5 Ways to Make Money Online with Issuu
Content creation can be a lucrative career, if you can come up with a good strategy for how to make money online.
With over 600 million blogs existing today out of the 1.7 billion live websites, it's important to learn how to stand out above the crowd. Goofy movie references aside, creating content on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, or other social media platforms can pack some pretty hefty competition. These platforms have 50 million content creators, and are growing everyday.
That’s a lot of competition, but getting a share of the pie certainly isn’t impossible. As the saying goes, "Work smarter, not harder." Using all of the tools available to you to make money online can help you get on the right track. One such tool is Issuu, a digital publishing platform trusted by millions.
Issuu is used by small business owners, publishers, entrepreneurial writers, educators, digital natives, and millennials. Issuu can help you rise above the noise in the ultra-competitive world of content creation.
How Issuu Works for Content Creators
Issuu is often seen as an online magazine stand. However, it is not just for magazines. You can publish a wide array of content, including product catalogs, portfolios, DIY guides, menus, tutorials, and brochures, among others.
The Issuu website first rolled out in 2008. Since then, it has grown to host more than 50 million publications, raked in over 1 billion page views, with 100 million monthly unique visits, and become trusted by more than 2.5 million brands.
If you want to make extra money online and you’re wondering if you can publish content on Issuu, it is pretty straightforward. Once you have signed up and you have a print-ready PDF file of your content, you’re all set. You can upload that file, and the website will format it into an easily readable flip-type magazine that is pleasing to the eyes.
Below are some of the benefits of Issuu:
Create professional-looking documents:
Whether you are uploading a 500-page or a 5,000-page document, you can easily upload them to Issuu. Moreover, they can be viewed in the proper format on various screens from desktops to mobile devices.
No technical skills required:
You don’t need coding skills or other technical skills to upload and post documents.
Easily shareable:
You can embed your work on your website and easily share on various social media platforms.
Create once, share everywhere:
Repurpose and remix your designs into other marketing assets, such as social media stories, images, emails, and more.
Analytics:
Know your audience better through valuable data that gives you an idea of what types of content work, and what doesn’t.
We like to help you take your content, and make it amazing! As a flipbook maker, not only does Issuu transform those boring scrolling PDFs into page turning digital flipbooks, but we also make it easy to take that top-quality content and make money online.
1. Sell Digital Access to Your Publication
Using Issuu to publish your content is one of the best ideas to make money as a content creator. As a content creator, Issuu allows you to use its platform to make extra money online, and it’s commission-free.
Issuu turned revenue sharing off to help digital content creators during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it worked. The sales of digital publications from March through September 2020 went up by 841 percent. In addition, the combined revenue for all publishers selling their content via Issuu went up over 363 percent.
Here’s how digital sales of publications work on Issuu:
Sell as Single Issues or as a Subscription
You can sell your content on Issuu and give your audience digital access on any device. What kind of content will you offer, you might ask? It may come in the form of digital magazines, ebooks, whitepapers, or more. You will have complete control, whether you want to sell individual content pieces or offer your work for a subscription.
When selling single publications, you can upload a new publication or place an existing publication for sale. Upon payment, users can access the content that they paid for. You can also give your audience free access to some of your work.
On the other hand, when readers buy a subscription, users pay you in advance and will automatically gain access to your newly published work. Since they are getting multiple issues, you can offer them a discount to encourage them to sign up. When a reader starts their subscription, they are able to read the latest published issue along with any following issues published. Take note that you need a Stripe account to start accepting payments.
Once you are all set up, remember to optimize your publication and profile so your potential readers can easily find you. Don’t forget to pique the interest of your audience and promote your digital publication via your website and your social media. You can also use Issuu Stories to help sell your content.
How Digital Sales Can Help Your Brand Grow
With Issuu, you give your audience access to affordable, high-quality content, on a visually engaging platform that they can access on most devices. With the excellent search engine reputation of the Issuu website, you have good leverage to drive new and recurring traffic.
You can also help grow your community of readers on Issuu itself by sharing your content on different social media platforms. If you plan to reach out to an international audience, the digital publishing platform is a great channel to promote visibility.
With a broader readership, you can secure more partnerships and seal more deals from retailers, influencers, or advertisers.
2. Affiliate Content
Aside from digital sales, you can also earn money online by promoting your affiliate content on Issuu. Adding affiliate links to your publication is a great way to earn passive income.
Advantages of Being an Affiliate
If you are thinking of ways to make money online without the risk of shelling out a huge amount of money to start, affiliate marketing is perfect for you. Here’s why:
You can join most affiliate marketing programs for free.
