Hi Reader, welcome back to Brand Credential, a platform where I share insights on personal branding and marketing from my experience as a 10-year marketing industry professional.

This week’s edition will focus on a strategy for growing your marketing channels, an ecommerce solution for creators, and the massive growth of the creator economy.

Weekly Personal Branding Tip: Double Down on Your Best Channel(s)

A marketing motto that applies to both business brands and personal brands suggests that having one marketing channel where you engage followers and create content regularly is better than spreading your time and resources across several channels where you aren’t as active.

One of the common personal branding mistakes people make when they are first starting out is focusing on too many channels at once. It’s easy to get overly ambitious and to want to have big audiences on every platform.

Instead, picking one channel where your niche target audience is active and focusing on building a following there will get you further faster.

Building a following on one platform and expanding to other channels later allows you to grow more quickly on other channels. That is because you can cross promote your new channel and bring your followers with you to the new channel.

For example, if you have built a following on X, you can promote your newsletter using your X account and pick up subscribers.

Social media audiences follow the law of compounding, meaning focusing on one channel for a period of time will lead to follower growth in multiples later.

It will take longer to get to the phase of faster follower growth if you slow your progress by focusing on too many channels at once.

​Dulma is an entrepreneur with an impressive personal brand.

She exemplifies the strategy of starting with one channel to fuel growth, as she started by creating content regularly on TikTok. This resulted in a 100K+ follower TikTok audience she was then able to bring with her to additional platforms.

Pick one channel to focus on when you are first starting your personal brand. Grow there, and then expand to other channels later.

Read more: Personal Brand Framework: 5 Steps to Defining Your Personal Brand​

Insight From the Head of Marketing: What I’m Building This Week

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The latest news from my desk is a that I added a new tool to my creator / business tool stack: Stan​

Note: I get nothing in terms of affiliate commission from talking about this, and have no relationship with Stan. Rather, I am simply sharing this in case it is a helpful solution for someone.

​Stan.store is an ecommerce solution that brands itself as the "all-in-one creator store." I would have to agree with their tagline.

They have created a simple solution that makes it easy for creators to sell and promote products. Many creators use Stan to host their digital products and to serve as their "link in bio" solution on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

I first discovered Stan from Sammie Ellard-King, the personal finance content creator and entrepreneur behind the "Up the Gains" brand.

His Stan store serves as a one-stop-shop for his digital products, free templates, and other links.

The Reasons I am Using Stan Store:

1. One-stop-shop - I wanted to consolidate my ecommerce products and platforms under one roof. Previously, I had been using a combination of Amazon, Gumroad, and my own website to host my products and free templates. I will continue to keep these solutions in market in order to give my products exposure to different marketplaces. However, I plan on using my Stan store as the primary link I share in my social media profile bios and other call-to-action opportunities.
2. No sales commission - Stan does not take a commission on sales. Rather, they charge a monthly fee. If you plan on doing a high volume of sales for digital products (which I hope to do), at a certain point, paying a fixed monthly fee will save you money in comparison to a set commission structure per product sale.
3. Simplicity - I was able to setup my one-page ecommerce store using Stan in under an hour. It is super easy to use, and I think the final product looks clean and polished.

For anyone in the market for an ecommerce tool to host products like courses, ebooks, etc., Stan presents itself as a great option.

This Week in Marketing: Creator Economy Projected to be Worth Half-a-Trillion Dollars

A new report by Goldman Sachs highlights a robust future for the creator economy, forecasting growth to $480 billion by 2027—nearly double the $250 billion it is worth today.

That is A LOT of e-books and courses.

Content creation jokes aside, this very real movement is being driven by a three-sided creator economy landscape:

1. Consumers who want to buy products and services from people they trust.
2. Creators who want to make extra money from the content they enjoy creating.
3. Businesses that are adapting to the trend of people wanting to buy things from other people.

Goldman Sachs predicts growth for all three sides of this ecosystem.

That means more people buying digital products and services, more brands investing in influencer marketing to reach those people, and a significant opportunity for us all to earn additional income through content creation.

Key Takeaways

Monetization Potential

The Stan stores I shared above serve as examples of the types of products and services people are creating to make money from their existing skills and knowledge.

From courses to ebooks and consulting services, creators are finding ways to make money from the things they already know how to do.

Packaging the problems you solve for yourself and expertise gained through your day job into products and services is a very real opportunity to earn additional income.

For example, I turned my experience helping executives build personal brands into an ebook I sell and a website I monetize with digital ads. Both of these revenue streams were simple extensions of things I already know and content I was already creating.

Think about how you can follow suit and make products and services out of your own unique experience.

A Niche for Everyone

The report highlights the success of niche content, which is great news for creators who specialize in specific areas.

Whether your passion is mental health, gardening, or something else, there is a community of other people with that same passion out there waiting for you to start creating.

This is an opportunity for you to connect with people who share your interests, and to build a side-hustle business around those interests.

The Opportunity to Create Now

While the creator economy is a big, 480 billion-dollar pie, there are more people than ever competing for a piece.

It is going to become far more common to see people build personal brands like these:

1. ​Maegan Lujan - An example of someone with an impressive "day job" as a technology director at Toshiba, who also manages a significant digital presence as a content creator and entrepreneur. Traditional career paths and creator-led entrepreneurship will coexist more often.
2. ​Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi - An example of a creator who has turned their content creation side-hustle into their full-time job. The gargantuan dollars already being spent on creator-driven marketing mean big opportunities for creators to turn their content into a viable full-time career path. More creator businesses will pop up in the next few years to meet the demand.

As more people realize these paths, competition will also grow.

There is still an opportunity to gain a first mover advantage now, before social media channels and digital product and service offerings become more saturated.

Final Thoughts on the Creator Economy

The insights in this report are not surprising. However, seeing creator trends validated by a group like Goldman Sachs makes them even more apparent.

I hope you see this report like I do, taking it as an inspiring call to action for anyone looking to start building their online presence and turn their content into a business.

More Ways I Can Help

That’s it for this week! As always, thank you so much for reading.

If you’d like more personal branding and marketing tips, here are more ways I can help in the meantime:

• Read more on my website, Brand Credential​
• Check out my latest Medium articles​
• Read my free book, “The Personal Brand Blueprint: A No-Nonsense Guide to Personal Branding in the Age of the Creator”