We chat with educational creators every day who’ve built an audience on YouTube and monetized via ads, brand deals, and Patreon, but are looking to diversify. Maybe they’re trying to go full-time on their creator business, some algorithmic change has decreased their reach, or their patron count is diminishing.

These folks want new income streams, but don’t always know what the options are or how difficult they will be to build from their work and audience today. Here’s a quick overview of some of those near adjacencies from an educational YouTube business.

Start a Podcast

Difficulty: low-med
^{for most creators, a net new podcast would be high, but experienced YouTubers are used to editing and can probably repurpose content}
Income Potential: low-med-high
^{building a worthwhile podcast business is very challenging, but successful podcasts can create quite a bit of ad revenue}
What is it: A lot of the same content you’re already providing in audio form
How to: There are lots of apps like Anchor that make it easy to start recording

Sell Digital products

Difficulty: low
Income Potential: low
What is it: Notion, Airtable templates, worksheets, custom how-tos, self-paced courses
How to: throw them up on Gumroad, etc., advertise them through YouTube and other social channels

Provide 1:1 Coaching

Difficulty: low
Income Potential: med-high
What is it: Scheduled sessions working through specific audience member challenges
How to: You can go fairly low tech on this one. Calendly has a payment function. For more advanced capabilities, you can use something like Xip.

Note: With anything requiring you to be there live, be careful of burnout. It’s easy to do a few of these a week, but easy to fall into doing way more than you have energy for.

Write a Newsletter

Difficulty: med
Income Potential: low-med-high
^{like podcasting, a sizeable or well-developed niche of reader creates opportunity}
What is it: A weekly/monthly email
How to: Sign up for ConvertKit, Substack, and share links through your social channels. Start sending.

Note: Whether you send a newsletter or not, there’s only upside in creators developing their own contact list.

Publish an eBook

Difficulty: med-high

^{if you’ve had a newsletter/blog going for a while, it’s easier to wrap that content in a book format}
Income Potential: low-med
What is it: Collected educational materials that extend from your content
How to: Lots of variables based on how much content you need to create vs. repurpose and edit, but nuts and bolts outcome is a digital download sold through a platform like Gumroad, self published on Amazon, etc.

Host Paid Events

Difficulty: low
Income Potential: low-med-high
What is it: 1-to-many events
How to: It’s easiest to set up a paid event via Luma and publicize it to your audience. A more complicated version might be to have folks signup and send invites via ConvertKit.

Coach a Mastermind

Difficulty: low-med
Income Potential: med-high
What is it: An evolution of 1:1 coaching with more folks who can lean on each other
How to: Create a signup form on ConvertKit, use Calendly Meeting Polls or Doodle to find the best time. Collect payments with Stripe or Paypal. Send a recurring calendar invite with a Zoom link.

Host a Membership Community

Difficulty: med-high
Income Potential: high
What is it: A natural evolution of masterminds, coaching, and paid events. A digital space where folks can collaborate and you can deliver additional educational materials.
How to: Community Discovery can be challenging, but well-run on a platform your members are comfortable with, Membership Communities can provide recurring revenue for a long time. Of course, use Burb to make the experience incredible for your members.

Run a Cohort-based Course

Difficulty: high
Income Potential: med-high
What is it: A time-bound learning experience, particularly for those seeking near term transformation, including meetings, content, and assignments.
How to: Cohort courses are operationally intense, with marketing, messaging, tracking, a calendar of events, and a community space, but at hundreds to thousands of dollars, they can be worth the effort. Use Burb along with all these tools to simplify cohort operations.

Which should you pick?

Ultimately, if you wanted a job you didn’t enjoy, you wouldn’t be building a creator business. So the most important thing to do is to do the work that you have energy for. What sounds the most interesting? What best fits your skill set? What do you think you can sustain?

And, of course, ask your audience. A massive follower count isn’t critical to success, but you should have a small core of fans truly passionate about learning from your content.

From there, start small, and build. Don’t be afraid to experiment and kill experiments that don’t work!