Influencer vs Couse Creator : Which Business Model is Best? Nesha Explains!
Prefer to watch?
Here’s the video!
Mentioned in the Video:
*That’s an affiliate link - my margarita fund thanks you kindly!
Rather read all about it?
Have you ever felt stuck between deciding whether you'd rather be an influencer or content creator or a course creator?
These are two massively popular online business models, and for a good reason; they are truly dream jobs. But which of the two is the better option, more enjoyable, easier, more profitable, and provides more freedom to run? Not many people have insight into doing both successfully, but my guest today, Nesha Woolery, has experience in both. Nesha and I have both run course businesses in similar industries for years, and we've kept up with each other over the years. When she recently told me that she had also started a more influencer and content creator business with her partner, I unloaded questions on her about the practicalities of running such a business model and how she thought it compared to the course creator life. So if you're curious, as I was, then you're going to love this interview with Nesha. Enjoy.
Okay, Nesha can you please give us a little bit of context? Tell us about your course creator business and the influencer business? Who are you serving with the two businesses, and how exactly did they come to be?
(Nesha:) Yeah, so the first business is my online business and marketing coaching business. So I've been in the online business world for about 11 years now, and I teach women how to build online businesses that can make $5,000 a month while they work three days a week so that they can run a business that prioritizes their life and supports their bank account and well-being.
So inside that, I sell online courses, and I also have a group coaching program. Sometimes I sell one-to-one coaching as well, but not very often.
And then the second business, which is kind of like a side hustle... started out as a hobby that became like a side hustle. That's my YouTube vlogging business, influencer business, or whatever you want to call it. So that has been around for a year and a half, I want to say, almost two years, maybe, I'm not quite sure.
The content on YouTube is all about my boat renovation. So I own a boat, and my boyfriend and I have been doing a complete restoration because it was an absolute wreck when I bought it and needed a lot more work than I thought it did. So it's been interesting and challenging, to say the least, but also just a really fun challenge.
So I've been documenting that by vlogging the renovations, vlogging myself learning how to use power tools and all of this stuff. So that's the vlog and what that's all about.
And as a result of it being about DIY and things, it's a very different audience from my course business.
So my course business audience is mostly female entrepreneurs, and the YouTube vlog audience is actually 81% male, mostly over the age of 45. So it's a completely different audience because my course business audience is mostly under the age of 35, something like that, 25 to 35 mostly. So two completely different audiences.
So you don't really cross-promote your businesses?
Yeah, I don't really cross-promote because the two just don't have anything to do with each other, really. So other than maybe one email that I sent out when I first began my vlog, I sent out like one email to my email list. So I've maybe got some of that audience subscribed to the vlog. But after that, I realized it's two different niches. They don't need to cross over. So I'm just going to keep them separate.
Can you tell me about the day-to-day of actually running these two different business models?
Yeah. So when it comes to being a course creator/business coach, I work three days a week, from Wednesday to Friday, solely on that business and on my students and my clients.
When it comes to the other side hustle, the YouTube one, I am probably not the best example, to be honest, because I don't post super frequently on YouTube. It still does really well. So that's fine by me.
But because I decided to make my course business my priority, I don't give as much of my time to YouTube or to the side hustle. And I think, for me anyway, it might be different for some people, but I think there comes a point when you have two businesses, even if one is smaller than the other.
But you have to ask yourself, you know, which one am I going to focus on growing the most? And which one am I going to give the most attention to? Because they'll both be vying for your attention.
And I certainly got to this point with the vlog where I realized I could actually grow this into something a lot bigger than it is. I think one of our videos got to like 140,000 views or something like that. And I thought, okay, this could actually become something.
But do I want this to be my main business or not?
So for that one, when it comes to the day-to-day running of that, it's not really daily.
It used to be; I used to check in on my insights and comments and all of those things. But as time went on, I found it a bit toxic to be checking those things every single day, to be completely honest with you.
And so now what it looks like is I'll just edit vlogs every couple of weeks. It takes me roughly two days to make a 25-minute vlog, one day to make something that's shorter. And then I'll post that. And now we've started to have sponsors. So it also includes communicating with those people on their side who are managing the brand deals. So that's all that goes into that, really.
