💸How To Unlock the Earning Power of Social Media Whitelisting

How to increase your earning potential with Social Media Allowlisting (Previously known as Whitelisting)

*Disclaimer: I hate the term “whitelisting.” It gives me the ick every time I use it. However, it’s the most commonly recognized term in the social media marketing industry. Thus, I have to use it to ensure that I both appear in search results and can easily communicate it as an offer to potential brand partners. However, I support the shift towards more inclusive language and will be using the term “Allowlisting” as the industry (slowly) begins to adapt it as well.

Now, back to this week’s main topic:

Exploring this underutilized income opportunity for Solopreneurs and online creators.

Previously, only “traditional” influencers with large followings could receive sustainable income from brand partnerships. It was like being stuck in an endless loop of spending a ton of time trying to grow an audience large enough to grab a brand's attention and simultaneously needing to spend that time making actual money.

When we hear the term “social media influencer,” names like Jaclyn Hill, Logan Paul, or Charlie D’Melio often come to mind. These individuals skyrocketed to fame seemingly overnight and are now the epitome of social media stardom, but it no longer means that brands won't look your way if you don't have a following that matches any of the above personalities.

As solopreneurs and creators increasingly seek to monetize their knowledge by leveraging the power of the internet, there has been a significant shift in how brands approach partnerships. Micro and nano influencers emerge as key players in this new landscape, striking deals that afford them greater financial freedom and a more flexible career path than a lot of the traditional 9-5 jobs.

And let’s not get it twisted: If you’re building a business online, you are an influencer. You may not be influencing others to buy a makeup palette or an energy drink, but you’re absolutely influencing them to buy whatever you sell. So before you scoff at the term, take a good hard look at what is driving sales in your business.

We know there are various ways for solopreneurs to monetize their online presence, like offering their services for hire and creating digital products to help their followers. That’s why we’re pivoting this week’s newsletter to discuss a little-known aspect of brand deals that is often overlooked.

Influencer Allowlisting (formerly known as Whitelisting)

(It's giving Prince every time I type this and I'm not sure how to take it...)

Anyway! Get ready to take some notes. We’re going to explore this in-depth and the advantages it offers both brands and creators.

What is Allowlisting?

It’s a collaborative effort between brands and social media influencers and creators. Essentially, it involves the influencer authorizing a brand to run sponsored content or ads directly from their social media account. This strategy enables brands to leverage audience and advertising history to target specific demographics or interest groups.

Advantages:

Controlled Audience Targeting: Brands can use their audiences and advertising history to control who sees the content via a peer-to-peer delivery. Seeing the sponsored content come from a person’s social media handles rather than the brand handle can convey a more relatable message to the audience. This targeted approach ensures the ads reach the most relevant audience segments, maximizing engagement and conversion rates.

Enhanced Content Longevity: With Allowlisting, brands can make quick edits and iterations to the sponsored content, extending its shelf-life. This flexibility allows for ongoing optimization to ensure the content remains relevant and effective over time.

Expanded Reach: Allowlisting allows influencers to reach a much larger audience than they could organically. This expanded reach is particularly beneficial when the brand partnership aligns with the influencer’s target audience, facilitating mutual growth and exposure.

When to Pitch Allowlisting:

This strategy won’t make sense for every potential brand partnership. A brand needs to be more heavily involved in paid performance marketing so that pitching this service as a core offering in the strategy will make sense. E-commerce and Direct-to-Consumer brands are most often the types willing to invest and test these somewhat unconventional social strategies. So, how can you find out if a brand you’re interested in creating for would find value in Allowlisting?

Look them up in the Meta Ad Library.

It’s a tool open to everyone, so you can see what ads and how many a brand runs at any given time. If there aren’t any results, they’re not running ads, so it’s probably not wise to create a pitch around Allowlisting.

Instead, approach with a different creator offering. You can always add Allowlisting as an additional service if they’re interested.

*Hot Tip: I love going through the Meta Ad Library and TikTok Ad Library often for fresh ideas and creative inspiration!

How To Price It:

The tricky part. Pricing.

If you give access to your social handles, it’s safe to assume that you will also create the content. I always advise charging a flat fee for creating the content and an additional fee for Allowlisting.

Let’s break it down:

Example: Let's say I partner with a brand to create a social-first video for their product, specifically for a paid ad campaign.

I charge a $500 flat fee to cover the time and expertise I invest in creating the ad. This covers scripting, filming, editing, and one round of revisions.

Then, I negotiate a second fee, which is a percentage of the overall ad spend (usually between 3-5%), for them to utilize my name, image, and likeness in the form of my social handles to promote their product/services.

To simplify: $500 Flat Fee + 3% Overall Ad spend.

Here’s why I separate the two:

I have a background in media buying. I know, more than anyone, that two scenarios are probable:

Scenario 1: That ad you think will perform beautifully could leave the target audience less than impressed. If an ad isn’t performing, it gets pulled, and the brand budget could go toward another ad, outside of your brand deal, that’s generating the brand’s desired outcome.

Let’s pretend you sign a brand deal that states,

“We’ll give you X amount for every sale that comes through.”

You put in the hours to create it, and the brand loves it, too, but it falls flat in audience delivery. It happens often, trust me. But instead of receiving compensation for the work you’ve already put in, the brand pauses the campaign and diverts the funds elsewhere. And now you’re left with little to nothing to show for it.

Scenario 2: The content you create could take off and become the most successful campaign the brand has run thus far. So they do what all good media buyers do: They sink more money in and scale it up until it hits creative fatigue and people are sick of seeing it.

Now let’s talk numbers:

Scenario 1: You’ve covered the time you invested by implementing a flat fee for the ad creation itself. +$500

You opened your handles for brands to run ads via Allowlisting and agreed to a 3% fee on the overall ad spend.

It didn’t quite hit, but the brand invested $5000 throughout the campaign before pausing and diverting funds elsewhere.

3% * $5000= $150

You’re still net positive at $650 for a campaign partnership. It’s not life-changing money; however, it is a respectable amount compared to the time and intellectual property invested.

Scenario 2: You get your flat fee of $500.

The ad is a smash, so the brand goes all in on the media buy and invests $100,000 throughout the ad’s lifespan. (This is not an unrealistic media buy for large e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands.)

3% * 100,000 = $3000

All in: $3500 for one campaign.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not mad about that as an additional income option, are you?!

As I said above, this may not be feasible for every brand partnership, but now you can add Allowlisting (the Influencer Marketing Strategy formerly known as Whitelisting) to your arsenal of possible income streams for your online business.

The never-ending opportunity to diversify and expand into new revenue streams is what keeps me doing this day in and day out.

Have a quick question? Email me at mindy@mindythomas.com, I'm all ears!

Want to book a little more time to dig deep and discover if this is an option you'd like to incorporate into your business model? I've got Office Hours open! Book here to chat about all things Allowlisting or to pick my brain on getting your online business off the ground!