ad copy is direct and straightforward.

Forbes has beautifully expressed in a few words what it is about and added a clear CTA for users to get started. The page also features a “scroll to site” button that makes the ad disappear as if the actual site was underneath it.

2. Tito’s

Source

Purpose: Verification wall

What we love about this: This page has a simple yet excellent design that matches what Tito does(their brand colors and their vodka logo). However, there is no exit button as visitors must verify the minimum age requirement before entering the site.

3. Zara

Source

Purpose: Location and language verification

What we love about this: Zara serves in many countries and leverages its splash page to give visitors the best experience possible. One look at the design indicates the company’s color preferences. The splash page is simply designed and contains an easy-to-perform call to action.

4. Conversion Gods

Source

Purpose: Getting visitors to download a resource in exchange for their email addresses.

What we love about this: This is a marketing company that has managed to leverage human psychology to speak to its audience. You can see how engaging and conversational the copy is. Plus, it leverages FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) to get visitors to act quickly.

6 tools to build your splash page

Now that you have an idea of what goes into creating a good splash page, here are some tools to help you create one.

1. Strikingly

Strikingly is the go-to tool for creating splash pages. It is designed to help anyone build user-friendly and responsive websites efficiently.

Strikingly hosts a library of features and page-building templates you can edit without any coding or programming skills—making it the most straightforward tool for creating splash pages.

2. Instapage

Instapage is a website builder that helps you quickly design your splash page using professional templates. Instapage works the same way as Strikingly. It offers a fully customizable landing page builder, a plethora of features, templates, and a clean and intuitive user interface.

With this tool, you can bring any splash page design to life with the least amount of effort.

3. Unbounce

Unbounce also offers a drag-and-drop builder with professional templates that you can leverage to create unique splash pages. They offer templates based on your industry, which you can choose based on your needs or goals. Plus, the tool is AI-powered, which makes it a good choice even for non-technical users.

4. Swipe Pages

Swipe Pages is a lesser-known tool than the above tools. Still, it is one of the best tools you can use to create your splash page.

Swipe Pages provides templates to start with or lets you create your splash page from scratch. It also offers several features such as drag and drop editing and device visibility option to show or hide elements depending on the visitor’s device. You can also leverage their galleries and carousels to create your splash page in style and entice your visitors.

5. PageMaker.io

PageMaker.io is a website builder with unique features ideal for mobile-friendly designs. It gives you all the features that competing tools offer, and goes the extra mile by providing templates based on your niche. You can also learn for free on their learning portal.

6. Sumo

Although it was not originally designed to create splash pages, Sumo is also an excellent tool for creating simple splash pages. Sumo helps you design pages in the form of a welcome mat. You can design a one-pager and add a lead capture form to collect visitor information. You can also add some promotional or marketing information to share with the visitor. Sumo is free forever.

Make a splash with your splash page

There is more to splash pages than most marketers realize. You can use them to get more leads, get your message across or get more eyeballs on a product.

You will need to check a few things to ensure your splash page is effective and does not hinder your site’s overall performance. These include:

• Its goal. Splash pages are more effective when they have a clear and well-thought-out goal. Set one clear goal and center your message around it.
• Its display frequency. Splash pages can be irritating if they appear every time a visitor comes to your site. Make sure your splash page only appears once over a certain time period. This can be once a week, a month, over a quarter, etc.

• Its alignment with your branding. This prevents confusion and ensures the splash page resonates with your brand. It also helps the visitor know that they’re on the right page.

• Its exit button. The splash page’s content is not the reason you built your website in the first place. Make sure that your splash pages can easily be closed.

Now you know what makes a great splash page, but why stop there? Head over to the AppSumo Marketplace to get the best deals on the best splash page creation tools.

[…] It’s not rocket science; it’s just good manners. —Matthew Smith, Founder of Really Good Emails

Welcome emails are the first email communication you send to your new contacts, and they play a crucial role in your future relationship with the new contact. In this article, we’ve some outstanding welcome email examples for you to learn and carve your own from.

So, let’s get started with the clarifications.

What is a welcome email?

