What 2 YRS of Building An Automated Creator Business Looks Like In Action

[VERY LONG POST WARNING]

Hey all my creatives!

I've been taking this time recently to "reflect" on my business and how far it's come along - and I both wanted to celebrate and share what I've learned so far.

When I first started this content creator business I made it a point to not do:

meetings/sales calls/etc.
bring on a team (think VA's, manual labor, agencies, etc.)
launches/work with 1:1 or group clients

I told myself that if we're going to do this, things have to be different:

Only passive income
Free Calendar
Remove me as a bottleneck & be fully automated.

While I was reflecting I decided to "draw out" what my automations look like on a monthly basis. This is both a mixture of marketing/paid channels/list or leads building.

I'll explain the "calendar view picture":

Monthly I participate in at least one bundle:

I recommend you check out: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bundlesofbundles/

It's been great for me to connect with other creators and contribute my products for free to a bundle opportunity.

Bundles have been phenomenal because at a minimum they bring in about 100-200 email subscribers per bundle.

*I'll get to how I "monetize" the free bundle traffic later on.

Gray = Daily content automation

If you're wanting to develop a "high reward skill" I recommend you look at no code with tools like Zapier, Make, Pabbly, etc. -> I prefer Zapier.

Essentially I have two years worth of content in an Airtable database and I created an automation where it randomly selects an article within that database and produces content for Pinterest, Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, IG, etc.

This daily content automation allows me to be "active" on all channels and drive that traffic to either my:

affiliate marketing products
email list

Red = Weekly Affiliate Marketing/Product Promotion

I'm heavy into affiliate marketing because I love promoting the tools I love to use within my business - literally you can't get me to "shut up" when I love a product (affiliate marketing allows me to get paid to promote the tools I love).

Similar to the daily content automation I have a weekly affiliate marketing automation:

Essentially I have an affiliate product database that houses all my links, descriptions, etc. in Airtable and weekly the automation triggers to select a random affiliate product and create content about it across my social media channels.

This allows for an automated "push to promote" the products I recommend.

Alongside Zapier, I recommend and use BannerBear to create graphics on demand for my socials - it's a much cheaper solution than hiring a graphic designer (given my no team rule).

Blue Box = Fresh content

In the image you'll see my "Fresh content" posting schedule.

Note this is the schedule of when it goes live not when I actually create.

I usually create 4-8 pieces of content TOTAL that's either for Youtube or Blog articles -> then when they go "live" I have automations trigger in the background to take that content and repurpose it across 5+ platforms.

It takes me about 8-10 hours a month to create this content -> BUT THAT'S ALL THAT I DO.

AN = Automated Newsletter

Every piece of my content is meant to drive leads to my newsletter and grow my email list, ultimately that's where I do most of my "selling" and "relationship building".

But I'm "lazy af" and don't want to sit down and "manually" write out a newsletter.

The way you can "automate your newsletter" (in depth article linked) is by creating an RSS feed. Since my content goes live on my "blue box" days I append the content to an RSS feed and the RSS feed "releases" to my email audience every Saturday at 12pm CST.

Thus allowing for me to "send an email" to my list.

*Continuing the conversation on monetizing free traffic

There are two "lead flows" I have in my business.

Content Lead Flow
Product Lead Flow

Monetization Flows for Both

Since I have daily/weekly/monthly automations go out to create content AND Bundle product giveaways to grow my email list the flow is generally the same across the board.

A person "opts in" and get's automatically recommended to sign up for other recommended newsletters.

By me "recommending them", which I whole heartily do recommend, the sponsoring newsletter pays me a certain $ per subscriber that joins their email list via my recommendations. A great way for me to monetize my free audience and for the sponsor to only pay for emails that opt-in to their newsletter.

After the recommendation they either get taken to a tripwire or an affiliate product recommendation that makes sense for the lead magnet/product giveaway.

Once they "opt in" on the back end they get my weekly automated newsletters where I provide them content and share dynamic CTA's to promote X product based on behavior or stage in "forever funnel."

Additionally, in the email funnel I have "monthly product promotions" that are automated on the backend for the email subscriber.

I want to be 100% honest, this took me 2 years to build. My journey won't be your journey - and it's not supposed to be.

There were a lot of nights that I cried wondering why the fuck I'm doing this in the first place.

A lot of days where I made no sales.

But the goal is to take one day at a time.

Put your head down and play the long game.

There are a lot of "gurus" out there that say you can accomplish XYZ in [insert some arbitrary time] - some of their roadmaps have merit, some do not.

But identify early on what type of business you want to create.

Create your "non negotiables" fast and early on - you'll be so glad you did in the long run.

I know this is a very long post - I hope it's worthy of a value bomb!

I wanted to share this because I think it's 100% possible to build a creator business that doesn't mean you have to be on social media 24/7 or sacrifice your time/sanity to make money online.

If anyone wants a recommendation/referral link to the products mentioned I can share them - but that's not the point of this post, the post is to educate and provide a value bomb!

So I hoped it boomed :)

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