Lessons From 7 People Who Got Rich and Famous on Social Media

Social Media

There are plenty of people that get their big break on social media. Some become well known and others strike it rich. There are also the lucky few who achieve both. It’s not surprising when you consider the fact that when you have fame, money-making opportunities also begin presenting themselves.

However, it is amazing to think that sites and apps such as YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr and others have the power to put the spotlight on talent across a variety of different disciplines. As you are about to see, though, success stories are in no short supply.

Related: Why This YouTube Star Spends 2 Hours Daily Reading Audience Comments

Let’s take a look at several different individuals who got rich and/or famous on social media, and what we can learn from them.

1. Susan Boyle
Susan Boyle, Britain’s Got Talent

Susan Boyle

Singer Susan Boyle become a worldwide phenomenon thanks to a YouTube clip that showed her performing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables on Britain’s Got Talent. This 47-year-old from Scotland became known in Britain after the show aired, but it was the virality of the YouTube video that eventually catapulted her voice across the globe.

Boyle was unemployed when the video was recorded, but record execs everywhere started calling her after seeing the clip. She quickly earned more than $8 million in advertising and recording deals.

The singer is an excellent example of someone who took a chance. She went up on stage, gave it all she had and the judges and the audience couldn’t help but recognize her incredible talent as a vocalist.

If you’d like to learn more about making money on YouTube, take a look at How to Make Money on YouTube: 101 Monetization Tips

2. Brittany Furl, Vine

Brittany Furlan is Vine’s biggest female star, with more than 9 million followers. This aspiring comedian quickly grew in popularity when she started posting six-second comedy sketches on Vine. Last year, this landed her a development deal for a sketch comedy show to be produced by Seth Green.

No matter what your skills and talents are, if opportunities don’t seem to be forthcoming, try packaging and delivering your ideas in a new format. You never know when it might resonate with a new audience.

If you’d like to start making your own Vine videos, take a read through 4 Tips for Making Memorable Vine Videos.

3. Kate Upton
Kate Upton, Sports Illustrated, Youtube

Kate Upton

We all know who Kate Upton is today, but prior to her success with Sports Illustrated, she was struggling to find work. Part of her success today is due in part to a couple of YouTube videos. In particular, there was a video where she was “doing the Dougie” at an L.A. Clippers game. Not only was the video viewed millions of times, it also gained her 170,000 Twitter followers. Today, Upton has no shortage of work.

Are you short on work? Then why not show your talent on YouTube? You might be able to drum up a little bit of engagement.

4. Wedley Estime
Wedley Estime, Dadi Nicolas, Youtube

Wedley Estime/ Dadi Nicolas in jersey

Even athletes have been turning to social media to get more attention from scouts. Football player Wedley Estime decided to create a highlight video showing his skills and post it on YouTube. This video got passed around to recruiters, who started sending in offers. Estime eventually signed with Virginia Tech, and has since changed his name to Dadi Nicolas.

If you just aren’t getting the attention you think you deserve, it may be worthwhile to turn to social media.

Related: 10 New Features YouTube Is Rolling Out for Creators (Hint: 3-D Is Getting More Immersive)

5. Amalia Ulman
Amalia Ulman, Instagram

Amalia Ulman with friends; Dean Kissick and Ed Fornieles

Amalia Ulman was fascinated by pop culture’s obsession with Instagram celebrities. When she decided to become one herself, this well-studied Instagram persona quickly gained nearly 65,000 followers. Prior to that, she had actually spent time studying the language, the hashtags and the selfie styles that the most popular Insta-celebs were using.

The moral of the story here is pretty obvious. If you study those who are popular and duplicate their efforts, you too can become known.

Also see Secrets of Succeeding at Visual Marketing on Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube.

6. Alex Lee
Alex Lee, Target, Twitter

Alex Lee

Is it possible to become famous accidentally? You’d have to ask Alex Lee, who is likely the most unintentional Twitter star of all time.

