How to 3x your income by saying no, and pitching less (you can post less too)

First, let me be clear, by posting less and pitching less, I do NOT mean you will be working less.

First of all, you don’t need to post every day, let alone multiple times per day. You don’t need to send out 10 pitches every day. You don’t even need to send out one every day.

You DO need to get super educated on usage and perpetuity. You DO need to pitch the right brands. Schedule a phone call or video call if you can.

Here is a list of content creator platforms. I don’t use any of them.

Discount codes and affiliate marketing is available to any Joe Schmo who can type in a web address. It is not a partnership of mutual benefit. It costs the brand nothing, and in most cases they have the same discount they’re offering you available to anyone who signs up on their website (show some examples).

There are cases when affiliate marketing is worth it:

• High ticket items, like electric bikes
• If the brand posts a white-listed ad, using your affiliate link. If you do this, the brand should be paying you a percentage of the ad spend as well.

Brand “ambassador” programs are typically just affiliate marketing in disguise. Unless they’re paying you or giving you a way higher commission than their standard, you are not an ambassador.

All affiliate commissions are negotiable.

Focus on high quality content versus high quantity content.

Remember, once you start selling content, even if it’s just for trade, this is no longer a hobby. You now have taxable income. Knowing this really changed my mindset and empowered me to say no more. You can also get creative on payment structure.

If a brand doesn’t have the budget now for your full rate, negotiate payment bonuses based on views and performance.

Focus on long-term brand partnerships over single use. (Show examples of what this structure could look like, and how I would pitch it).

It took me 3 years to finally make a good media kit. Having something is better than having nothing. But it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. Having examples that you can link to in your pitch is the most important thing.

My website still isn’t finished. My husband is even a freakin career web developer. It doesn’t even have a work with us page. You don’t really need this.

You don’t need a large audience. I don’t even have 10000 followers on Instagram, and less than 12000 across platforms. But you should be posting cross platform (I waited too long to start doing this). Charge more for cross posting. (Example of how I increased the value of long-term partnerships by including cross posting).

Don’t focus exclusively on collaborations. We made 3x our standard rate with one brand partner because they wanted to purchase a video we originally made for a collaboration, to post on their own social platforms and run ads on. Combining collaborations and UGC can lead to much higher payouts.

I initially tried to ask them to use my affiliate link in their ad, but they preferred to just pay more to own full rights to the video.