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After almost a decade of being a full-time content creator and helping hundreds of students quit their jobs and become full-time creators, I’ve learned that there is truly no one right way to become a content creator. There is only the way that’s most aligned with the business you want to build and the lifestyle you actually want to live.
Because what does being a full-time content creator even mean?
Does it mean making all your money from Instagram brand deals? Being a YouTuber earning money from AdSense? Being a travel blogger generating affiliate income? Selling your own digital products? Or creating content for brands without even posting it to your own audience?
All of these can be full-time creator businesses, and your answer might change completely depending on the season of life you’re in.
When I first started The Wanderlover almost 10 years ago, I was very much a travel content creator. I was posting on Instagram every single day and writing blog posts every week. Most of my income came from collaborations. I worked with hotels, went on press trips, and partnered with different travel brands. At the time, that was amazing to me. I was getting opportunities to travel and stay in beautiful places because of the content I was creating.
But there’s a difference between being a content creator and actually building a business that can support your life through all its chapters.
After building a creator business through a pandemic, working from remote islands with no Wi-Fi, and navigating maternity and parenthood, my mindset shifted from “How do I become a bigger creator?” to “How do I build multiple income streams around my content and audience?”
That distinction is probably the most important thing I can teach you.
Get Paid First, Not Just More Followers
If your goal is truly to become a full-time content creator, I don’t want your first goal to be reaching 10,000 followers. I want your first goal to be getting paid.
This is something I teach inside The Wanderlover Business Academy: get paid first, because it will give you clarity and momentum.
Once you’ve made your first dollar online, you’ve proven something incredibly important: this can work.
Instead of asking, “Can I make money doing this?” your question becomes:
- How do I do this again?
- How do I make my first $1,000?
- How do I make my first $5,000?
That’s where I think the path to becoming a full-time creator becomes so much more tangible.
So many creators commit to posting multiple times every single day for 30 days, only to burn out. If I were starting from zero today and my goal was to eventually do this full-time, I would actually work backward from my first $5,000 online.
I wouldn’t start by asking how many followers I need. I would ask:
- What do I already know how to do?
- Who can I help?
- What can I create?
- What’s the fastest path between the skills or knowledge I already have and someone paying me?
Maybe that’s working with five clients at $1,000 each. Maybe it’s ten clients at $500. Maybe you create a $100 digital product and sell 50 of them.
Or perhaps you land two $1,500 brand partnerships and make the other $2,000 through affiliate commissions, UGC, or a service.
Your first $5,000 online doesn’t need to come from one perfect passive income stream. In fact, it probably won’t.
I think this is one of the reasons people make becoming a content creator harder than it needs to be. They’re trying to build the final version of their business before they’ve even made their first sale. They’re thinking about passive income, funnels, sponsorships, and YouTube AdSense when the fastest way to get paid might simply be offering a service to one person.
If you have 500 followers and someone is willing to pay you $500 for something you can help them with, that’s a business.
If you have 50,000 followers and you’re making zero dollars, you have an audience, but you don’t necessarily have a business yet.
Obviously, audience growth matters. Content matters. Your brand matters. But I want you to think about those things as tools that make monetization easier, not prerequisites you have to complete before you’re allowed to make money.
Choose What You Want to Be Known For
Once you’ve figured out your first way to get paid, content becomes incredibly powerful because you’re no longer just creating for views. Your content is attracting people into your world.
This is where choosing what you want to be known for becomes important.
You don’t have to choose one topic and promise to talk about it for the rest of your life. I definitely haven’t. My life has changed so much since I started The Wanderlover.
But someone should be able to find your page and understand why they would want to follow you.
When I started, travel was such a huge part of my identity and my content because that was my life. I had left corporate America specifically because I wanted the freedom to travel, and I was building The Wanderlover while traveling around the world.
But then my business evolved.
I started teaching other people how to build online businesses. I created digital products, started coaching, launched The Wanderlover Business Academy, and started my podcast.
Then the pandemic happened.
I think the pandemic was a really interesting moment for anyone whose identity or business was connected to travel because suddenly, nobody was traveling.
If your entire definition of yourself was “I’m a travel creator,” what happens when the world shuts down?
For me, it reinforced why I never wanted my income to depend entirely on my ability to physically be somewhere.
I could still create content. I could still coach. I could still sell digital products. I could still record my podcast and communicate with my audience.
My business could travel with me, but more importantly, it could also stay home with me, like it does now with a toddler.
That’s why I don’t think the goal should simply be to become a content creator. The goal should be to build a creator business that supports the LIFE you want.
Because you can absolutely create another job for yourself on the internet.
