Forget Likes and Shares

Asking your audience to consume and share your content is nice.

Motivating your audience to buy, subscribe, and promote your content is even better.

Whether you have a newsletter, book, podcast, online course, or other content product, you can develop an incentive program that grows both your audience and revenue. We talked to a newsletter consultant, a book author, a product provider, and a content website owner toget their advice for your business.

Referral programs: Though referral programs have evolved from where they were five years ago, they still can be a powerful tool, says Dan Oshinsky, who runs the email consultancy Inbox Collective and its newsletter.

But Dan says he doesn’t recommend giving away physical products, such as T-shirts, stickers, mugs, and tote bags, in 2024. “I have not seen a lot of (recent) success with giving away swag or that sort of merchandise,” he says. “Readers aren't necessarily going to be super incentivized to share the newsletter with five or 10 friends just to get a coffee mug. Plus, on your end of things, as the operator, there's a lot of work to print ship this sort of merchandise.”

In 2024, Dan says, content businesses should consider two incentive categories – digital rewards and contesting.

You can reward an audience promoting your content with an exclusive ebook, a discount code to a product or course – anything that a reader might be interested in getting access to and would be willing to share your newsletter for access to it.

Or you can hold a sweepstakes monthly or quarterly for audience members who get a handful of friends to subscribe to your content. In crafting the rewards, think about the lifetime value of an email subscriber. If it costs $15 to buy and deliver a prize, and the value of a subscriber is $3, the effort isn’t with it.

“To me, the most important thing is that you set your referral tiers fairly low,” Dan says. “Start small and start focused.”

Pre-order incentives: Tilt community member Annie Schiffmann created an incentive system for the launch of her book Simple Social Media.

“None of these were really things. They were creations that I came up with to enhance the experience of the buyer. They cost me basically nothing to make,” she says.

Before she released her book, she enticed buyers through pre-order bonuses, including the Simple Social Media webinar and a 20-minute personalized strategy session. They also received a free ticket to the launch party and access to a special mixtape on Spotify of songs referenced in her book.

Annie also put together bundle bonuses for bulk purchasers and formed partnerships with other creators to incentivize people to buy from her site rather than a book marketplace. On her site, she offers free digital resources for people who give her their email addresses when they buy the book directly.

Affiliate marketing: Stefan Chekanov, co-founder and CEO of Brosix, a secure instant messenger provider, uses an affiliate program that lets users earn money by promoting their product. While not a content business, the Brosix model offers lessons for content entrepreneurs.

Brosix pays a 30% commission on all referrals AND gives a 20% discount to the referred customers. “This strategy works because both parties win,” Stefan says. “It creates a snowball effect and adds extra value to our brand by creating long-term partnerships and generating continuous revenue streams.”

Rewards act as tokens of appreciation: Scott Lieberman founded Touchdown Money, a resource for people to learn how to make money online. He rewards the site’s email subscribers with a first look at new content.

“This makes the email subscribers feel special and also lets me know which customers are most interested in new content,” Scott says.

“Building an emotional tie with customers and making it a priority of marketing will ensure not only keeping them as customers but will organically drive long-term success and add customers over time,” Scott says.

- Ann Gynn

Looking for more tips on growing your audience and revenue? Join us at CEX 2024 to hear from expert presenters on these topics and much, much more. Register today!​

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Entrepreneur: Tim Huelskamp

Biz: 1440​

Tilt: News with no bias

Scene: Newsletter (3.4M)

Snack Bites:

• When they launched, Tim and co-founder Andrew Steigerwald had 78 subscribers (friends and family). But they still focused their first quarter of operations on developing the newsletter to become “as kickass as possible.”
• They built a unit-cost business model – the cost to acquire a subscriber vs. the lifetime value of that subscriber.
• The newsletter now has a team of 14 and earns at least $1M in revenue per team member.
• Word-of-mouth referrals are its best organic growth tool.

Why We Stan: Tim has known since the beginning the secret ingredient of a successful content business – always focus on the audience.

​Read Tim’s business advice and more.

Know a content creator who’s going full tilt? DM us. Or email tilt@thetilt.com.

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• ​Before Social Media:​​​​​​​​​ The Marketing Elements You Need Before You Post (Free Webinar)
• ​How to Create a Multi-Million Dollar Business from Your Book (Content Inc.)
• ​Vice Implodes. What's Wrong with the News Media Model? (This Old Marketing)
• ​An Introduction to Paid Book Promotion (Publish & Prosper)
• Join the conversation about how in-person events can help you and your business at 12 p.m. US EST Tuesday on Tilt Your Business: A Weekly Mastermind for Content Entrepreneurs.

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