I created the Power Your Research program to help academics trapped in the world of academe use their credentials and expertise to build a brand that gives them the visibility, authority, and income to be free from relying solely on higher education for their livelihood. I’ve found success and a thriving public platform through the power of my academic brand. I’ve been helping my fellow educators and academics do the same for over ten years now. In this article you’ll learn the 9 keys to building a 6-figure academic brand.
- Define your niche. Who are you? Who do you speak to? And how can you help them? Many academics lack clarity on their audience and their purpose, and finding clarity means defining your niche. If you can determine what your area of expertise is and how you can use it to help people that care about that area of expertise, you can get them to pay you for the value you provide them; that’s the foundation of making money.
When finding your audience, it’s important to niche down. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to limit yourself to one project, but you should be able to state your academic brand and desired audience clearly and concisely, and it should target a specific and narrow group of people. For example, my brand statement is, “I create experiences for free thinkers to feel empowered when they’re challenging the status quo.” From this, you know exactly who I attract—free thinkers—and exactly what I want to help them do—feel empowered when they’re challenging the status quo. I do this in multiple different contexts, from empowering academics through the Power Your Research program to empowering people to tell their stories through my writing career, but it all falls under this narrow mission statement. To be able to convert your passion and expertise into actual income, you should find a similar niche that you can focus on and target, and then make sure everything you do serves that goal.
If you are having trouble finding your niche, here’s an exercise to try:
Get a sheet of paper and make two columns. In one column, write everything you like to do. The items on this list could be computer programming and talking to people, or they could be playing video games and bingo. Even if it seems trivial, if you like doing it, write it down. In the second column, write down everything you’re good at, whether you like it or not. Make sure you consider skills that you’ve built in an academic context that could be extended to the outside world as well; for example, I teach my students public speaking, but I can certainly teach public speaking outside of a school setting too. Now, pick an item from each column at random, and see if you can create something combining those two items that will help people. I picked “advice” and “branding,” and this led to the creation of Power Your Research, where I help academics build their brand. Try this exercise yourself and see what you come up with!
- Stick to your niche. To see the fruits of your labor, you must be consistent with your niche over an extended period of time. It is important to understand that, whether you like it or not, you are always presenting a brand to your audience through everything you do publicly. If you are inconsistent with your brand and your content is all over the place, then that is the brand people will associate with you—which we don’t want.
To make sure that your niche sees your academic brand and understands the value you can provide to them, create only one type of content on each platform. For example, my Instagram is where I am building my writing income, so I focus my content there on writing and giving other writers advice. I do not speak about Power Your Research there; for the past year, my Instagram has been dedicated only to writing. On the other hand, my LinkedIn content is focused exclusively towards academics whom I am trying to help get free from higher education. I share minimal content about my novels, comics, and other writing projects, because those works aren’t relevant to my target audience there. Keep your content focused and consistent, and maintain it for at least a year. Over time you will build brand awareness with the people your message will resonate with, and the more they see your message, the more likely they are to pay you for the value you can provide them.
- Provide value to your ideal audience. It’s counterintuitive, but in order to earn money you will have to think less about making money and more about providing value. Consider how you can create free content that actually helps your niche audience, as that’s how you can prove that you have value to provide that is worth your audience investing their money in. This is the first step to earning the social proof you need to set up future success, and things will snowball from there.
- Learn how to monetize your niche. If you’re in the academic space or have advanced academic credentials, it’s likely that you’ve never run a successful business. The educational system unfortunately does not teach us how to make money; it just teaches us how to get a job. And your personal academic brand is a business that you want to make money from, so you will have to learn how to think about it as a business and do what businesspeople do.
The first step is to familiarize yourself with the channels and avenues you have to monetize your niche. There’s a plethora of different options, and you can use just one or a mix of several. The choice will depend on your personality and the best way you can deliver information to your ideal audience.
A few of the most popular methods for monetization are:
- Coaching
- Sponsorships and Endorsements
- Digital courses on platforms such as Teachable and Udemy
- Ad revenue on your content
- Affiliate links
- Selling merchandise using platforms like Printful and Shopify
- Membership sites such as Patreon, private Discord channels, and private Slack channels
It’s important to note that, with any of these, it’s not enough to stick a link on your website somewhere and forget about it. You must have a sales funnel that will take your audience from awareness of your brand to giving you money, and you must provide consistent value to your audience to convince them that your products or services are worth it.
- Figure out your channel or method and master it. What are your passions and strengths? What do you like doing, and what are you good at? You do not need to be on all platforms and pursuing all monetization methods; in fact, doing so would probably do more harm than good. Instead, figure out which social media platform you like best, and master it.
I’m a writer, so I started out on Twitter because it played to my strengths and my desired audience. I built a following of close to 7K people, I got verified, and once I had mastered my Twitter presence, I hired an assistant to keep doing what I had been doing so I could move on to Instagram and start mastering that. I have now been on Instagram for almost a year and have almost 4K followers. Every social media platform has its own algorithm that takes time to master, so start with the one you’re most comfortable with and experiment, study, and analyze it—all the skills you’re an expert in as an academic—until you have mastered it.
- Validate your ideas. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: it’s the middle of the night, and you’ve just had a brilliant idea for a business. You jump up excitedly and immediately start dedicating all of your time, energy, and resources to making this idea work… only to find out that no one wants it. It’s not speaking to your audience, and no one wants to pay you for it.
Before you put all of your eggs in one basket, you must validate your ideas first. Gauge interest by beta testing your concepts; offer the content for free, and receive feedback to see whether the project is viable.
- Find and focus on your true fans. What is a true fan? A true fan is someone that buys from you, and someone that talks about you.
I keep an Excel spreadsheet of the people who have bought from me and the people who are talking about me positively so that I can continue to serve and help them. Most of us are very concerned with going viral and acquiring thousands of followers, but there are plenty of public figures with thousands of followers who can’t even sell 5 t-shirts. The type of people I track in my spreadsheet—the true fans—should be the real focus, and you accrue those true fans by serving your niche consistently over an extended period of time. What’s more, these true fans are the early adopters that will then help expose you to the masses later on. This is the basis for what I call the Thousand True Fans concept: you only need a thousand people to each give you $100 in one year to make 6 figures from your academic brand. You can even play around with these numbers; if 500 people give you $200 each, you get the same result. It’s not easy, but hopefully, when it’s framed this way, you can see that this is an entirely achievable goal.
- Create a website. You need a website, and it needs to be effective. Why? Your website is the one platform you can own. You don’t have to contend with an algorithm or game the system on your website; you can communicate directly with your audience and control exactly what content they see. Your website (and other digital tools you own, like your mailing list) is a crucial part of your digital academic brand, and it can be the difference between whether you are offered $500 or $3,500 for a one-hour public speaking engagement. (Hint: $3,500 is the lowest you should accept.)
- Eventually, be everywhere. We want to be methodical and take our time in building our brand on different platforms and mediums, but eventually, we want to be everywhere. Think about McDonald’s; it’s everywhere. There’s a McDonald’s when you need it, because it’s literally everywhere. That’s what you want your brand to be as well, and you can do that as you start monetizing more. As you make more money, you can afford to hire people to help you maintain a presence everywhere at once. So as you keep growing your academic brand, keep in mind that the long game is to stay visible to as many people as possible simultaneously once you have proven to yourself that you can serve and help your niche.
This is not an easy process, but it is tried-and-true. Find your niche, provide value to them consistently over time, monetize that value and build a platform around that audience, and you will build a 6-figure brand!
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