You can build a business where you feel like you have to post every single day because if you stop posting, your income disappears. You can build an audience where every dollar depends on the algorithm continuing to favor you. You can become completely dependent on brand deals and spend every month wondering where the next one is coming from.
Technically, you might be a full-time creator. But is that the freedom you were trying to create?
Choose a Creator Business Model That Fits Your Lifestyle
There are so many different ways to make money as a content creator, and I think it’s important to choose a business model that actually aligns with how you want to work.
For some people, brand partnerships are the DREAM. They love creating campaigns, working with brands, and being on camera every day. Amazing! Build your business around that.
Someone else might hate having deadlines and revisions from brands but love teaching. In that case, coaching, courses, and digital products might make more sense.
Someone might not want to build a personal brand at all. They could create user-generated content (UGC) for companies and get paid for the content itself.
Someone else might love YouTube and want to build a huge library of long-form videos that generates ad revenue, affiliate income, and sponsorships.
The question is: What business model gives you the lifestyle you’re actually trying to create?
Once you have some idea of that, I would choose your main platform.
Pick One Main Platform and Stay Consistent
One of the biggest mistakes I see new creators make is trying to be everywhere.
They’re starting a YouTube channel, posting TikToks, trying to grow Instagram, starting a podcast, making Pinterest pins, writing blog posts, and starting an email newsletter.
Suddenly, their entire life is CONTENT without the payoff.
Pick somewhere to start and get really good at understanding what works there.
Right now, I’ve been putting a lot more energy into YouTube. Even after creating content for years, I’ve had to learn a completely different way of thinking about content.
Growth isn’t linear with content. You really have to put in so much time and effort into something that may not pay out.
But what you can do is focus on monetization from day one instead of just waiting for the payout.
That’s why consistency matters, but I don’t mean you need to post every day.
I would much rather you choose a schedule you can realistically maintain for the next year.
Your first post or video probably isn’t going to be amazing, and that’s actually ideal.
You get better at creating content by creating content. You get better at talking to a camera by talking to a camera. You get better at writing hooks by writing hooks. You learn what your audience cares about by putting things in front of them and seeing how they respond.
You don’t need to sit at home for six months planning your perfect personal brand.
Publish something, and then publish again.
Build an Email List and Create Something You Own
While you’re creating consistently and starting to attract people, keep coming back to getting paid.
If you’re creating content and building an audience, what’s the next step you want people to take?
This is where I think a lot of creators get stuck. They build the audience first and THEN start thinking about the business.
I want you thinking about both.
Maybe someone discovers you through Instagram or YouTube. Great! Now what?
- Can they join your email list?
- Can they download something free?
- Can they buy a digital product?
- Can they book a call?
- Can they work with you?
- Can they use an affiliate link?
Is there anywhere for that attention to GO?
This is why I am such a huge believer in building an email list and creating something that you actually own. It’s exactly what I teach inside The Wanderlover Business Academy.
Your Instagram followers belong to Instagram. Your YouTube subscribers exist on YouTube. And I’ve had enough experiences with platforms and accounts at this point to know that you never want your entire business sitting on someone else’s platform.
Social media is incredible for discovery, so use it. But build something beyond it.
Your email list, your website, your offers, your products, and your customers. That’s your ecosystem.
Don’t Wait for YouTube or Instagram to Monetize You
You also do not need to wait for the platforms themselves to monetize you.
I think this is especially relevant right now because I’ve been going through the YouTube monetization process myself.
I recently hit the requirements I was working toward, applied, and then ended up waiting through the AdSense approval process.
I’m STILL waiting.
It’s been a great reminder that platform monetization is ONE income stream. It’s not the business.
Imagine spending a year building an audience and telling yourself, “I can’t make money until YouTube says I can.”
You could have been building an email list that entire time. You could have been using affiliate links, creating a digital product, getting clients, pitching brands, or creating UGC.
You could have been getting paid before you ever qualified for a penny of platform revenue.
GET PAID FIRST. Then use your growing audience to make that engine stronger.
How to Make Your First $5,000 Online
Once you make your first $5,000 online, I want you to pay really close attention to HOW you made it.
Ask yourself:
- Which part came most naturally?
- What did people actually want to buy?
- What did you enjoy delivering?
- What had the highest profit margin?
- What could you repeat?
- What could eventually become more scalable?
Maybe your first $5,000 comes from one-on-one services, but you realize everyone is asking you the same questions. That might become a digital product.
Maybe people buy that product and then some of them want more support. That might become a course or coaching program.
Maybe your content grows and suddenly brands start reaching out. Maybe your YouTube channel becomes monetized.
