10 Steps For How To Become A Content Creator

Last updated: February 26, 2024

One of the hottest jobs of 2024 is content creator. In this role, you’ll need to create faceless content or put yourself out there to raise your personal brand and become a household name. A content creator might create videos for social media content or blog posts.

Regarding your content strategy, you could be a content creator in various niches and industries. This article will give you the full context on how to become a content creator in 2024.

What Is A Content Creator?

A content creator is a person who creates content. Traditionally, content creators were bloggers, infographic designers, and ebook authors.

However, other forms of content have emerged over the years, such as podcasters, video creators, influencers, streamers, social media content creators, and more. If you create content online, you can call yourself a digital content creator. The type of content you create doesn’t make a big difference with this label.

Types of Content Creators

There are many different types of digital content creation. Here’s a rundown of what kind of content creator you can be:

• Writer
• Influencer
• YouTube creator
• Twitch streamer
• Video creator
• Content Marketing Manager
• Graphic designer
• Musician
• Podcaster
• Blogger
• Social media manager
• Educator
• Author
• Coach
• Photographer
• Email newsletter writer

How to Become a Content Creator

1. Choose your niche

The first step to becoming a content creator is to choose your niche. This niche choice is two-fold. Part one involves figuring out what kind of content you’ll produce. Will you write blog posts, start a podcast, take pictures, or shoot videos?

When deciding on this part, think about how much time you have to commit and which one you feel most excited to get started on. Ninety-nine percent of getting started as a content creator involves taking that first step. Which type of content creation will you take the plunge into? You can’t be daydreaming about it and need to be excited to start today.

Once you’ve narrowed that part down, it’s time to pick your industry. Think about the type of experience you have. What do your friends and family always ask you for advice about? Is there something you get SO excited to talk about with your friends?

You’ll make more money creating content about something you’re excited about and can look at from all sorts of weird angles. If you can position yourself as an expert in that vertical, you’ll attract more like-minded people, which can help you grow your audience.

2. Understand your audience

To become the ultimate content creator, you must deeply understand your target audience. You’ll need to learn to be a leading expert in your niche. You can do this in some ways.

For instance, identify how you can position yourself to your audience if you’re unique. Is your quirkiness going to outshine your competitors? Are you a master in your niche who can position herself as an expert?

To understand your audience, take some time to do some customer research. Make a list of several other content creators in your space (think bloggers, influencers, podcasters) and look at their comment section. What sort of comments do content creators get? This will help you understand a ton of information.

For example, are there ideas of topics you can create content for within the comments? Do people write positive or nasty comments directed at them on social media? Is their comment section flooded with spam? These little insights will help you understand your user better. Plus, if you look at several content creators, you’ll also realize who people respond well to.

Another angle for understanding your users involves keyword research. You can use tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to see the volume for specific keywords. This will help you compile a list of the best topics to discuss in videos or your broader content.

3. Create content daily

Setting goals can give you a clear direction of where to work. But if you want to see some results, set daily habits. If you’re dead serious about becoming a content creator, you need to promise yourself that you’ll create content every single day with no skips.

Building this into your daily routine will help you learn as much as possible in a shorter timeline. Plus, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. And by creating content daily, you’ll start becoming a content wizard.

The more content you create, the more chances you’ll have of going viral. Plus, those who produce content often (and for years) have the biggest audiences. Creating content is a skill, but you don’t need to be naturally talented to succeed. You just need to keep doing it and learning from it.

A person creating content seven days a week on social media will get great at content creation. Taking those steps to produce large volumes of content will help you achieve the success you daydream of.

4. Experiment constantly

Becoming a content creator who achieves big success will also require a ton of experimentation. Now that you know how important it is to create content daily, here’s the big why. The more content you produce, the more experiments you can run.

Every day, you should think, “I wonder what’ll happen if I create a video like (insert idea here).” You can take suggestions and comments from your audience, but you should always brainstorm ways to create unique content no one else has thought of before. Don’t be afraid to be weird or take risks. That’s the fun of marketing and content creation in general.

5. Collaborate with other content creators and brands

Networking plays a huge role in your success with content creation. You can collaborate with other content creators to grow your audience size if you have a related audience to another person in the space. Influencer marketing and collaborations go hand in hand.

You can also collaborate with brands to help you practice monetizing your audience and earn money. Becoming successful as a content creator will depend on your ability to form relationships with others and help others achieve their goals. Instead of thinking, “What’s in it for me?” aim to think, “How can I help or support you?” to ensure you provide value to others. The more you help people, the more opportunities you’ll have come along throughout your journey.

So, when content creators or brands reach out to you, even if their audience size is small, reply to them. You never know how those people will repay you in the future. Even if someone has a small audience today, they will still have a big audience a few years from now. People remember the excellent gestures and deeds people do for them.