A teenage girl snapped a photo of Lee while he was working at a Target supermarket. This girl was friends with another girl who had a crush on Lee. Pretty soon, a different Twitter user found this photo on Tumblr and tweeted it out. That’s when the popularity of the photo skyrocketed and got tweeted out more than 800,000 times within a few hours. The hashtag #alexfromtarget then grew to prominence.

Lee was unaware of the trend until after he finished his shift at work. The attention quickly turned creepy, and people started showing up at his job to snap more photos of him. However, it landed him an appearance on The Ellen Show, and he now has roles in a music video as well as a movie. Death threats notwithstanding, this story has a happy ending.

This just goes to show you that you never know what’s going to catch on. Experimentation can lead to success in unlikely places.

Looking to learn more about Tumblr? Here’s an article worth reading: How to Make Money on Tumblr: 25 Proven Tips.

7. Nash Grier
Nash Grier, Vine

Nash Grier

Nash Grier found his popularity on Vine with silly, humorous, spontaneous, almost Jackass style six-second loops. Though he may not be a household name, girls ages 12 to 20 know who he is, and simply can’t get enough of him. Grier currently has nearly 12 million followers on Vine. His other numbers aren’t bad either: he has nearly 8 million followers on Instagram, more than 4 million subscribers on YouTube and 4.7 million followers on Twitter.

Grier also gets a cool $25,000 to $100,000 whenever he plugs products in his six-second clips.

Looks may not be everything, but they certainly seem to help with some social celebrities.

Final thoughts
In addition to the sites already mentioned, it is also possible to earn money on Facebook. Regardless of what social network you turn to, there are opportunities to be had.

Duplicating the successes of those mentioned here could prove challenging, but we could all be making a modest income from social media with a little effort.

Take some time to study 15 Inspiring Entrepreneurs Who Earn Income on Social Media, and find the drive and motivation within you to be a go-getter.

How to Make $1,000 Or More Per Hour

Want to Make $1,000 per hour?

No, you don’t need to go to law school or become a doctor. In fact, you can start making $1,000 an hour or more right now.

This is not an article about some new multilevel marketing company or passive income stream. You can achieve these results in your current business, knowing what you already know.

And best of all — you can make this money consistently.

I recently listened to 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall on Audible. Like these books I mentioned a few weeks ago, 80/20 Sales and Marketing is changing how I think about business. (Whether you are in sales and marketing or not, pick up a copy of this book today. Trust me.)

In the book, Marshall explains how in a typical day, a person does numerous tasks that are worth just a few dollars per hour, and a few small tasks that are worth much more.

How much is an hour worth?

Nearly every task on earth could be outsourced, for a price. If you want to get ridiculous, you could even hire a butler to pick you out of bed, carry you to the bathroom, and brush your teeth for you. While I don’t recommend this, let’s expand on this topic.

If you are mowing your lawn for one hour, how much are you earning during that time? You could have paid the neighbor’s kid $10 for that work, but instead you did it yourself. You earned $10 for that work.

Look at you, big-shot entrepreneur! You should be proud.

Now, maybe you already hire a kid to mow your lawn. But what about checking your email? Your Facebook? How much is that worth?

You could probably get that done for around $10 an hour also. Maybe less.

OK, Brandon, I get it: outsource more. But how does that help me earn $1,000 an hour?

Hold your horses, we’re getting there.

Just as there are certain tasks during the day that are worth very little, there are other tasks that are worth more. For example, hiring new employees.

If you are the CEO of your company, you are likely still hiring your own employees, sifting resumes, doing interviews and making offers. But how much is that task worth, per hour? What would a competent person charge to do such a task for you: $30 to $50 an hour?

Let’s be excessive and pretend we all live in San Francisco. A good HR person might cost you $100 per hour. So by doing all the work of hiring new employees, you are making a whopping $100 an hour. Look at you, hot shot! Your parents would be proud.

But I’m not done yet.

