You may have heard that there’s a lot of starving on your way to being a successful artist (or a creator in our case). But what if I told you that there’s a different way? A way where you can be a creator, do what you are passionate about and line your pockets full of money…without starving?

Being an online creator should never be about having to make decisions on whether you can afford to buy the equipment you need or rather using that money for rent, in fact thoughts like this should never exist in your mind. Being an online creator is about creating things that are helpful to others and getting paid well so you have enough resources and funds to create even more cooler stuff tomorrow and helping more people.

With all that in mind, I wanna introduce you to a framework that makes all this possible – It’s called the PARTS model and it’s gonna move you from a “I wish I could do this full-time” creator to a pro! But before I jump into the juicy bits, let’s take a look at what the PARTS model is from a 10000 foot viewpoint…

The PARTS model – an overview

The internet is full of information, some valuable and some just plain nonsense, the sad bit is that we are all exposed to all of it. There is soooo much noise, so much advice, so many gurus and so many differing views on how to actually build a business online that it all gets confusing.

The PARTS model adds to that “noise” but there is a slight difference, I didn’t build it with that intention in fact my aims here are directly the opposite. I built the model to strip away all the noise and give you only what is essential to help you build a thriving online business that lets you create all you want and never have to worry about where your next meal will come from.

So think of this framework as a roadmap for all aspiring professional creators to have a starting point and a place where they can reference back to when they get further down the road of their creative careers.

Side note: I am constantly iterating and updating the framework as I learn more so what you will read below is the latest version of my thoughts around this.

The PARTS model is a comprehensive framework for building an online business for creators. The model is an acronym:

• Purpose
• Attention
• Revenue Model
• Trust
• Systems

Each of these elements is essential to building a lucrative creator business. They are all needed and the build upon each other – I strongly recommend that you tackle each one of them one at a time and in the order that they are listed in the acronym.

Let’s dive in…

Purpose

Everything starts with why you are doing what you are doing aka Your Purpose.

If you don’t dig deep and understand the reasons behind “your why” then everything after this step will be a struggle. The importance of this really cannot be understated and if Your Why is shaky or is built on the wrong motivations then nothing you do after this will matter.

There are four questions to help you develop a strong purpose:

1. Who do you help (and what do you help them do)?
2. Why does your content need to exist?
3. Why you?
4. What is your Content Tilt?

Let’s break those down…

1. Who do you help (and what do you help them do)?

Let’s start with the easiest questions first.

If you aren’t able to describe your target customer and what you help them do, you’ll have a hard time convincing people that you can help them.

Start with this simple formula: I help (X) do (Y), where X is the specific group of people you help and Y is what you help them with. So for example in my case: I help creators make money online.

I could take this a step further by specifying what kind of creators I help and how exactly I help them but this should be enough for you to get the ball rolling for now. Go deeper on this when you’re ready!

2. Why does your content need to exist?

On the surface, this question may seem redundant because you just told me who you help and how you help them, right?

The honest truth is that there’s a lot of content online that has no business being there, the content is not informative in any way, it’s not educational and it doesn’t add much to your life.

From this perspective then, the question “Why does your content need to exist?” makes sense because what I’m getting at here is looking at the competitive landscape. Why does YOUR particular content need to exist amongst the resources and creators that are already out there?

I’m not saying you need to “niche down,” but what I AM saying is that you need to understand why your content makes a difference in the market place and why it is needed.

In my world, there’s a LOT of competition, in fact too much for my liking. There is no shortage of people telling you how to make money online.

But I believe that most of these voices lack soul, warmth, approachability, and even depth. Most of these voices are the same repeated, surface-area information that are rooted in a very small set of experiences.

I know I can do better.

3. Why you?

Why are YOU the right person to pursue this purpose?

In an ideal world, you’ve had some experience that you’ve deleted over the years that would qualify you to be the ideal person to be pursuing this purpose.

At this point in my online career, I’ve spent the last 5 years working behind the scenes with Influencers (I honestly can’t stand this word, so I’ll revert back to creators) and I’ve helped them make a living online.

By working with them, I have scene what goes on behind the scenes, what it takes to make a living online and how to go about making that living so I can bring unique perspective to the space. I’m not creating content based on just my own creator experience – but on the experiences of HUNDREDS of other creators. I’m conducting firsthand research and identifying my own patterns and trends because of it.

