Jay Heinrichs@jayheinrichs

How to make a living in

CONTENT

Let’s talk Katy Perry.

How much does she

get paid to perform in

the Super Bowl

halftime? Zero. Katy

Perry makes content.

Music. But she’s not

getting paid for it.

Why? Because she

benefits from the

audience. That’s true

of content in general

today: The value

doesn’t come from the

content. It comes from

the audience’s

attention.

$1 $1

This explains why Henry James made $1/word

writing for magazines in 1865, and why Kate

Silver makes $1/word today. Henry James’s dollar

was worth at least 21 times as much. The

difference is in the completely changed business

model of media. Used to be, media gathered the

audience and then paid for the content.

Advertising paid the bills. Today, marketers are

shifting their budgets away from advertising. And

most media no longer can afford to gather

audiences themselves.

McKinsey & Co: “Marketing Disruption”

MARKETERS WHO WILL KEEP THINGS THE SAME.

19% 81%

MARKETERS WHO PLAN TO SHIFT BUDGETS TO

CONTENT AND NEW CUSTOMER

EXPERIENCES.

Where are the marketing dollars

going? Toward content: blogs, videos,

social media. Stuff created by

individuals who gather their own

audiences.

Clicks, Sweeps

Entry, Votes,

Comments

Click to e-

commerce,

Conversion

AWAREN

ESS

Reach (total

impressions), Views

Sharing, Likes or

Follows, Contest

Entries, Samples

CONSIDE

RATION

PREFER

ENCE

PURCHA

SE

LOYALTYReferrals, User-

Generated Content

DECISION

“JOURNEY”

Marketers are all talking

about the decision journey:

the path a consumer takes

from awareness of a product

to brand advocates.

Increase brand awareness

Get people to try a new product

Drive traffic to a brand site

Drive users to social media channels

Get more followers

Drive engagement with a promotion

Capture email addresses

Get content to feed social channels

Increase sales

Build relationship with influencers

KPIs

Key Performance

Indicators

Here’s where you come in.

1. Become an

influencer.

I’m going to suggest 15 ideas. All

of them come down to this.

InfluencerMarket reach

Independence

Frequency of impact

Expertise

Persuasiveness

Role throughout Decision Journey

This is what an influencer looks like to a marketer. She

has gathered her own audience and reaches them

daily. They see her as an expert in their passion, and

they’ll follow her opinion. Plus, she influences them to

buy products and become brand loyalists.

Razorfish used influencers to market a new

model of Mercedes even before the car came out.

The agency created cargo mats, the same shape

as the car storage space, and sent them to top

people on Instagram.

The Instagrammers created visual stories of

adventures they would take with the car.

Razorfish (and Mercedes) paid them to do

this, because they were talented, yeah, but

mostly because they had gathered their

own big audiences.

Influencer Pay

$200

$200,000

Marketers will pay top pinners on Pinterest up to

$200,000 to promote a brand. You probably won’t

make anything like that. Still, it shows you’re

responsible for your own audience.

I like to experiment with ways to attract audiences.

Here’s a recent one, psychomixology.com. I create

cocktails that celebrate individuals, and serve them at

parties to raise money for a local charity.

If I wanted, I could profile top bartenders and show consumers

how to create their own amazing drinks. Say I gathered an

audience of 200,000 drinkers. I could approach a distiller like

Seagram’s and offer to use its booze in my drinks. Or I could

offer to do special blog posts for destinations that want to attract

tourists, such as city convention and visitors bureaus. I’m just

doing the site for fun. But you can use your journalistic skills and

creativity to carve a niche.

2. Find a tiny niche.

The Self

PublisherDan Poynter

Dan Poynter self-published a manual on

hang gliding in 1973. It sold 130,000

copies. In 1979, he published a manual on

self-publishing. Starting with a small

audience, he made himself into a multi-

millionaire.

3. Gain legitimacy

with a book.

Writing a book helps you gain

expertise, and it makes others

think of you as an expert.

I did this with my own book on rhetoric, the art of

persuasion, and sold it to Random House. The book has

sold more than 175,000 copies so far. I’m not making

anything near what Dan Poynter made by self-publishing.

But people see me as an expert on persuasion, and that

makes me money.

3. Collaborate.

But you yourself don’t have to be

the expert. You’re an expert

writer. Partner with an expert who

can’t write.

The

CollaboratorLou Schuler

A former Men’s Health editor, Lou Schuler paired

with a top fitness trainer to writes a series of

books called The New Rules of Lifting. Lou self-

published them. He has since gotten certified as

a trainer himself. But he still works with his

partner.

5. Start a publishing

company.

Self-publishing is getting easier all the time.

You can have books printed and sold in

Barnes & Noble; you can have physical books

and ebooks sold on Amazon, without using a

traditional publisher.

The PublisherBrad Herzog

Brad Herzog started out publishing his own

books, then branched out into publishing other

people’s books—including his own son’s. Once

you learn how to self-publish, you have a

marketable skill. You can charge an author to get

a book into print, or take a cut of the sales.

