My revenue breakdown for 2024

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I made $254,334 in income from my content-driven business(es) this year.

Let’s break down the numbers below.

But first, I have some big news - especially if you’re working on monetizing your content:

Business Breakdown

A few things to note here:

• Partner with Creators LLC is my go-to-market agency; it’s a separate entity jointly owned with a partner. Thus the Net Income amount in here already has expenses deducted - and those expenses are high, because we had to hire a lot of people to do client work.

• Total Expenses are the expenses incurred against all of this income, and don’t include the expenses from Partner with Creators - which, as mentioned, was already deducted.

• Cash Taken is how much I’ve paid myself; it differs from the actual revenue figures because money may carry over from previous years or need to stay in the accounts to cover future expenses

• Cosmic Dancer LLC is the name of my personal LLC. Ask me about it at a party.

Revenue

Advising, Consulting, Partner with Creators LLC

The bulk of my revenue came from services, and those services were sold through my content. LinkedIn was the my primary client acquisition channel (although events, existing relationships, and the Creator Logic newsletter did contribute - often amplifying interest generated from a prospect seeing me post on LinkedIn).

I was very selective about who I consulted with - I only worked with companies that had products that were interesting, people I liked, and budgets high enough to be worth the effort of serving them given how much effort it took to win them.

It’s worth emphasizing two things about this:

1. Don’t just quote rates that cover the time you spend working on the client. You should also mark up your fees enough to cover the time you spent making free content that actually attracted the customer. (For example: If you spend 20 hours a week making content and 20 hours working on client work, and you want to make $50 an hour, then quote $100 an hour because if you quote $50, that 20 hours you spent making content to get the customers will go unpaid and you’ll actually make just $25 an hour for the week).

2. If you quote high, you might get more “No” responses, but the “Yes” responses will actually pay your bills. If you charge double what you think you should, you only need half the number of clients. You can probably see how this is related to #1.

We all know content creation is both time-consuming and exhausting, so I don’t regret having fewer, higher-value clients. I don’t think I could have made it through the year any other way.

Brand Deals

I had one long-term brand partner - TubeBuddy - and several one-off partners for speaking and thought leadership through 2024.

TubeBuddy contributed the majority of this revenue figure. The funny thing is - the deal almost didn’t happen!

We had a BIG deal - I’m talking six figures - inches from closing and then suddenly the company cut budgets. The big partnership wasn’t going to happen.

Rather than moping, I reached out and offered to remove the highest-cost deliverables and do a lite version of the deal at a lite version of the price. That way they could have a thought leadership strategy even with the new budget constraints.

They said yes, and the rest is history!

Sometimes deals go awry - it happens, and it’s frustrating.

But if you can understand the other party’s problems and goals, you may still be able to offer them a solution that ends up benefiting you both.

Referrals

I broke my referrals business down in a previous article, so I won’t go into too much depth here. Check that article out for exactly how I did it - it’s totally replicable and not that difficult!

Events

The only sponsored event I did this year was my VidCon party, in partnership with SuperBam and Storygrounds and with sponsors Super.fans and Towerhouse.

It was awesome - best drinks at VidCon (tiki pirate theme!), Creators big and small, and a ton of great relationships built…also, I made $15,556.81, which was nice.

Creator Logic Newsletter

I have a partnership with a big newsletter operator, The Future Party, for them to grow and monetize this newsletter. Our focus in 2024 was on growth, not monetization; we tested a bunch of growth tactics and figured out a growth motion that seems to be working for now.

Along the way, we got a few sponsors, but ultimately didn’t prioritize sponsor sales because with a small newsletter, it’s hard. We are hoping to grow revenue going into 2025, and I plan to break down the economics of the newsletter in a future article.

Expenses

I’m not going to break my expenses down item by item because most of them are not that interesting…but let’s talk about some of the the particularly big line items:

Contractors

Over 50% of my expenses were contractors - I paid people to do everything from video editing to SEO to project management for myself and my clients.

People are the most expensive cost of running a business. They’re the most difficult to source and manage, and also the highest potential ROI. Maybe this last point will change because of AI, but I think we’re still many years away from that.

I pay people well - or at the very least, what they quote - because it makes it more likely I’ll be able to attract high-ROI people. Paying well has its downside, though - it makes the failures more painful. I did spend tens of thousands of dollars on a few people who didn’t end up working out.

I can’t recommend my approach as a good business practice, but it’s one that aligns with my values (humans should get paid fairly for their work) so I’m willing to take the hit.

Office Supplies and Software

I pay for (and use!) quite a bit of software - beehiiv, Notion, Canva, Fireflies, Google Workspace, ChatGPT, and a number of others. If I had to say how much, I’d guess something like $500-$1000/mo. Monthly SaaS fees are getting expensive!

Meals, Travel, Hotels, etc.

My unfair advantage as a metacreator is that I’ve been a talent rep, producer, and executive in the Creator Economy for 15 years - so I have great access to partnerships through relationships and credibility.

Maintaining that unfair advantage costs money - I have to travel to speak at conferences and go to lots of lunch, dinner, and drinks meetings to maintain my relationships.

Next week, I’ll breakdown my 3 biggest wins and losses in 2024, and my 3 goals for 2025.

Want corporate-quality health insurance with a lower monthly premium as a Creator? Essentl is a new Creator-founded health insurance company I’m an advisor to. They’re launching soon, so get on the waitlist now.

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Written by Avi Gandhi, edited by Melody Song,
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