What about the tasks during your day that are worth much more. I’m talking about those special moments when you make a huge sale, land a big client, install a new product or reach 50,000 people on a podcast.

Those moments are worth much more. Those moments, even if they last only a few minutes, can be worth $1,000 an hour or more.

Related: The One Productivity Hack Every Entrepreneur Needs to Incorporate

Consistency is key.
Let me ask you a few questions:

How much time today did you spend doing tasks that were $10-per-hour tasks?
How much time did you spend doing $100-per-hour tasks?
How much time did you spend doing $1,000-per-hour tasks?
My guess is you probably spent a lot more time doing $10-an-hour work than $1,000-an-hour work. In fact, I’d guess you are spending 99 percent of your time doing the former and just 1 percent doing the latter.

But what if you could spend more time doing $1,000-per-hour work and less time doing $10-per-hour work?

You can!

I know what the naysayers are thinking right now: “In order to have those $1,000-per-hour moments, you have to spend a lot of time on the $10-per-hour administration tasks.”

True.

However, do you need to spend that time on the $10-per-hour tasks? Can you train someone else to do all those tasks for you? Why can’t they do the windup and you throw the pitch?

Everyone can earn $1,000 an hour. Even a fast food employee has tasks that, if only for a few seconds, are worth $1,000 per hour. The key is in consistency, and increasing those moments in your day.

The more time you can spend doing $1,000-per-hour tasks the more money you, and your business, will make. It truly is as simple as that.

If you currently spend 30 minutes per day doing $1,000-per-hour tasks and the other seven and a half hours doing $10-per-hour tasks, you are bringing in $575 per day for your business. But if you spent two hours per day doing $1,000-per-hour tasks, and six hours doing $10-per-hour tasks, you are bringing in $2,060 per day for your business.

Do you see the power in this?

The best part isn’t even the money, it’s time. What would be better? Spending 12 hours per day doing $10-per-hour work or one hour per day doing $1,000-per-hour work?

Exactly.

Take a minute right now and write down what tasks in your business are worth $1,000 per hour? What tasks are worth $100 per hour? What tasks are worth $10 per hour?

Start outsourcing the $10-per-hour jobs out today, followed by the $100-per-hour jobs.

Watch how fast your business explodes.

Brandon Turner
Real Estate Investor and VP of Growth at BiggerPockets.com
Brandon Turner is a real estate entrepreneur and the VP of Growth at BiggerPockets.com, one of the web’s largest real estate investing community. He is also the author of The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down and several other books. Buying his first home at the age of 21, Turner quickly grew his real estate portfolio to over 40 units using a variety of creative finance methods. He and his wife Heather live in Grays Harbor, Wash.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245311

5 Ways to Aggressively Grow Your Newsletter Subscribers

Email is one of the most effective forms of digital marketing and an essential component of every campaign. A great way to build your email list is to offer a newsletter.

Simply placing an opt-in form on your website isn’t enough to build a large subscriber list. Sure, you will get the occasional subscriber here and there, but if you want to aggressively grow your list consider these five options.

1. Include an opt-in form after each blog post.

By placing an opt-in form at the bottom of each blog post you are catching the visitor at the perfect time — right after they finish reading your content. If your content provided value the visitor will be more willing to hand over his or her email address to continue engaging with your brand.

If your website is built using WordPress there are several free plugins that allow you to create several customizable styles of opt-in forms and integrate them with your email marketing service. Optin Forms and WP Conversion Boxes are two great options.

2. Promote your newsletter via social media.

Every business should have a social media presence, and this is a great audience to attract newsletter subscribers from. Is every single follower and fan that is socially connected to your business already subscribed to your newsletter? That is highly unlikely, making this an easy way to add new subscribers.

If someone has “Liked” your Facebook page or is following your Twitter account then there is already an established relationship. They are obviously interested in your brand, so encourage them to join your newsletter by sending out frequent posts welcoming them to subscribe by highlighting the benefits of your newsletter.