And as both a practitioner and researcher, I’m constantly able to stay at the edge of what’s working now.

4. What’s your “Content Tilt”?

To take this yet another step further, wrap your belief for why your content needs to exist into what Joe Pulizzi calls a Content Tilt:

The content tilt is that sweet spot when a topic related to your product or service has minimal or no competition.

This is a concept that I can’t stop thinking about. Entire creator businesses have been built on the back of a good Content Tilt.

Your Content Tilt is crucial because we live in a noisy world and whichever industry you’re in, there are thousands of other people just like you trying to get noticed. Unless you distinguish yourself by taking a subject and putting your own unique spin to it, you’ll never get a chance to show how different you actually are. To stand out, you need to develop a tilt on your content.

My content tilt is that becoming a professional creator isn’t an art – it’s a science. It is something that can be observed, analysed, broken down and applied by different people to their own corner of the internet to make a living.

Here’s how to establish your content tilt.

Finding your content tilt takes creativity and an honest look at your capabilities. Here are five ways to set yourself up for success.

1. Read and reflect on the case studies. People before you have pulled this off, and there’s a lot to learn about how they did it.

2. Assess the field. Before immediately jumping into Google Search, jot down some angles that you think might serve as a content tilt. This exercise will allow you to think creatively rather than jumping from topic to topic based on what Google offers up. Once you’ve compiled a list, start searching. Most, and maybe all, of your ideas will likely be ruled out but this process is invaluable for narrowing your focus and finding your niche.

3. Assess yourself. If you discover your content tilt, do you have the time, skills and energy necessary to own the space? Only when you have a full and honest understanding of what you’re capable of will you be able to create a strategy to fill the gaps and get started.

4. Determine your delivery methods. Are blog posts the way to go in the age of peak content? Depending on your niche and audience, maybe. But be sure to entertain a variety of other options – from podcasts to print magazines – that may better align with your anticipated audience and the skills of your team.

5. Schedule routine tilt checks. When you’ve found your content tilt and are successfully rolling, keep in mind that the insights you gain, both from your growing audience and the likely rise of competitors, will help you determine whether to stay the course or make slight alterations to your overall content marketing strategy.

If this seems like a lot of work to define a strong purpose, that’s because it is.

It’s the most important part of this whole framework.

Attention

Once you’ve identified your purpose, it’s time to start sharing that message with the people who need to hear it.

The challenge is with sharing your message is that very often no one ever receives it, so you need to create a reliable process that ensures your content receives attention.

You should think of attention in two halves:

1. New audience attention
2. Retained audience attention

New audience attention

When you don’t have an existing audience, you need to capture the attention of a new audience.

You capture that attention namely through discovery platforms:

• Social media
• YouTube
• Google Search
• Guesting
• Collaborations

The idea is simple:

Go where attention and interest for your purpose exist and start contributing there.

There are corners of social media where your audience is already gathering and they are talking about the things that you would like to talk about. There are people searching for topics related to your purpose every day. There may even be complementary creators who have already gathered a community of people who fit the profile of your ideal audience.

Your job is to get in front of them.

The first thought is to get in front of them by creating and publishing your own content – that’s useful. But you can also get in front of them by contributing to the conversations that other creators have already started.

Those creators may even be open to speaking with you directly in their OWN content (think podcast interviews or YouTube channel appearances).

Discovery platforms have existing, organic traffic for you to basically “audition” and get your content in front of.

And if you’re wondering how you can “win” those auditions, I recommend leading with your Content Tilt.

Retained audience attention

Once you’ve reached someone for the first time, now they’ve entered your world – at least to some degree.

Once someone is aware that you exist, it should be easier to reach them again.

If they liked what they saw, they may have decided to follow your social media profile or maybe they even subscribed to your YouTube channel.

The goal is to retain as much attention as you can – because retained attention is much easier to reach in a meaningful way. You’re no longer “auditioning”. Instead, you’re just delivering on the promise you made that someone has chosen to tune into.

While it’s true that a follow on social media or a subscribe on YouTube should mean you’ve retained someone’s attention, I think this is actually only halfway there.

Any third party platform like social media or YouTube actually sits in the middle of your relationship with the audience. The platform determines if and when your content gets seen by that audience.

That’s not truly retained attention.