And then in terms of the work that you're doing, talk to me about what is the work that you do as a course creator.
So for the course creation business, I do a few different things. I like to focus on content creation because places like Instagram are where I get a lot of my clients and course students.
So I focus on social media marketing content creation. The marketing side is what gets a lot of my attention the most.
I don't handle things like inbox management or scheduling content or uploading content. My assistant does. So that kind of helps me get out of the admin side of that business. So I can focus on where I need to be, which is in the marketing side, and also on supporting my clients.
So I'll do like biweekly group coaching calls and things like this. That's how my time goes primarily in the course creation business. So once you've created the courses, you mostly, other than like smaller updates, you mostly could use the same course.
I think you've been doing the same one a couple of years in a row, right?
Oh yeah, more than a couple of years.
One of my courses, Organize and Automate, I think I've had that course for, I want to say six years. Yeah, it might be more, to be honest. I don't know anymore. It's been a long time.
So yeah, I update those courses every so often. And then I also have Evergreen funnels that sell them in the background. So as long as I can drive traffic to those funnels, then they will sell the courses on autopilot for me.
And then the influencer YouTube business, can you talk to me about what is the actual work that goes into that business?
Yeah, so the work involves discussing with sponsors, negotiating rates, discussing things like the dates of the videos, choosing products because often they'll give you the choice of which product to review.
And then it also includes editing the vlogs. So I really enjoy the editing process. That's why I started the whole thing in the first place because I just really wanted a creative outlet.
Because I feel in my business, sometimes the creativity aspect just got a bit lost, or you end up doing the same thing over and over again. And when you do that, I think it's good to have a hobby, something that you can do that's a little bit different to what you normally do with your time.
And so that's why I started the blog. So I still edit the vlogs myself. That's probably the biggest thing that I do, even more so than the filming.
And yeah, I would say so. Editing takes longer than filming because I'm already doing the work anyway. My boyfriend and I are already doing the renovations and things. So it's not that much more work to turn the camera on and just keep changing where the camera is positioned and stuff like that. It's the editing that takes the longest amount of time.
(Paige:) Interesting. I've noticed that when I've been filming vlogs, if I go to do something like go to a tennis lesson and try to film it as well, it's like, oh my gosh, I need twice the time to go, like, even get to this lesson because it just takes so much longer to film while I'm doing it.
And are you thinking of like stories and everything for the videos and doing thumbnail research?
Yeah, I do sometimes. Not for every single vlog. I think that when I was more in the mindset of growing the vlog, because for a period of time I really did think, oh, I want this to potentially replace my course business.
And so because that was kind of the goal in the back of my mind, I put a lot of research into things like titles, thumbnail creation, research, seeing what has already gone viral or performed really well in my niche. And how could I give that my own spin?
Now that I decided to focus mostly on my course business,
I've sort of just eased a bit on that stuff. And it's nice. It's really taken the pressure off. And I've also eased off on the planning of the story for most of the vlogs. Some definitely do require a bit more planning, you know, this is what's going to happen at the start, and this is the middle. And, you know, but for the most part, because I've decided I'm going to keep it as my side hustle and my hobby, I don't have to put too much thought into the story. That makes sense. Okay, cool.
And then correct me, I'm assuming the course business is maybe slightly more passive because you mentioned you created this one course like six years ago, give or take, and you've been selling the same things since. Is that correct? Or what do you think?
Yeah, I would say my business is like half passive because I have my online courses, which they sell on autopilot because of the Evergreen Funnels. And I have my group coaching program. So that's like another aspect of my business. So I have the two. Yeah, so it's half passive.
In the influencer business you can also make it passive. You could like launch a digital product to that audience. You can absolutely do that. A lot of people do. But that isn't something that I've done in that business.
So the way that we make income the most in the influencer business is through brand deals, which is essentially like client work.
Because obviously you've got to receive the product, film the product, and then you've got to put it together in the vlog, send it to the sponsor, they have to approve it or give you some tweaks to make.
So it's a bit less passive than my course business model. Because like you said, it's a once you make a course and then set up a system that sells it, you can start making sales in your sleep as long as you can keep driving traffic to that funnel.