3. Run contests and giveaways.

What is one thing the majority of people can’t pass up? Something for free. It doesn’t even have to be some outrageous giveaway in terms of monetary value. In fact, your own products or service is often the best giveaway.

Create a contest and offer a free trial, free service or free product — and to be entered into the contest require that the individual subscribes to your newsletter and shares the contest on Twitter or Facebook. So you gain a new subscriber and you also get additional exposure across social media, which can potentially attract more subscribers and more social promoters. The right contest can become viral quickly, delivering a huge influx of email subscribers.

4. Use an exit-intent pop-up offer.

There will be some people that just don’t complete your website forms, even if they are placed right after your blog content. While aggressive, an exit pop up can help convert traffic into blog subscribers. Rather than using a pop up that fires when the page loads or after a specific period of time, opt for one that uses exit intent technology, only displaying when it detects that the visitor is about to leave.

Bounce Exchange, the pioneer of converting abandoning traffic, is behind some of the most aggressive and successful exit conversion campaigns. In fact, I have witnessed enough successful campaigns run by Bounce Exchange that my company, Market Domination Media, has engaged it to create and manage campaigns designed to increase our newsletter subscribers.

5. Create Twitter lead generation cards.

This is one of my favorite ways to build highly targeted email lists for our clients. Twitter lead generation cards allow you to create an offer and collect email addresses in a single click. What’s the best part? You know the email address is valid because Twitter passes the email address that the user has confirmed and uses in his or her profile.

Twitter ads have incredible targeting options, which allows you to only present your newsletter offer to prospects that match your target criteria. You have to pay for each email collected, but for businesses that really want to grow their subscriber list fast this is a great option.

Why You Need to Focus on Focus in Your Marketing Plan

Focus — it’s something I’ve tried to instill into my kids through the years. It’s something I teach in my class at New York University. It’s something I try to place into every client assignment.

Focus is a key tenant of any marketing plan.

Without focus, a marketing plan is all over the map. It lacks a mission and a purpose. It lacks a central objective that guides its every move. It lacks clarity and a specific call to action for the team.

Without focus, you don’t have an actionable marketing plan.

Truth be told, focus isn’t something you suddenly think about when you’ve completed your plan. It would be a lot of work to go back in and add focus at the end of your planning.

But hopefully what you’ve been noticing as this series has progressed is that the process we’ve been following to build your marketing plan has had focus built right into it. If you’ve been following it step by step, then your plan couldn’t be anything but focused.

It all started with a clearly defined objective to kick off the process and a single-minded question: What do you want to accomplish this year?

The plan got rooted in some fundamentals of the brand and then we kicked into gear with some data about the target customer, the competition and your own past marketing initiatives.

The plan then followed a somewhat regimented approach to map out strategies and tactics as well as a measurement protocol to make sure that you were accomplishing your objective along the way.

There was focus the entire time!

But don’t take focus for granted. We could have easily strayed and added in a litany of tactics that could have put us in a spin. We could have decided on strategies that wouldn’t really accomplish the objectives. We could have mishandled the budget and tried to do too much with too little.

We could have easily lost our focus. It happens every single day.

Which is why I have to say that while focus is built into the process, it’s not automatic. Focus is not an innate talent for most of us. We have to learn it along the way.

As human beings, we are enticed by shiny objects, and as marketers we are constantly bombarded with new ways of doing things. We are constantly sidelined with new problems that have to be fixed and fires that have to be put out.

It’s so easy to lose focus at any given moment in the process.

So as you write your marketing plan and begin to execute it throughout the year, keep your focus sharp. Challenge yourself to bring even more clarity to your tactics and even more acuity to your marketing spending.

It’ll not only make for a closer adherence to your plan and to your goals. It’ll also set you up for even greater success next year.

Good luck to you!

JIM JOSEPH
CONTRIBUTOR
Agency President, Author, Blogger, Professor

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