6. Form a network.

The most successful influencers

leverage the audiences of

colleagues.

The Networker

K.J. Dell’Antonia

K.J. Dell’Antonia runs the parenting blog for

the NY Times, “The Mother Lode.” She has

developed a network for the leading

parenting bloggers, attracting a huge

audience of neurotic mothers.

7. Become a remora.

This means taking the gleanings

of rich people in need of your

editorial skills.

Every fund manager writes a newsletter for

investors. And every fund manager wishes he

could write like Warren Buffet, a witty guy. You

can charge good money, not just editing the

letters but teaching the managers how to write

more like Buffet.

8. Pursue an issue.

You’re a journalist, not an entrepreneur.

What if you just want to write stories?

One solution: go deep into an issue with

a big potential market.

The JournalistMegan Feldman

Megan Feldman wrote an amazing story for me, about a

murder. The father of the victim got together with the

grandfather of the shooter, and they now teach forgiveness

around the country. Megan went on to find other forgiveness

stories around the world, and she sold a big book, The Heart

of Forgiveness, to Penguin. She shows how forgiveness can

help you, and can help save the world. It’s coming out soon

and will be a bestseller. And people will consider Megan an

expert on forgiveness.

9. Become a speaker.

Once you become an authority,

people will pay you to speak.

The SpeakerRegina Barecca

Gina Barecca, a literature professor at the University

of Connecticut, wrote a hilarious book on women’s

strategic use of humor, They Used to Call Me Snow

White (But I Drifted). Companies pay her to speak

about ways to avoid gender conflict. And she makes

them laugh. A good speaker can make $20,000 a

speech.

10. Pursue your

passion (and work a

real job).

There’s something to be said for writing

what you want, and earning a living

some other way.

The PoetSarah Lindsay

Sarah Lindsay is one of the nation’s leading poets.

One of her books got nominated for a National

Magazine Award. What does she do for a living?

She’s a copy editor for Pace Communications,

working on the Verizon account. She writes amazing

poetry in her spare time. Of all the people I’m talking

about, I admire Sarah the most.

11. Teach.

Also not very lucrative: Teaching.

The TeacherLisa Jones

Lisa Jones writes for the Smithsonian, and she

published a wonderful nonfiction book, Broken,

about a horse whisperer/Indian shaman. She just

drafted a terrific novel. Lisa teaches writing

workshops in Denver. She gets paid for it, but she

told me that the teaching makes her a better

writer.

12. Gather a video

audience.

The VloggerNatalie Tran

Natalie Tran is a terrific writer. She

used her skill to gather a huge

audience on YouTube, doing a

series of funny videos about her

life.

523,000,000 views

$150,000 annual income

Besides the money from YouTube, Natalie got

Lonely Planet to send her around the world making

videos of cool places. She and her boyfriend just

started a video production company, which will

make more money. You can start with your

smartphone. One of the scarcest skills in online

video is writing. You can write.

13. Diversify.

I love to experiment with stupid projects. Some years ago I wrote

a story about self-publishing for the Southwest Airlines

magazine. To prove how easy it was, I conceived, wrote and

published a book in two hours. It’s called Sniff It First, And 15

Other Things I Learned From My Cat.

It’s a terrible book, and I said so in the story. The point

was to prove the concept. But two weeks after the story

came out, blurb.com sent me an email saying several

thousand people had bought the book. The automatic

markup was $2/copy. That’s the most money I ever

made per hour. The moral: it pays to experiment.

14. Work for karma.

Even more important, it pays to work for

free. For instance, I did this talk for

ASJA for free. Somehow, good things

will come from it.

Writing

Content

Persuasion

Speakin

gWriting

Content

Persuasion

Speakin

g

Other

Income Mix Time Mix

Other: Study, video, new

skills, rhetoric classes, silly

projects

Here’s a breakdown of my income streams (left) and how

I spend my day (right). I spend more than half my time on

things that don’t actually make me money—yet. I’m my

own laboratory.

15. Find your one

great story.

Not that you should give up writing stories. But if you ever

plant to pitch to me, be warned: I’m not looking for “a”

story. I’m looking for your one story, the one that will turn

into a book and make you famous. That will break people’s

hearts and make them want to dedicate their lives to

serving humanity. Narrative features are the one place an

editor doesn’t have to serve the consumer decision

journey. Let’s not waste it.

Show me a story better than this one. It’s by Kate Silver, and it’s the

best story we’ve run in Southwest: The Magazine. May is a service

dog trained by prisoners at the Bedford Women’s Prison. Jacob is

an Iraq War veteran with PTSD. May literally saved Jacob’s life. (My

friend Tyler Stableford photographed the piece.) People still talk

about it. It’s told with heart, and it’s why we became storytellers in

the first place. There are easier ways to make money. But if you

think you can beat this story, I’m all ears.

JayHeinrichs.com