There are many purposes for building an audience and meeting new people can be valuable even if no monetary reward is offered. The source of your success can come from these relationships and may not directly unfold on day one, but don’t count them out.

6. Practice converting your audience

You don’t need brands like Google or Microsoft to offer you deals to practice monetizing your audience. As a content creator, knowing how to get your audience to buy something requires skill, practice, and preparation.

If you can’t monetize your audience, you’ll only have a large group of people following you without the perks. You also need to know how well your audience converts before you can discuss your rates with brands. So, create simple digital products like ebooks or online courses to help figure out if your audience is engaged and willing to buy from you.

You don’t need a fancy tool to figure out how to monetize your audience. The goal is to create niche-specific content to help you build a specific audience type. For example, a fashion content creator on Instagram can post videos wearing different outfits. Styling outfits in unique and trendy ways will help make the outfit seem more desirable rather than just wearing a simple dress.

When people see the whole look, they can imagine what it would look like on them, building anticipation to buy. So, when monetizing your audience, you might put out affiliate links for the outfits in your video content for people to purchase and test to see how often people believe and what styles people tend to buy from you.

That way, when a clothing brand reaches out to you, you can specify the types of clothing people tend to buy from a sales perspective to help that brand make money off your content so they’ll keep coming back to work with you.

7. Engage with your community

What do content creators do outside of their videos? take some time to Google celebrities who treat their fans well. Use their stories to inspire you to create beautiful interactions and experiences for people. As a content creator, you’ll likely build an audience, so being kind, memorable, and supportive is essential.

You might not earn money from kindness, but people will have a more positive experience as your fan or follower. So, reply to comments on YouTube or any other platform you get engagement. Share advice that helps people elevate their lives and uplifts them. Create the kind of content and experience that allows people to respect you.

8. Create a website for your brand

Content creators should consider building a website for their brand. If you’ve been wondering how to become successful, it’s often through content creation and brand recognition.

A website is the ultimate way to build your audience and monetize your experience or expertise through digital products, such as selling online courses, creating a membership site, or selling digital downloads.

You can build a website using Payhip. Payhip has a Forever Free plan that only charges a 5% transaction fee but no monthly subscription. That way, you only pay via course, ebook, or other digital product sales.

You can build a blog and an email list on your website. And if you’d like, you can run an affiliate program to drive people to generate sales for you through their custom referral links. Your personal brand or membership website is crucial to your long-term success as a content creator. Fortunately, Payhip has an easy-to-use interface, which makes it ideal for new content creators.

9. Apply to content creator jobs

You can make a career out of being a content creator. There are so many companies out there who will hire you to create content for them. Your experience doing it online as a freelancer or influencer can be added to your resume and cover letter to help you get the job of your dreams.

Regarding your job research, content creator can be one of many job titles you’ll find online. For instance, you might discover roles for social media manager, content copywriting, content marketing, video content creator, digital content specialist, multi-media content creator, and more.

One of the benefits of working as a content creator for another company is that you’ll get insights into data from yourself and other creators on your team, so you’ll see what the potential for growth is.

Plus, you’ll learn so much from others by visiting them and achieve significant results, which will, in turn, teach you so much. Once you’ve soaked up as much knowledge as possible, you could apply those skills to your assets and business to help you achieve even greater success as a content creator.

10. Hit publish

If you never hit publish on your first piece of content, it’ll always be nothing more than some wishful fantasy. Remember, your first piece of content will always be your lowest-performing blog post, video, or podcast. Hardly anyone will watch it.

So, if you’re worried about the risk of putting yourself out there, know that success in content creation compounds from one piece of content to the next over the years. The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be years from now.

Remember to think carefully about the quality, style, or experience when publishing your first piece of content. With practice, you’ll get so much better at it with time. You’ll gain experience with every video you post and see the feedback you get from others.

When you get the odd negative comment, treat it like a learning experience where someone is telling you exactly what you need to do to improve. Great! Most people are shut-lipped about that kind of stuff.

When someone directly gives you feedback, take it in and apply it to your next video for experiment’s sake. If you like to learn and challenge yourself, you’ll be a great content creator. So, dive in to create your first online content piece. You’ll be great at it as long as you keep practicing!

Become a Content Creator with Payhip

Content creators can use Payhip to build their websites and blogs to become content creators. You can also use your website to include your rates, create an email list, store examples of unique multi-media content, link to your social accounts, and more.

These are just some steps to becoming a content creator, and you can take any path. Refrain from second-guessing your ability to achieve success. Anyone can learn to become a better content creator with practice. To build a website for yourself, sign up for Payhip today.