As the name implies, a welcome email is a friendly and courteous email designed to welcome a new subscriber. It’s the first email you send to your new leads or prospects after they’ve joined your email list. It offers a unique opportunity to establish a genuine relationship with them.

While marketers like to think of welcome emails as a way to make a good first impression, they’re not. People subscribe to your newsletter or email list due to the positive sentiment they’ve built for your brand over time. It’s generally based on what you’ve shown them so far or a lead magnet they’ve found worthy of trading their email address for—meaning the first impression has already been made.

Why are welcome emails important?

Sending your subscribers a welcome email is the first step in establishing a long-lasting relationship with them.

Welcome emails offer you an excellent opportunity to:

• Forge the first connection with your new contacts
• Build a relationship with them
• Understand more about their needs and expectations
• Encourage future emails to be opened
• Provide additional information about your brand or company
• Guide subscribers towards a first action
• Inform them about the type of content they will receive, your products and services

Here is what a great welcome email does. As you can see, in the image below, the recipient is happy with the welcome email they received and couldn’t resist sending a thank you note to the sender.

Source

Additionally, a welcome email comes at the exact moment when your subscribers are most receptive to your communication. An Invesp study shows that 74% of people expect to receive a welcome email immediately after signing up for your list. Not surprisingly, the same study found that the average open rate of a welcome email is 50%—much higher than most promotional emails.

So if you want to make the most of your email list, you need to make sure the content of your welcome email is up to par because this is how you start engaging with your subscribers.

We’ve collected 15 of the best welcome email examples to help you engage your users from your first email.

15 best welcome email examples

Keep in mind that while some emails will be particularly aligned with your business and work for you, some will not. So make sure you pick those that fit your business model.

1. AppSumo Blog

Email subject line: Oh, this is gonna be good.

Angle: Setting up the expectation.

Unique quality: Simple and fun

Our AppSumo blog has one goal: empowering Sumo-lings with unique content to facilitate their marketing efforts and help them be more successful.

This fun and straightforward welcome email does a great job of setting the expectation for new subscribers by telling them what they will be getting from us and how that’ll impact their business.

Also, this email uses a conversational tone that makes it enjoyable for the recipient. This is also a great way to set the tone for the type of content the recipient will be receiving later.

Key takeaway: Welcome emails are always most effective when they’re short and concise. You don’t have to talk about everything you do in your business for it to be good.

2. Monday.com

Email subject line: You’re in quick video inside

Angle: Exposing their brand mission

Unique quality: Quick video with a conversational tone

There are a gazillion project management tools, but very few are effective at doing what they claim to do. This welcome email from monday.com states what the software does and tells the story of why it was created. This is a good way to build rapport with the readers and, at the same time, weed out those who think monday.com is not for them.

The other reason this email works is because it comes from the company’s CEO and contains a personalized thank you note that makes it feel like an intimate conversation.

Also, the video uses a conversational tone, and the interaction with the voiceover gives the impression of a one-on-one conversation between the CEO and the new subscriber.

Key takeaways: The more conversational you can make your welcome email, the more effective it will be. Also, if you have a lot to say, it’s better to opt for a video email rather than a text email.

3. Lyft

Email subject line: Welcome to Lyft

Angle: Getting subscribers started

Unique quality: Simplicity and straightforwardness

If your goal is to create a simple welcome email, Lyft is your company to learn from. The Lyft app is quite popular, and they have a lot of perks and benefits to mention in a welcome email (as most companies do). But instead of overwhelming the reader, they only focus on a one-liner welcome message, “Nice to have you on board!”

They also added an image of two users enjoying a ride together, describing the actual benefits of the app. Furthermore, they show new subscribers a preview of the app’s interface to immerse them in the experience.

Finally, they end the email with a clear call to action, redirecting recipients to the app.

Key takeaway: Sometimes, simplicity can make the difference between a great welcome email and an unappealing one. Remember that your core purpose is to welcome the new subscriber. So, it’s perfectly fine if you only do that.

4. Asana

Email subject line: Welcome to your Asana trial

Angle: Getting new users started

Unique quality: Simply designed, making it scannable.