Now, instead of trying to discover THE income stream, you’re stacking them.
That’s when a creator business can become really powerful.
Maybe one month your income comes from brand partnerships, digital products, affiliate income, coaching, and YouTube. If one slows down, the entire business doesn’t disappear.
That’s very different from having one source of income controlled by one algorithm.
When Should You Quit Your Job and Become a Full-Time Creator?
Then there’s the question everyone eventually asks: when can I actually go full-time?
I don’t think there’s one magic number.
This is where you have to get really honest about your own lifestyle.
Consider:
- How much does your life cost?
- How much does your business cost?
- How much money do you have saved?
- Do you have debt?
- Do you have children?
- Are you comfortable with inconsistent income?
- Do you need health insurance?
- Are you willing to reduce your expenses temporarily?
- What does full-time actually need to look like for YOU?
Someone living with their parents and having very few expenses has a completely different quit-your-job number from someone supporting a family in New York City, and that’s okay.
Again, there isn’t one right way to do this.
You don’t have to quit your job tomorrow to prove that you’re serious.
You can build your creator business alongside your job. You can freelance, transition to part-time, save six months of expenses, or get your first clients before you leave.
You can wait until your online income consistently covers your expenses. Or you can do what I did and take a bigger leap.
Whatever route you choose, I want it to be intentional.
The goal isn’t to copy somebody else’s creator journey. It’s to create one that makes sense for your life.
How The Wanderlover Business Academy Helps You Build Your Creator Business
If you’re listening to all of this thinking, okay Danielle, I understand, but I want to know exactly how to turn what I know into my first offer, get my first customers, and start making actual money online, that’s exactly what I teach inside The Wanderlover Business Academy.
The entire philosophy behind the Academy is that I don’t want you spending six months making everything look perfect before anyone has paid you.
We focus on getting paid first.
Validate the idea, create the offer, put it in front of real people, get customers, and then improve and scale what is already working.
If your immediate goal is making your first $5K online, I want you to use that number to make this feel concrete.
Don’t just say, “I want to be a full-time creator.”
Ask yourself: How could I make $5,000?
Write down the actual math.
Could you:
- Sell five $1,000 packages?
- Sell ten $500 packages?
- Sell 50 $100 products?
- Combine a $1,500 brand partnership with $2,000 from clients, $1,000 in digital products, and $500 in affiliate commissions?
Suddenly, becoming a full-time content creator isn’t this mysterious thing reserved for people with millions of followers.
You’re building a business one transaction at a time.
My Journey From Travel Content Creator to Online Business Owner
That’s essentially what I’ve been doing since 2017.
The version of The Wanderlover I started back then is not the version I have today.
I started as a content creator doing collaborations. Then I learned how to monetize. I built offers, started coaching, created digital products, built an email list, and started a podcast.
I continued creating through the pandemic. I built a business I could operate from different countries. I became a mom and was able to take maternity leave.
Now I’m growing YouTube.
And I’m sure five years from now, my business and my life are going to look different again.
That’s the point.
I don’t want to build a business that requires my life to stay exactly the same in order for it to work. I want the business to evolve with me.
So if you want to become a full-time content creator, don’t obsess over finding the perfect roadmap.
Figure out what you want your life to look like. Choose a business model that can support that life. Start creating and building your audience, but don’t wait for some arbitrary follower count to give you permission to monetize.
Get paid first. Make your first sale. Then make your first $1,000. Then figure out how you’re going to make your first $5,000 online.
Pay attention to what works, build systems around it, diversify your income over time, and let your content become the engine that brings more people into your world.
Because the end goal isn’t really to say, “I’m a full-time content creator.”
The goal is being able to say, “I built something that allows me to live and work on my own terms.”
For me, that’s meant being able to travel the world, live in different countries, continue my business through the pandemic, become a mom, take maternity leave, and work from wherever our family happens to be.
Your version might look completely different, and it should.
There isn’t one right way to become a creator. There’s just the way that’s most aligned with the life you actually want to live.
Ready to Become a Full-Time Content Creator?
If you’re ready to stop thinking about someday becoming a creator and actually start building the business behind it, check out The Wanderlover Business Academy.
I’ll put the link below. Start with getting paid, work toward your first $5K online, and build from there.
And if you’re already on your creator journey, I’d love to hear where you’re at right now. Are you trying to make your first dollar, your first $1,000, your first $5K, or are you trying to make the jump to doing this full-time?
Leave a comment and tell me what you’re working toward. I would love to hear about your journey!
Have an amazing week, my loves. I’ll see you in the next one!
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