Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

Brands are becoming increasingly cautious about how they use their budgets. Since larger clients – like brands – are a stable source of income for creators, it becomes a necessity to know how to secure their business, even during times of crisis.

Here’s what you can do to avoid being short-changed and ensure you’re getting the remuneration you deserve, even when businesses cut back on their expenses.

Tip #1 To Make Money As A Content Creator: Don’t Be Desperate

Do desperate times call for desperate measures? I think not! Even if you’re in a dire situation, and bills are piling up, don’t form a relationship with a client out of desperation. Not only will making short term plans – like decreasing fees and taking on extra work – cause you to burn out, but it will extinguish your abilities to earn a reasonable income post-crisis. Instead, you’ll end up having to fire many of the clients you had during your season of crisis. Moral of the story: avoid taking on clients or negotiating with clients because you’re in a bind.

Tip #2 To Make Money As A Content Creator: Develop A Long Term Plan

The best method to avoid being desperate is to create a long term plan. A long term plan will enable you to think beyond your current predicament, to create enduring profitable solutions. Base your long term plan on what you want to achieve rather than what your current predicament dictates. When you’re creating this plan don’t be stressed or anxious as this will only cause you to make decisions and take on projects based on impaired judgment.

Tip #3 To Make Money As A Content Creator: Set Up Your Exit Strategy (If Applicable)

If worse comes to worst and you’re forced to reevaluate your fee structure or remuneration when you’re not getting as many brands, sponsorships, or ad revenue, create an exit strategy. An exit strategy can be described as how you’ll reintroduce your normal fees, post-crisis. You want to ensure you’re getting the right kind of remuneration while ensuring you don’t alienate the clients who expect lower fees so you don’t lose any clients or money in the process.

Your exit strategy should cover how you’ll phase in higher fees incrementally, discuss fee increases with clients, and fire clients that were unbearable, but necessary to meet profit margins.

If this doesn’t apply to you, be grateful and move onto implementing tip #4.

Tip #4 To Make Money As A Content Creator: Establish Your Value Proposition

Why should a brand or business partner with you – or choose your services – instead of another content creator or influencer? What makes you unique, distinctive, worthwhile? What value do you contribute? You should explain all of this clearly and concisely in your value proposition. Include your value proposition in all your professional branding, from your website’s about me section, LinkedIn profile, pitches, etc. Doing this reduces the back-and-forth that’s common when communicating with clients, and establishes you as their preferred creator.

Tip #5 To Make Money As A Content Creator: Enhance Your Time Management

As a creator, time management is essential to attain profit margins, which is often sidetracked by passion projects or menial tasks, these can be described as tasks that aren’t profitable, and distract from your primary source of income. To avoid taking on these trivial tasks, prioritize how you’ll spend your time, especially during a crisis. You can do this by investing more time into meaningful projects.

However, for those creators who are truly too busy during vital tasks, it’s time to consider delegating. Hire professionals to do tasks that use your precious time but aren’t a core part of your job. For example, you can hire professionals to edit your audio, video, or text, manage your social media, liaise with clients, and so on. This will save you so much time that you’ll be able to redirect to vital tasks.

These 5 tips to securing more clients focus on maintaining your profit margins during this crisis. But, perhaps, there’s something else – something far simpler – you should consider, like innovating your budget. You’ll find you won’t need more clients if you learn to do more with less. Doing this not only allows you to survive during this time of crisis but once this ends, you’ll be a far leaner business that can achieve extraordinary growth.