Just like monday.com, Asana is a leading workflow management tool. As a welcome email, Asana offers new users a 30-day free trial.

Without a good guide, a project management system can appear messy. Asana understands this and leverages its first touch email to provide three unique tips to get users up and running.

And while there are many links the recipient might click on, there is only one main call to action placed twice (in the middle and the bottom) with different wording, both taking users to the app.

Key takeaway: Figure out burning issues your new subscriber might face as they commit to doing business with you and solve those after welcoming them. This shows you care about them and indicates excellent customer service right off the bat.

5. Airbnb

Email subject line: How does Airbnb work?

Angle: Showing how the app works and breaking uncertainty

Unique quality: An image is worth 1000 words.

Everybody knows what Airbnb is, but only a few people are aware of the app’s capabilities. That’s why Airbnb dedicates its welcome email to building awareness about the features of their tool.

What is great about that strategy is that they use many images to illustrate their point—making the welcome email easy and fun to read.

Key takeaway: The more your new subscribers know about your company and its services before committing, the better off you are. The welcome email is also a good channel to explain and teach stuff.

6. Allbirds

Subject line: Welcome to the flock

Angle: Highlighting their unique position

Unique quality: Brevity and conciseness

Allbirds is a footwear and apparel brand that creates special products with a unique feel. They have designed a vibrant welcome email that shares their philosophy with new subscribers.

With the subject line, they make you feel like you are part of their playful and friendly flock of birds (Allbirds) while conveying the spirit of their brand. Inside the email, they explain what makes their products unique and use it to win the hearts of their new subscribers.

Another thing that makes this welcome email a great one is that it only contains a unique CTA that tells readers the only thing they need to do, which is to “learn more.”

Key takeaway: Like everyone else, you probably have many competitors. So your welcome email can help you stand out by focusing on what makes your brand unique from the competition.

7. Casper Sleep

Email subject line: Welcome to Casper!

Angle: Leverage social proof to earn trust.

Unique quality: Fun to read and scannable.

Casper Sleep studies the way humans sleep and creates products based on real customer needs and feedback.

The company wrote an easy-to-digest and straightforward email that welcomes its new subscribers and boasts about what makes them different from competitors. One look at the design and color scheme of the welcome email shows how well the company understands the cooling, relaxing atmosphere, and language needed for a good night’s sleep.

The body of the email tells Casper’s story and leverages social proof to earn readers’ trust.  Bonus points for puns to make readers chuckle.

Key takeaway: Another goal you can achieve with your welcome email is to earn the trust of new subscribers. You can do this by showcasing some of your social proof.

8. Evernote

Email subject line: Welcome to Evernote!

Angle: Making an offer.

Unique quality: Beautiful and scannable design

Evernote is a popular app for storing anything like a receipt, an article, a to-do list, or even a simple typed note digitally. The company designed a great welcome email that rolls the red carpet for new subscribers and handles everything one can think of upon signing up for a tool.

The welcome email covers the app’s main benefits and uses three different calls to action to get users to learn more, show them how the app works, and eventually get them to upgrade to a premium plan. Also, we can’t help but notice the beautiful and straightforward email design, which makes it scannable and easy to consume.

Key takeaway: While most people think welcome emails only intend to welcome new subscribers, it can also be a great place to share key benefits of your product or service and get free subscribers to move on to the next plan.

9. Grammarly

Email subject line: You + Grammarly = Ready for Action

Angle: Portraying the app as a hero

Unique quality: Leveraging human imagination

Grammarly is the tool that helps you fine-tune your writing. Grammarly’s welcome email helps you envision a future where all you have to do is type without worrying about mistakes. This strategy works because it makes the reader envision the after-effect of using the app.

Key takeaway: Your marketing strategy doesn’t need to feel like marketing to be effective. Find something that matters to your target audience, tell a story about it, and make yourself part of it.

10. Drift

Email subject line: Welcome to Drift.

Angle: Empowering new subscribers with resources

Unique quality: Text-only email.