And for both, you have to turn out content like this, the similarity between the two of them is like, you've got to do the marketing.
Yeah, constantly. You do have to do the marketing for sure.
Okay, so the main revenue stream in the influencer business is partnerships. Can you start talking to me about like, tell me about partnerships & sponsorships? Like how did that come to be for the first time for you? And what does it actually look like to fulfill one of those?
So the first brand deal we ever got just they reached out to us. Because there are apps that brands can use, and they can, you know, type in what kind of channels they want to work with, the topics of the channels, the size, the frequency that they post and so on. And those apps will just help them find people that they want to collaborate with.
So except for one time, it’s always been them reaching out to us. All of the other people that we've worked with came to us, and I didn't have to go out and search for those brand deals, which you can do. But yeah, just just thankfully, they've sort of approached us.
So yeah, so they just approached they ask you for your your insights.
So the data, your audience size, demographics, all of that good stuff.
And they ask you for your rates.
So I have a media kit, which includes all of my channel insights, as well as my rates and some of the previous brand deals that we've done. And then I just send them the media kit.
And then from there, we tend to negotiate the rate. I like to also find out when exactly they want the video to publish because for me, I like to have at least a month in advance to be able to create.
And then can you tell me what was the size of the channel when people started reaching out to you for you to actually do these deals?
That's a really good question. I don't actually know. I think it's I mean, if I was to hazard a guess, I'm gonna say it was around 6000 subscribers or 5000 subscribers. We got our first like gifted item at maybe around 2000. That was like two huge boxes of tools that this popular tool company in the UK sent us, which was good for me because at that point, I didn't own any tools. I was just borrowing my boyfriend's tools. So yeah, that was around a few thousand.
Okay, and so all the brand partnerships, have they been very specific to your sort of boat renovation type channel?
No, no, no. And we get a surprising amount of food companies like food and drink. You know, like the companies that do the meal prep for you, and they just provide you with the ingredients. Yes. Or the companies that are like drinkable, like meals in a drink. Yeah, we've had a couple of those because I think because they want to target an audience who tend to be on the go quite a lot and don't have time to spend long amounts of time cooking healthy meals. And that's the DIY audience. So it makes sense. But yeah, it hasn't always been boat-based companies. We also had a shoe brand. That was good.
And I think you say what are the apps that you were on in order to for these brands to be able to find you?
So I wasn't on any apps until very recently. So, but they can use apps that just look at channels in general on YouTube. So you don't even need to register for anything.
So they can just like type in, um, yeah, whatever they want to, if they want to target people with a demographic of like men over the age of 40, for instance, like our channel, then they would type that in and maybe type in some topics for the channels. And then it all just like, produce loads of different channels for them to go through and they contact info for all of those channels. And then brands tend to reach out to people that way. I think that's the only way I can, um, I can imagine they would find channels.
(Paige:) Yeah. That's also good for you. Because like, it's not like, as you said, all these things, they mostly just come to you. You've just created the content, you've created the brand, you've created the audience. And from that point, the companies will start reaching out, and it seems like so that's good.
(Nesha:) Yeah, it is really good. I know of plenty of influencers who do reach out to brands themselves. Um, and I did do that once, which was quite recent, actually, I think it was a few weeks ago, I reached out to, um, a tile company that I just, I found and I absolutely loved, you know, and you just find a brand and you fall in love with their products. And I just figured, well, I'm going to buy from you anyway. I might as well reach out and see if you'd like to collaborate. And immediately they were just like, yeah, we would love to. It sounds like a great project. So that was good. Yeah. So you can do things like that as well.
And then also you said in your media kit, you have your rates on there. How did you figure out your rates?
I think everyone is always trying to figure out and determine what is my, this size of audience that I've created this niche of audience also worth really to brands. How did you figure that out? So there's an app called Social Blue Book, I think. I'm pretty sure it's called Social Blue Book. And I signed up to that because you're totally right. Like the first time that a brand, it was a big name brand and it's the first time a big name brand had ever reached out to us. And they asked for our rates and I had no idea what to say. It kind of felt like I was back in my other business. I started out as a freelance designer like 11 years ago, before I switched to business coaching. And it reminded me of being that freelance designer back in 2012, when somebody asked me for my rates and I was just like, I don't know. 200 pounds, I don't know.
