An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
By far the easiest way to monetize your brand no matter the size of your following is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate Marketing allows you to generate income by selling someone else’s product to your audience. You earn a commission when someone makes a purchase through your affiliate link.
As part of my series about “How Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand” I had the pleasure of interviewing Siobhán Alvarez.
Siobhan Alvarez is a mom to two young sons living just outside of Atlanta, GA, who shares her motherhood journey on her successful blog Mimosas & Motherhood, where she shares easy recipes, DIY projects, pregnancy advice, parenting tips and more. After teaching herself how to tackle SEO and generate an income with her blog, Siobhan now teaches other women how to launch their own websites that can generate a real, meaningful income for their own families, too.
She is also the Executive Director of the Atlanta Autism Consortium, a nonprofit organization that provides free educational programs and events for the autism community both in Atlanta and across the country.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit more. What is your “backstory”? What brought you to this point in your career?
I started my blog and Instagram platform as a hobby while pregnant with my first child in 2018. I needed a creative outlet that had nothing to do with my full-time job, and also wanted to find a way to connect with other moms-to-be at the same time.
For the next few years, my major focus was growing the community on my social media platforms, and the idea of making it into an actual business really hadn’t crossed my mind… until the pandemic happened. My husband and I watched as friends lost their jobs, and I was faced with the very real possibility that we could end up in the same position, with two young children to take care of.
I decided to throw myself into learning as much as I could about blogging and monetizing both platforms, just in case one or both of us lost our job, too. By the end of that year I had quadrupled my website traffic and was consistently making a full-time income as a content creator, in the part-time hours I had left after working my full-time job and wrangling my two toddlers.
I never expected to be an influencer or blogger, but it’s been such a fun and unexpected journey to creating my own business, and I’m loving the adventure along the way!
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you in the course of your career?
I would say for sure the funniest thing that’s ever happened was when I was approached by a company who was convinced that our family had pet squirrels, and could use them to help promote their products. No matter how many times I tried to explain that when I called my children “wild animals” on social media they were still human children, they were pretty persistent!
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Blogging and influencing has been transformational for our family’s lives. I have loved creating my business, and along the way I realized that truly anyone could have this same kind of success. You just need a little help finding the right education, resources and plan. With that in mind, in 2020 I created a 100% free course to teach other women how to launch their own blogs that are set up for success, and am proud to share that I’ve taught more than 300 women through it. I now also teach content creators how to grow their income through affiliate marketing and paid partnerships, and am excited to continue to expand what this level of support looks like for creators of all different sizes.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that many have attempted, but eventually gave up on. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?
My biggest piece of advice is to take creating a successful online business as seriously as you would preparing to start any other small business. Be prepared to invest in the courses and extra education that will teach you how to grow the right way.
When I decided to get serious about growing my blog and social media platforms into a business, I spent a few months researching what I needed to do to get there, and where I could learn how to do this. I invested in two relatively inexpensive courses that were transformational. I learned so much information that I was able to put into practice right away, and saw a huge amount of growth very quickly.
However, if I had been hesitant about investing in this type of education, I might not have ever learned these types of things, and would probably still only have a hobby blog.
None of us can achieve success without a bit of help along the way. Is there a particular person who made a profound difference in your life to whom you are grateful? Can you share a story?
The person who has been absolutely instrumental in my success with growing the blog and our social media platforms has been my husband. He is such a fantastic cheerleader and motivator and incredibly supportive of my goals. He’s swooped in to help care for our boys in a bigger way, and has shown in so many ways his belief in what I’m doing. I’m so grateful to have a partner who supports and believes in me the way that he does.
So what are the most exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
Right now I’m excited to be working on an expansion of my free blogging course. I’ve heard from so many students over the years that they have learned so much by taking that course, but would love to have a really robust roadmap for success as their websites continue to grow.
With this new course, I’ll teach content creators not only how to get their blogs off the ground the right way, but also help them map out how to be successful and grow it into a business, focusing on SEO, landing paid partnerships, maximizing affiliate links, growing an audience and more!
What are your “Top Five Ways That Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand” . (Please share a story or example for each.)
While there are many ways to monetize your brand, these are my top 5 that I’ve found can work for nearly any influencer or content creator in any niche.