You don’t have to worry about creating new products or services
You don’t have to manage inventories, because the merchant will ship the product for you
It’s an extra source of income for content creators
How to Use Issuu to Promote Affiliate Content
You can subtly drive traffic to affiliate programs you have signed up for with links embedded in ebooks. Aside from getting more people to check out your affiliate products, you will also establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
You can also produce immersive product catalogs with embedded affiliate links during big sale events such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Holiday gift guides are among the best ways to rake in commissions from affiliate programs.
Promote your affiliate content by embedding your ebook or catalog on your website and sharing them on your social media channels. Likewise, you can share specific content from your publication to tease readers about the topic you are covering or deals you are promoting.
Don’t forget to review the rules of the affiliate program you signed up for before priming your affiliate content.
3. Add Shoppable Links
Create an interactive experience for your target market and lead them to your products. At the same time, you can also entice advertisers.
If you are running an online store, you can drive traffic to your website and generate more sales. You can add direct links or shoppable links to your content on Issuu. When you add shopping links, readers will see a small cart icon on top of specific links, which signals potential buyers that they can purchase that item. Issuu also has an auto-detect link feature that locates clickable content, so it’s easily visible to readers.
When creating a digital catalog for your online store, remember the following:
Consistent and effective branding:
Since you’re expecting potential buyers to jump from your digital catalog to your online store, you need to make sure that you give them a seamless experience with your brand elements such as logos, colors, and other details consistent on both your website and your catalog.
Balanced design:
Your products must stand out. This can be done by using proper fonts, headings, and layouts.
High-quality images:
If you want consumers to click your shoppable links, give them a reason to do so. Do not settle for “good enough” images – make sure you adhere to the highest standards of publications by adding only the best images for your products.
Brand storytelling:
Keep your potential buyers on the hook by being consistent with the messaging of your brand. Aside from the usual photos and details about the products, you can include some insights about your thought process, manufacturing techniques, or the things that your brand stands for.
How to Add Links on Issuu
Issuu has an intuitive interface that lets you optimize your content the way you want to. When adding links, you just need to go to the published work where you want to add web links, video, or shopping links. From the Link Editor, you can select pages and other sections you need to add links to.
Whether you are running an online fashion store, a virtual bookstore, a virtual kitchen, or other forms of e-commerce stores, Issuu can help you make most of your content marketing efforts.
4. Create Course Content
Another way to make money online is by creating course content. You can use Issuu to distribute learning materials that you can embed on your website, choosing which pages are free, and which pages are behind a paywall. Only want your content viewed by certain people? Easily publish content with the "Unlisted" feature on Issuu.
Share your expertise or tap a team of experts to help you create educational content that you can sell for profit. It is the best time to do this, because during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and as we transition to a new normal, there is an explosion in the online education niche. For example, there has been a 4,000 percent increase in the demand for anxiety management, and a similar level of growth in other wellness skills. More people are also after bite-size learning these days to avoid overwhelming volumes of information. Creating digital course content is a great way to give back to your community.
How to Promote Your Online Course Using Issuu
You can directly sell your course content to your audience via Issuu Sales. You can easily upload your PDF content and get paid by interested users. In addition, you can control who can access and download your content, and pique the interest of your target users by creating a preview of the material.
It’s easy to create a landing page where you can embed your preview. In exchange for the preview, you can collect the email address and other information of prospective students. You can customize the preview to suit the digital experience you want for your potential students.
Another way to promote your online course is by giving away free how-to guides or a list of practical tips. Provide just enough information to help them see you as an expert, and encourage them to enroll in your course or buy your course content.
Snippets on your social media pages are a great way to magnet interested users to your course. You can easily derive marketing materials from your course content, because Issuu allows you to create Visual Stories that can be easily posted on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms.
5. Sell Advertising Space
If being an online educator is not your game, another way to make extra money online is by offering advertising spaces on your publication. Brands are always on the lookout for ways to reach out to their market. When your content is in tangent with their brand, your work is the perfect medium for them to get their message across.
How to Attract Advertisers
You need to have a good following before you can expect brands to tap your services. Make sure you monitor the performance of your content so you can make adjustments and improve your offerings as necessary.
Once you have good readership statistics, you can use those numbers to create a media kit to promote your brand. The brands want to know your reader demographics, number of subscribers on different platforms, details about your circulation, and details about your distribution channels. In short, they want to see a clear picture of what they can get when they tap your audience.
Your media kit must have an excellent layout and represent the kind of branding that potential advertisers want to partner with. Use easily scannable graphs, eye-friendly fonts, and a classy color scheme.
Don’t forget details about ad dimensions, rates, guidelines, and other specifications. This will give brands an idea of what fits their needs and budget. You can also give potential advertisers several ad options to help them make an informed decision.
Start Making Money with Issuu
Issuu is not only the ideal digital publishing platform for content creators, but it also opens more money-making opportunities for you.
Maximize your potential in the gig economy by creating engaging content and making the most of your work by repurposing them in a flash.
Join Issuu today and take your brand to the next level.