Yeah. So I just had no idea what to charge. So there's an app called Social Blue Book. And if you go on there and you sign up with your YouTube or your Instagram, I think you can do both. It will basically assess your number of followers or subscribers and your engagement rate, your demographic, like different things like this. And it will produce an average rate for your audience and everything and your audience size.
It'll produce an average rate, above average, and smaller. So you can choose between the three.
So I did that as like a good baseline because I had zero clue what on earth people charge for things like this, with an audience of the size that we had at that time. So I just used that as a really good indicator for, is what I'm thinking of charging in my head actually going to go down well. And then I went from there. Yeah. I actually charged a bit more than it said on there because I thought I can always negotiate it if they say no.
And have you since then always stuck to what it said in Social Blue Book? Or have you kind of, as you've done a few more, you just like pick a number or start raising it, I guess, over time?
Yeah, I've slowly raised it over time, depending on like if the audience size has gone up. And if our views have stayed the same or they've started to go up or not, I'll just sort of change it dependent on that.
And it's also always negotiated, like the brand will almost always come back to you and want to negotiate it with you. So yeah, I take that in mind and I go into the conversation knowing that that's likely what they're going to do.
Tell me about fulfilling on a partnership. How much detail are they giving you on what you need to do, what you need to say? Do they need to review it before it actually gets published, all of those bits and pieces?
Yeah, so it depends on the brand. But if you're working with a bigger brand, what they will typically do is they'll provide you with a PDF and it outlines lots of information. So it outlines the key brand information that they want you to share in the vlog, the product info, any key details that they would like for you to mention.
They also outline things that you shouldn't do in the video.
So for one of my brand deals, there were rules like no plastic is allowed anywhere on show in the vlog, the portion that is for the ad.
Yeah, so there's no plastic allowed on show. It was a food brand, so no pasta dishes were allowed to be cooked. Yeah, just like rules like this.
Yeah, there are some rules like this that they provide you with so you know what to do and what not to do. And then you create that section of the vlog, then you create the actual vlog. That's how I do it.
I tend to record the ad, and then I'll record the vlog and I'll insert it.
And then you send it to the brand for approval. So they tend to want to have like two revision rounds available to them in case they want you to change something. But I've never actually had a brand want me to do like two rounds of changes.
Usually it's just like one change or no changes. And once that's done, they'll provide you with the links and anything else that they want you to add in the description.
And then you can just go ahead and publish the vlog.
And have you ever had to re-record the entire like ad section? Because they were like, oh no, does it work?
Thankfully not. I've never had to completely re-record it. I thought that I might have at one point because I recorded it on my phone and it was pretty dark. And I didn't realize until after I had that the quality was just so bad. And I thought, oh, I think they might ask me to redo it. And I'd left this one as well till the very last moment. And so the deadline for getting approval was that very same day. And I just thought, please, please, please don't ask for changes because I don't know what I'm gonna do in order to get it done today.
But thankfully she was like, no, it's fine because you know, ads like this tend to actually perform better when they're recorded on a phone. Yeah, looks more real or whatever. So thankfully, I haven't had any crazy requests.
Although I have heard of someone who worked with a band who asked her to redo the whole thing just because a part of her hair was like sticking up. And they said it was distracting.
So moving on to your course business - let's go through figuring out maybe like a course idea. Tell me about how you determined what you should be creating a course on.
So for me, I can't even remember how I determined the first one to be honest with so many years ago. I'm just like, how did I even do that? I think it was just back in the day, like, there weren't that many courses around when I first launched my first course, which was Organize & Automate. And it's just a course about organizing your online service based business. So organizing things like your inbox and your client process.
And there weren't a lot of courses like that around at the time. And then I was also pretty niched at that time, I was only teaching designers. So that worked in my favor as well, because there was no other course like that for designers.
So I think I just I noticed that there were some courses on that topic, but non-network designer specific. So I saw a hole in the market and just decided to create a course that would fill that basically.
And then the other course that I sell is about marketing & sales. And I created that based on my market research, because
I always, always tell my clients, like, co-create your offers with your audience, and really just lean into what they're telling you that they want from you.