1 . By far the easiest way to monetize your brand no matter the size of your following is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate Marketing allows you to generate income by selling someone else’s product to your audience. You earn a commission when someone makes a purchase through your affiliate link.
The opportunities for affiliate commissions are endless. There are businesses that will pay you directly a percentage of sales; companies that can give you access to hundreds of retailers you can promote; and even opportunities for making an affiliate commission for promoting courses and other services!
Affiliate commissions can really vary, from a few cents up through a few hundred dollars per sale. However, if you do your research and find the right products and services to market to your audience, it can translate to a sustainable and consistent form of income for many influencers. If you need some help creating your plan for affiliate marketing, I created a free resource you can find here.
2. Next up is sponsored posts, also known as paid partnerships. Brands love working with influencers of all different sizes to promote their products or services to their target audiences. The audiences that we grow on social media are typically really niched down, making them a great marketing tool.
For example, if you’re a mom influencer who posts heavily about your elementary school-aged children, you are in a unique spot to share the newest fun activity center that’s opened in your town, or learning app that’s geared towards 6–10 year-old kids.
Keep in mind that rates can be all over the map for sponsored content, and thankfully unlike in the past, it’s no longer tied so heavily to the number of followers you have. Brands want to see real, authentic engagement on accounts, because that’s what translates to sales (their end goal).
Knowing your audience and being able to paint the picture of why you’re the best person to help a brand reach their goals is key. If you need some help, I’ve created a free resource on pitching paid partnerships here.
3. Course Creation/Digital Product Creation is a growing market. If you have a dedicated social media following and something unique to teach, this might be a lucrative path to look into.
For example, if you’re a food influencer who is known for creating the most amazing desserts, you could create a course that teaches students step by step how to make them on their own. Or, you could offer an eBook with all of your sought-after “baking secrets” that’s available only if they purchase it.
4. Opening a shop is another option for many influencers with a dedicated following. Unlike in the past, there are now so many options that allow you to create and sell physical products without having to have physical inventory on hand!
Drop-shipping options have really expanded in the past few years. Now you can host a shop online where the product design, marketing and checkout is managed on your end, but the physical creation and shipping of the product is handled by a third-party company. While profit margins are lower, it’s a great way to explore offering physical products without having to shell out a lot of money up front on inventory.
5. Finally, I am a BIG believer in the power of diversifying your platforms, and recommend to every influencer that they also create a website. Website content can translate to true passive income: you write a post once, insert your affiliate links or links to your products, and make sales over and over again as new readers find your content.
You can also monetize your website through ad revenue, which is again another completely passive form of income! Use your existing social media platforms to help drive traffic to your website for an additional source of revenue.
While the 5 ways I just mentioned are all fantastic ways to monetize your brand, you need to first be sure that you’ve covered the fundamentals of creating a strong base for your business. First, you need to define and target your key audience. If you aren’t doing this, your efforts will end up scattered. You need to understand who your audience is and what they need in order to monetize!
Second, it’s incredibly important to diversify your streams of income. When it comes to your income streams, you often find that some better than others, and this can also vary during different times of the year, too. For example, you might find that you land some great sponsored posts, but not consistently every month. Take a look at your other monetization options, and decide what to invest more time in to help balance it out. Could you create more affiliate content? Point your followers in the direction of a new eBook?
And finally, remember: there will be setbacks. It happens to every single influencer along their business journey! Learn to adapt and pivot when it does.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would want to inspire a movement around random acts of kindness. We live in a world where lately it feels like there’s so much pain and negativity. Little acts of kindness can truly make a big impact on someone else. Whether it’s paying for the car behind you in the drive thru line, surprising a neighbor with cookies, or just plain opening the door for someone, the world needs more random acts of kindness.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this. 🙂
I really admire Marie Forleo. She’s grown an incredible business that is not only extremely successful, but also has a focus on helping others achieve their goals, too.
What is the best way our readers can follow your work online?
Read along with the blog at www.mimosasandmotherhood.com, and follow me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/simply.siobhan, TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/@simply.siobhan and Facebook at www.facebook.com/mimosasmotherhood!
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Siobhan Alvarez of She Shines Media: Five Ways For Influencers To Monetize Their Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.