How to Make More Money through Personal Branding
- Written by Neil Patel on May 15th, 2007
- 20 Comments »
First time visiting Quick Sprout? Make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed before you leave!.
I talked about personal branding quite a bit last week and some of you asked “how does this make me money”? In most cases you will not monetarily benefit from branding in the short run, but here is how you will benefit from it in the long run.
Employment
If you work a 9 to 5 you probably already know that you won’t get paid too well unless you are a doctor or a lawyer. Now if you are looking for more money you could switch professions or you could brand yourself which will lead to new opportunities. I already work for myself but once I started to brand myself, big job offers started to fall from the sky. Within a 6 month period it went from people offering me jobs for 100k a year all the way up to 325k a year.
You maybe thinking that the job offers were going up because of my qualifications, but in all reality people are just started offering me more because they were seeing my name throughout the web. You can do this too, but you have to be patient because you can’t necessarily go after these jobs, they need to come to you.
Speaking
Speaking in front of a large audience isn’t always a fun thing to do, but when companies offer you money for speaking engagements it isn’t too bad. What it does is over time you are not only making money but as your brand grows, the value of your time goes up as well. This means that you can eventually charge quite a nice bit of money for speaking engagements as long as you are doing a great job and people see the spark. This doesn’t make you rich right away, but a few thousand dollars for a few hours of speaking isn’t too bad when you’re growing your brand every time as well.
Advice
By branding yourself as an expert people will start coming to you for advice. You can either give people free advice or you can charge them for it. If you start charging for advice you can bill at hourly rates from the low hundreds all the way up to the high hundreds. In the world of consulting you are worth more hourly compared to a 9 to 5 job because you are not seen as just an average employee, instead you are looked upon as a expert.
The Possibilities Are Endless
By branding yourself you can make money in more ways that any of can probably imagine. It could be as simple as being an evangelist for a company or getting paid to blog. Whatever it maybe, you will be able to make more money because branding yourself raises the fundamental value of your time.
I know many of you who requested this post were looking for a direct answer to how branding can make you more money and if there’s anything I would say here would be to compare Forever 21 with BCBG. They might make the clothes in the same place, but BCBG can charge a lot more for the same crap because they have a brand.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Money. You can follow the blog through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
As usual, you share some great insight into Personal Branding. I agree with you when you speak about getting yourself out there, but I know that you can uncover opportunities by first creating your brand online, so that you have something to talk to when you network.
Dan Schawbel
Personal Branding Spokesman
www.personalbrandingblog.com
This is a great post Neil. I agree with you 100%. If you want to be quiet and work a 9 to 5 behind a cube, that’s great. Nothing wrong with this. If you want to start commanding more money whether it is with a fulltime job or with consulting, if people know your name whether it is from speaking engagements, a professional blog, or a fat resume and you can prove past results and realize that you are a person with a real voice and know-how in any industry, they are sure to offer top dollar to have you on their side. About the 300k+ salary, ummh, they would have me at “hello”, but then again, I’m easy.
I missed this when I first started 97th Floor, I was so gun-ho on branding the company name that I forgot myself. I would reply to blogs with the company name as my name instead of myself, and all kinds of stupid stuff. If someone brands their name well the company that they work at or own will get recognition and when they leave the company or sell it or whatever happens they will still have a brand to stand on.
So, did you take any of those high paying offers?
If I would get such offers I would have a hard time deciding what to do. It’s much money, but if you have great ideas and a good team you are probably better of by putting the offer down.
You are a moron. Looks like you opted for the latter in this case (blogging for money), although I dont see any Google Ads on your site, how ever do you do it?
Matt: Maybe he likes the ability to have free time and work when he wants. He gets paid for speaking and there are several other money mediums he can obtain. Advertisement is only one perspective. There are speaking gigs, workshops, consulting, and book/e-books.
From the Desk of Gang0rraZ
Wednesday 16, 2007 10:50AM
The Internet
Dear Neil,
I am really glad you answered my last comment with this brilliant post. You could not say it better.
Branding is about perceived value. The more we know a brand and the qualities associated with it will affect how much we are willing to pay to get the brand’s products or services.
For those that do not understand why it is many times better to be your own boss — provided you have the right skills, let me paint it clearly. If some company is willing to pay you $$$$$$ amount it means you should be able to make them at least that. Now doing $$$$$$ on your own, plus the potential to sell your company, plus the potential to grow big or go public sounds like a lot better proposition. You also get the benefit of doing what you like most, how you want and when you want it.
Your fan,
Gang0rraZ
You forgot writing articles. Just like speaking except you don’t have to leave your house.
I also suggest mentioning that you’re available for XXX on your about page. I just got a freelance writing gig and the person mentioned that they had seen I was looking for work on my about page. Who knows if he would have contacted me if it hadn’t been there.
Anty, I did not take the job offer. It was a sweet deal offered by PepperJam which allowed me to work from home and still go to school.
Matt, I make my money from consulting.
Why do you still need to go to school if you can get that $325K salary? If just for the hobby of learning, why not just grab a book and read? Your career choice doesn’t make any logical sense. But I do agree with your points about branding yourself.
I am going to school because my parents want me to and they have paid for everything so far. Even when I started my own business I got a lot of my seed money from my parents.
Hi, first of all i want to say: “Great article” i realy liked it.
. At what university do you study ?
I see you have great respect for your parants that provided you with support and finance
Cal State Fullerton
Nice post Neil. For those looking to strike it out on their own or increate brand value to potential employers, this is a must read.
I think the end goal needs to be considered carefully as well. If you are looking to build a professional services business, the flip side needs to be considered as well. Once you grow (as a team and # of clients), if you have made yourself the brand, you potentially limit scale as a consulting firm since every client wants you and not the firm you are trying to build. And its very hard to get existing clients to start relying on other rock stars on your team. I’m sure you’ve dealt with this at some point
I think I’d like to be a ‘futurist’ rather than an ‘evangelist’…that way you could wax poetic about the future of whatever niche and if it turned out to come true your brand goes up, if it doesn’t you blame the shifting nature of the web…can’t lose:)
I just found your blog and it’s great. Very interesting article and branding is a big favorite of mine when I build blogs for clients.
Similiar approaches have worked for me also. It comes down to exposure. If your a freelancer, you must continually expose your name in your industry and be seen as an expert (as much as you can) like Neil mentioned.
If you people keep seeing your name (blogs, design galleries, web apps, business owners, interviews, etc. etc.) they will get the hint - your an expert
Neil, kem cho? Great article btw. I like the neat design of your blog too. Wat were you doing so long without a blog?
I have had a blog for a long time. My first blog was Pronet Advertising.
Makes sense to me neil…good stuff…I like the brand comparison.