I am an advocate of NOT selling to an audience unless the product is relevant to the content.
The #1 thing you want on social media is for your audience to have a good time, and #2 is for them to respect you as a creator.
"Selling" stuff is one surefire way to piss your audience off.
Here are some concepts you may not have thought of.
- Platforms will PAY you to be great: They’ll pay you a lot of money. There is one thing the social media platform AI looks at. It’s whether you are trying to flog something. The AI is exceptionally good at identifying it. It’s important to note that "solicitation" is actually against the terms of service of Facebook for Paid Pages. You can be demonetised. They don’t want general monetised content to be ads essentially. If it’s commercial, you should tag it as such, and Facebook wants its cut by selling on their platform. That’s point number 1.
- Number 2. Most people aren’t on your page to buy a t-shirt or hat: Every post you add on the topic is one that you’re losing the attention span and joy of your audience. How many caps or T-shirts do you think you’ll sell? The most powerful way to do this is just to wear your stuff and point the audience to the allowable web link on the page. If people really want it, they’ll go find it. You’d be surprised how few people want a cap or T-shirt even on the big pages unless the quality is fantastic.
- You can however—if you create the correct affiliate recognition: Plug people’s stuff for money, but you need to flag it as such—and you should be transparent. I think it’s the law to do so. People offering you their products to review etc.—you should be transparent about what you’re getting even if it’s just use of the product. But again, here you’re not going to make much money.
- I think the best way to make money off your audience: is to do something that is of massive value to the audience (like this course)—and give it away. The more you give, and the bigger and more engaged the audience gets, the more opportunities pop out. E.g.
- You may create content in the form of a course or something, and you may look for opportunities outside your page to distribute that content.
- You could create an online course or templates, and sell those through other platforms, that bring audiences to your page, and push your audience to your content.
- The easiest way to do this is share in real time what you’re doing so the audience can see it. The ones that are interested will follow it.
- But you don’t need to ADVERTISE the content. You just make it part of who you are and what you’re doing. It’s seamless, authentic, and you don’t even need to plug it. Very powerful way to go.
- At its core, you should give everyone in your audience a lot of value and don’t expect anything in return. You can however offer something extra. Access, your time, some special content—that can be monetised—but probably the easiest way to make money online is point to your success, and do a deal OUTSIDE of social media unrelated to social media. Having the social media is a credential, because it shows skills a lot of people don’t have.
Conclusion
The fastest way to ruin a great social media audience is to treat them like a cash machine.
Social media is built on trust, connection, and value. The moment you shift gears into hard selling, that relationship fractures. NOT doing it is actually refreshing and surprising.
The truth is, if you focus on creating genuinely engaging content and giving people a reason to come back every day, the opportunities to earn will pop up organically.
Platforms will pay you for quality content. Brands will approach you for collaborations. And doors will open outside social media because you’ve built credibility and reach.
The audience isn’t there for your merch, your affiliate links, or your pyramid marketing scheme.
They’re there for you. So respect that, give freely, and let monetization happen as a natural byproduct.
If you lead with generosity and authenticity, you won’t need to push products. People will want to work with you. That’s when you know you’ve built something real and sustainable.