There are two types of research. So there's deep research and there's micro research.
So for deep research, once a year, I try and get on a few calls with people in my audience, because I find that the best research that I ever do is when I hop on a call with someone who's my ideal course student or client. And then I just say to them, "Hey, if you let me pick your brain for 15 minutes, I'm happy to give 15 minutes of coaching on a subject that you're struggling with in your business”
So it benefits both of us because I get to pick their brain. They get some coaching help from me. So it's a win-win.
And the reason that I love doing the calls is because people will open up to you so much more on a call than you would ever get in an Instagram story poll, which I do as well. That's a form of micro research. And I love to do those too.
But on the calls, people will just get really open and vulnerable about their struggles, about their problems, their desires. And then when they really get into it, I notice that they'll start just telling me basically what I can put on a sales page. Like they just give me the language and I'm like, "Oh, that precise sentence so many people would relate to. I want to use that." So I find the calls the most helpful for me.
I would say just because one of my clients actually asked me about this last week and she said,
"What if you don't have an audience yet and you don't have anyone that you can hop on a call with, you don't have followers to poll? So how do you do the target market research?"
And there are quite a lot of different ways. But what I would say to anyone who can relate to that is find Instagram accounts that have your ideal audience. So they're in your niche, they have your ideal audience. And then go through the comments sections and see what those people are saying in the comments. Because I've done that sometimes and sometimes I'll screenshot people's comments because I think, "Oh, this person has really well captured exactly what the problem is." And the wording that they use and the language that they use sometimes when they're saying,
"Oh, I relate to this so much. My struggle is blah, blah, blah."
People will say these things in Instagram comments. So that's a good way to do some research as well.
Then let's talk about launching courses and what exactly that entails. Because that's like the other major part of running online courses is not aspect. Can you tell me about, for someone who's curious, new to the online course world, what exactly does launching a course entail?
So much. So launching a course, I mean, I don't even know where to begin with this one.
Launching the course entails creating the curriculum.
If it's a new course, I don't create the course before I launch it.
I launch it and then I create it.
That way I'm not spending hours of my time recording videos and then it sells to crickets and I've just wasted all of that time. So when I launched my sales and marketing course, I made the first module or two and then I launched it just so that in my mind I knew I was a bit prepared in the head because I had a feeling that it would sell. But yes, I recorded the first couple of modules and then I launched it and then in my head I thought,
"If I reach a certain sales goal, then I'll create the rest."
So that's how that happened.
And when it comes to the actual launch, you've got to create the sales page, you've got to create the checkout page, you've got to set up the automation, so that when, well, I do anyway, so when people, you know, actually give you their money, they are automatically added to the course.
And then it's all about scheduling sales emails, scheduling the social media content.
And hopefully you can create like some kind of a sales funnel, like a webinar or a free challenge.
And then at the end of that, you can pitch your course for sale.
In a nutshell!
For the course business, the main income stream is the courses and also some group coaching, a little bit of one-to-one and basically like coaching business owners on these different topics that you're an expert on. And then for the influencer business, it is partnerships. And I'm assuming also a little bit of YouTube out of it. Can you talk about the split between the two?
Definitely the brand deals are the bigger of the two. AdSense, you don't really make that much money from AdSense. I think that some people assume that you do, but you really don't make that much from that. And so, yeah, so brand deals tend to make up the most money if you want to go down the influencer route, or you could launch a digital product as well.
And then can you tell me profitability-wise, you've obviously done the influencer business for a shorter amount of time. So I'm assuming it's the smaller of the two, but with what you know about the numbers of both, if you had done both for the same amount of time and had put equal effort into both, which one do you think would have come out being the more profitable option?
I would still say the course business, because I mean, ironically, I did technically start out as a micro-influencer before I went into freelance design and then coaching and courses.
Like 12 years ago, I think it was, I had a blog back when blogs were the in thing. And it was a personal style blog, which makes me laugh now because I'm the least stylish person. But at the time I had a personal style blog. And so I would work with brands on their clothing and like shoes and stuff like this. And so sometimes I have looked back and thought, oh, I wonder where that would be if I had continued that. But I really don't regret it at all because when it comes to profitability, I genuinely just think that there aren't that many business models that beat the course business model because, you know, there's no ceiling, there's no income ceiling on that. It's not attached to your time, like it is when you do client work or you work with brands.
