7 Ways Creators Make Money Online in 2025

Summary

In this video, the speaker explores how to make money in 2025 by focusing on digital monetization through community engagement. Highlighting the limitations of social media for direct income, the speaker offers seven scalable ways to monetize an audience: coaching, physical events, digital events, digital products, courses, memberships, and challenges. The emphasis is on creating and selling digital products with high profit potential while fostering a loyal community. The speaker encourages viewers to shift from physical business models to digital entrepreneurship using platforms like Nasio.io, as the opportunities to build an online business are greater than ever.

Takeaways

• 😀 Social media is a discovery engine, not a business engine. It helps you get noticed, but you need to monetize outside of it.
• 😀 Physical products are hard to monetize and come with logistical challenges, such as shipping, returns, and manufacturing costs.
• 😀 Brand deals are unreliable, especially for creators with fewer than 10,000 followers. Predictable revenue is hard to achieve with brand deals alone.
• 😀 Community monetization is a new and exciting way to make money, offering a 100% profit margin by creating value for your audience.
• 😀 Coaching is a simple way to make money, but it’s not scalable because it’s limited by time—you can only coach so many people in a day.
• 😀 Physical events allow for higher revenue than coaching but are still not scalable because of space and logistical constraints.
• 😀 Digital events allow you to reach a global audience with minimal costs and can scale significantly with the use of ads to attract customers.
• 😀 Digital products, such as eBooks or guides, offer passive income as they can be sold repeatedly without additional time commitment once created.
• 😀 Courses can be highly profitable, especially if they provide value that people can make money from, such as learning to invest or become a chef.
• 😀 Memberships create predictable, recurring revenue, but convincing customers to pay monthly can be a challenge. However, they are highly scalable.

Q & A

Why is making money through social media alone not a sustainable option in 2025?

Social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube offer high engagement, but they don’t directly monetize user views. For example, Instagram doesn’t pay creators for views, and YouTube’s ad revenue is minimal, with only around $300 for a million views. Social media serves as a discovery engine, not a business engine. Monetizing off-platform is necessary.

What are the challenges of selling physical products online?

Creating and selling physical products can be complex and costly. You need to handle manufacturing, shipping, returns, and customer service. Plus, the profit margins are small. For example, selling a t-shirt for $30 might only yield a $5 profit after production costs.

How do brand deals work, and why are they not reliable for monetization?

Brand deals can be lucrative, but they typically require more than 10,000 followers to get noticed by brands. Even then, brand deals are inconsistent—one month you might earn a lot, and the next month, you might earn nothing. This unpredictability makes it difficult to plan or scale a business.

What is community monetization and why is it promising?

Community monetization focuses on creating value for your audience while generating revenue. It leverages your existing community of followers or supporters to build a business model with higher profit margins. Unlike brand deals or physical products, community monetization has the potential for sustainable, predictable income.

What are the least scalable to most scalable ways to monetize a community?

The least scalable method is coaching, where you sell your time for money. A step up is hosting physical events, followed by digital events, which can reach a global audience. The next step is selling digital products, which can be sold repeatedly with little effort. After that, courses provide more scalable opportunities. Memberships offer recurring revenue, while the most scalable method is running challenges, which combine community experience and high revenue potential.

Why is coaching considered the least scalable method of monetization?

Coaching involves selling your time directly, which is limited to the number of hours in a day. While it can provide good income, you can't scale it significantly since you're exchanging time for money.

What are the benefits of running digital events over physical events?

Digital events can be scaled globally with zero costs and have the potential to reach a much larger audience. Unlike physical events that require space, logistics, and limited attendance, digital events can host thousands of people, generating significant revenue.

How do digital products like eBooks and courses help scale a business?

Digital products, once created, can be sold repeatedly without additional time investment, allowing for scalability. For example, a recipe PDF or an online course can be sold to thousands of people worldwide, generating continuous revenue with minimal effort after the initial creation.

What makes memberships a powerful but challenging monetization model?

Memberships provide recurring revenue, which is predictable and scalable, making it easier to plan business growth. However, convincing people to pay a monthly fee can be difficult. It requires consistent value and effort to keep members engaged over time.

How do challenges differ from traditional courses in terms of engagement and revenue?

Challenges offer a more interactive experience than traditional courses. They create a sense of community, where participants go through the process together. This communal experience makes challenges more engaging and can lead to higher revenue, often surpassing traditional courses due to the social and participatory elements.