Next week, we're hosting a "Business Finance for Creators" seminar. Click or scroll down for more info.
Monetization generally means extracting money from your audience.
Brand deals. Courses. Subscriptions. Affiliate links.
You're trying to get as many of your audience as possible to buy something.
Sometimes, though, there’s more value in what your audience enables you to achieve than in what they pay you.
I recently advised Elana Gold, a partner at Red Beard Ventures who's built a strong LinkedIn following of 64,216 people by writing about startup investing.
She came to me wondering how to monetize her content creation.
After digging into her situation, we reached a counterintuitive conclusion:
She shouldn't monetize it.
Here's why:
Her Opportunity Cost Is Too High
Elana's in venture capital. In her world, one successful investment can generate returns that dwarf any creator monetization strategy.
As she put it during our conversation:
"If I can use my platform to source one great deal, or help one portfolio company succeed, that's worth infinitely more than brand deals."
Think about it. A $10,000 branded post sounds great until you realize that helping source or support a unicorn investment could mean millions - or even billions - in carried interest.
What if she loses the opportunity to invest in that unicorn because overly promotional emails or a brand deal with a competitor made that founder trust her less?
It’s not worth it.
Content as Strategy
For Elana, content serves three strategic purposes:
Sourcing deals - Founders see her content and reach out
Adding portfolio value - Her audience becomes a distribution asset for her companies
Building trust - Consistent valuable content establishes her as someone founders want to work with
She explained:
“When I post about a portfolio company, I'm not just promoting them. I'm actively helping them succeed, which directly impacts my returns.”
That's not monetization in the traditional creator sense, but it's arguably much more valuable.
The Reverse Monetization Model
This model isn't unique to VCs. Consider:
Recruiters build audiences of talented professionals. They don't sell to their audience; instead, companies pay them to access that talent pool.
Startup founders and CEOs build audiences by sharing their experiences aka “building in public”, causing potential hires, partners, and investors to slide into their DMs. They're not monetizing their audience - they're using it as a source of leverage (talent and capital) to build their businesses.
Serial acquirers and PE operators (like Codie Sanchez) build audiences sharing acquisition strategies and operational insights. Business owners reach out looking for exits. Even if they do sell courses, that's not the actual business - it's just a way to offset marketing costs. The real business is buying businesses from their audience at favorable valuations.
In the Reverse Monetization Model money flows backward from traditional Creator economics. A Creator builds an audience to acquire “assets” - companies, partners, talent - rather than customers. In doing so, they build equity rather than income.
Assets don’t pay you directly, but the value they yield over time can be 1000x higher.
Leave Money on the Table
Not every audience needs to be monetized directly. Sometimes your content is the marketing budget for something bigger.
Elana’s not the only Creator I've seen do this. I met someone who runs a meme account for lawyers; rather than trying to sell to this high net worth group, he brings them investment opportunities in the form of an angel investment syndicate.
These Creators are choosing to leave money on the table by eschewing traditional monetization, but they’re playing a different game entirely - one with a much higher upside.
What do you think? Are you monetizing your audience directly, or using the Reverse Monetization Model to enable something bigger? Reply to let me know.
Thanks for reading!
About: Creator Logic was founded by Avi Gandhi - award-winning Creator agent, producer, and executive - with the mission of helping 1 million people find freedom in the Creator Economy
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Before You Go
At 10am PT on Wednesday, September 3rd, I'll be hosting a free 45-minute “Business Finance for Creators” seminar with my friend and Karat co-founder Eric Wei.
Eric and Karat work with thousands of top Creators like Alex Botez, Graham Stephen, and Humphrey Yang to make their business finances simpler and more lucrative. He’ll break down the business finance fundamentals every Creator needs to know (but many don’t), including the why, when, how, and what of:
Setting up an LLC (you must do this if you haven’t already)
Business banking (checking vs savings, interest rate maximization, etc.)
Business cards (credit vs debit, perks, etc.)
Taxes (what to write off, how to save money)
And much more. It will be short but packed with info, so sign up now:
Also:
Join our community for access to virtual and IRL events (like the above seminar), fresh monetization resources, and a WhatsApp group with other thoughtful, hungry Creators.
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