And it's also not attached to your life, which I think is the biggest thing that people fail to take into account when they become influencers because I really enjoy it. But there are definitely downsides.
Like if you want someone who enjoys being recognized when you're out and about, you might want to think about that.
Or if you have kids or you want to have kids and you're starting a personal blog, you might want to think about do I want my kids to be, you know, on a blog?
Do I want strangers watching them?
Like there's no right or wrong for different people, I guess. But I think these are things to take into consideration. And if you're having a bad day and you're a lifestyle vlogger or also a bad season, because we've all had difficult things happen in our lives.
And I think that it would be hard if that was my main source of revenue, or my only source of revenue. Because if you're going through a really hard year or a really hard few months, and you've still got to show up on video every single week, there's only a certain amount of weeks that you can show up down before everyone starts saying, you know,
"Cheer up, be grateful, la la la la la."
And then you've got to, you know, you've got to show that more positive side again, because people are going to YouTube or to influencers on Instagram as a form of escapism. And you kind of have to remember that when when you're vlogging, that the whole reason people go to you is mostly for escapism or to be inspired.
So I think that if I think about it like that, I am really glad that I have my course business as well. Because if I'm having a bad season, or a bad few weeks, because my vlogging business is not my main business, I don't treat it like it's my main business. So if I don't want to show up, I don't force myself to show up. And I think if that was my main business, I would have to.
It's beautiful on the one hand, because it really does feel... I feel so connected to my community on YouTube. So on the one hand, it's really something amazing and something special. But yeah, that is one of the harder sides. Or I imagine it would be much harder if I was vlogging every single week. Because 95% of people who watch vlogs are wonderful people. And they're positive. They encourage you. They praise you for like any tiny obstacle you overcome. They're like, "Yes, you've got this. We always have faith in you." Like there's a lot of lovely people who watch vlogs and it becomes like this real community. But there is always like 5% that are critical people. And I mean, for me, it might not be the same for everyone. But for me, it's always that 5% that sticks in my head a lot more than the 95%. And I have to continually remind myself that I don't need to listen to criticism or naysayers. But I think that would be hard if it was my one and only or my main business.
Okay, so we talked about the profitability of the two. Can we also talk about obviously profit isn't the only factor for people to take into consideration when they're making a decision. Can you talk about like, which one do you enjoy more and why?
Yeah, so for me, it's still the course business that I enjoy the most. There was definitely a period of time where I felt like I enjoyed vlogging more. And so yeah, and so I did seriously think, "Can I grow this? Should I grow this to become my main business?" And I truly believe I could have, or I could if I wanted to. But yeah, I think going back to the hate and stuff like this, even though it's not like, it's not every day or anything that I get messages like that, I think because I'm quite a sensitive person, it just gets to me. And now I am thankful because it's helped me to develop more of a thicker skin.
But it did also open my eyes to the fact that actually I don't have to deal with this if I don't want to because in my course business I don't really have much of that.
So yeah, in that respect, that would be a big thing for me, I think.
Okay, and then can you talk about the two? Which one is more freedom-giving, would you say?
They're both quite freedom-giving to be honest. Because if you're vlogging or if you're an influencer, you're literally being paid to live. So you're literally being paid to live your life. And to some degree, it doesn't get much more free than that. Totally. Yeah, so there's a lot of freedom that comes with that really. But there's also a lot of freedom with a course business, especially if you can evergreen your course and sell it on autopilot. Then the sky's the limit for profit, and you get loads of your time as well.
Now, I would be super curious to hear which business model you think you prefer after watching this whole interview. Please do comment below, and we can all take a peek and see which business model seems to be more popular in the comments. But of course, Course Creator and influencer aren't the only business models out there. There are plenty more that you might want to consider before you go waste your energy on starting something and then realize down the line that you don't actually like it.
So be sure to watch this video next where I'll share the top freelance jobs you can do from home and lay out the pros and cons of each one for you"