We can all agree that this is the most simply designed email on this list. Drift is a world-class technology company, and the idea that they designed such a simple welcome email probably got you thinking. There’s nothing aesthetic or magical about the email, but if there’s only one thing that makes welcome emails successful, this email has it.

Drift sets itself apart from the average company by simply telling readers that they are different. Plus, the company took the time to curate their blog and select the best articles that will be most useful to new subscribers, and share them as calls to action.

Another important point is that the email is written by the company’s CEO, David Cancel. This, along with bold statements such as “we’re not most people” and the use of “I,” creates a certain one-on-one conversational tone and adds a human touch to the welcome email.

Key takeaway: Sometimes, focusing on the interactive elements of the welcome email can do more harm than good. So it’s also an excellent strategy to make it all text.

11. Headspace

Email subject line: Welcome to Headspace.

Angle: Sharing data-backed benefits.

Unique quality: Beautiful design.

Headspace helps people meditate and alleviate the stress of their daily routines.

One of the highlights of this email is that it starts out fun and friendly, mentioning the subscriber’s name. The bold text and emojis make the email clear and fun to read. In addition, the email is short and only has three sections—making it scannable.

Key takeaway: If you have a few wins or proven studies about your business you can brag about, you can mention them to convince your subscribers that they’ve made the right choice.

12. Capiche

Email subject line: Welcome to Capiche .

Angle: Confirming and showing enthusiasm for new subscribers.

Unique quality: Cool and calm look and feel emphasizing their brand.

This is one of the most straightforward emails on our list, both in terms of design and copy. Capiche is an online community for software enthusiasts who want to learn from peers. The company designed a simple welcome email that shows its enthusiasm to new subscribers and uses the dark mode visuals preferred by most software developers.

This email does a great job of mentioning what’s in it for the subscribers and sharing some resources to get the ball rolling with the community. While there are many clickable resources inside the email, it also features a bold CTA that invites the new user to explore the community.

Key takeaway: Showing gratitude and excitement is also a good way to show new subscribers that you care about them.

13. Framer

Email subject line: Hi there – Here’s how to get started with your first prototype.

Angle: Getting users started with a demo video

Unique quality: Fewer words plus scannability.

Framer is a tool that helps you and your team design stuff and work together. Framer’s welcome email includes two clearly designed and well-placed CTAs to get users to watch a tutorial and get started with the app. Plus, the email is easily scannable.

Key takeaway: If you think your product or software can be hard to use, you can create a demo video or how-to videos to get them started. And yes, it can fit in your welcome email.

14. Jira Software

Email subject line: Your free guide to setting up Jira Software.

Angle: Pointing the next step in the onboarding process

Unique quality: Straightforwardness.

Jira’s welcome email shares a guide to get new users started with the platform and points to their community as another resource for users who have further questions.

Why does this email work? It goes straight to the point by telling the recipient that they just need to follow six steps to install the software. Plus, it’s short and sweet.

Key takeaway: Sometimes, the best way to thank or welcome your new users is to give them everything they need to have a seamless experience with your product or service.

15. InVision

Email subject line: Welcome to Invision.

Angle: Onboarding new subscribers with video content

Unique quality: Very few words, one image, one video.

The first thing you’ll notice about this email is that it is designed to show more than it tells. InVision uses only a few words to welcome their new subscribers. They keep their core message large and at the top of the email and added a video to do most of the heavy lifting.

The video helps understand their brand and get started with the tool. They also mention a few reputable companies using their software to build trust and credibility with the reader.

This email is straightforward and drives the message home about Invision’s value and benefits. The original and direct approach of the email emphasizes the nature and quality of the product.

Key takeaway: Showing reputable companies or experts using your product/service is also a good way to tell new users what they can achieve with it.

Now it’s your turn to craft amazing welcome emails

From showing gratitude, making one-off offers, and giving your company a human feel, welcome emails can help you achieve unique goals with your new subscribers. But it is also a great way to build rapport with your fan base and make them feel like you’re a friend they can rely on.

Here are things to factor in when crafting your welcome email:

• A subject line that packs a punch.
• A personalized copy.
• A bit of humor and human feel.
• A clear call to action.

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