I recommend you become platform resilient as a Noble Creator**:**

Noble creators build sustainable businesses without the need for third-party social media or discovery platforms. While many of us enjoy the benefits of creating content on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, or even YouTube, depending on those platforms is a risk. A lot of creators depend on social media for distributing their messages or even providing an income (AdSense, creator funds) and may have a lot of success! But if any of those platforms went away or even just made meaningful changes to their services, it could have a major impact on the creators who depend on them. Noble creators are platform-independent. They build relationships directly with their audience that cannot be taken away. The core of my business is built on email. I further develop trust with my audience through my podcast. And my largest source of revenue comes from my membership community.

To do that, think of your retained attention as the audience who have chosen to give you the ability to communicate with them directly via:

• Email
• SMS
• Private community
• Podcast

Those channels allow you to reliably communicate with your audience whenever you’d like – THAT is retained attention.

Retained attention = owned distribution.

Revenue Model

Once you’ve developed a system for capturing and retaining attention, you can start to develop your revenue model – the way you actually earn revenue as a creator.

First of all make no mistake – creators are entrepreneurs. You need to think of your content business as a business. Your business has a business model. And your business model has a revenue model.

Your revenue model has two main buckets:

1. Product revenue – revenue generated from products and experiences you create and sell
2. Non-product revenue – revenue generated outside of the products and experiences you create and sell

What most wannabe-creators get wrong from the beginning is not realising that there are multiple ways that they can make money from what they create, most get stuck trying to get a brand deal or sponsorship and when that doesn’t workout, they give up.

There can be multiple income streams within each of those buckets. In fact, I’d recommend working toward that so you maximise the return from each stream.

Let’s take a look at the two buckets…

Bucket 1: Product revenue

As a creator you have the opportunity to create and sell your own products – both digital and physical.

These products may be:

• Pre-recorded courses
• Cohort-based courses
• Individual coaching or consulting
• Group coaching
• Memberships
• Templates or presets
• Physical products
• Software as a service (SaaS)

I highly recommend prioritising your own products as part of your revenue model. Your own products further help you become a noble creator and you get to keep the lions share of the revenue because as a new creator, you need to spend the the majority of your time creating content to capture attention.

Bucket 2: Non-product revenue

There are tons of ways to earn revenue from your content business that don’t include direct sales of your own products to your audience.

The most popular include:

• Affiliate revenue
• Advertising, sponsorship, or brand deals
• Patronage

When you’ve built a system of capturing attention, that attention is very valuable to other third parties. The sponsorship model exists because companies with their own products realise that their target customers have been curated by creators like us and we can help them reach those customers.

Whether that’s on a commission basis (e.g. affiliate revenue) or on a sponsorship basis, there are other companies who can benefit from the attention you’ve captured.

Together, your product and non-product revenue form your revenue model.

Trust

Capturing attention and having a revenue model are necessary, but not sufficient.

In order for your revenue model to work, the individuals giving you attention must also decide to purchase your products or the products you’re recommending.

This only happens when you’ve developed trust with that audience.

For the most part, trust is formed within your retained audience. If they don’t trust you enough to want to receive free content from you, they won’t trust you enough to buy something from you.

Trust doesn’t just mean they think you have high integrity. That’s part of it, but trust means they need to trust your ability to HELP THEM.

Why should we trust you to help us?

Trust comes from overdelivering. It comes from showing up for your audience over and over again.

Most creators develop trust by consistently providing incredible, free content. That’s a surefire way to show people what you’re about and the depth of your knowledge.

Trust takes time and consistent touch points to develop. There’s just no way around it – you have to be in this for the long-term.

You can conceptually understand all of the ingredients above but still fail to earn a living as a creator.

There are creators with huge “audiences” who struggle to earn a living. There are also creators with small audiences earning six and seven figures.

The difference?

TRUST!

I’ve seen it firsthand! I’m fortunate to generate more revenue than many creators who have a much larger audience than I do. Each week I’m helping creators better leverage the attention they’re capturing.

This is also why most creators will point to their email list, podcast, or other owned distribution platforms as their highest-performing sales channels.

Those channels are where you develop the highest degrees of trust.

Systems

If you get the first four parts of this PARTS model, you’ll have a business that is reliably generating revenue for you. There are a lot of creators who build strong, successful businesses with those first four ingredients alone.

But if you want to really grow and scale, you need systems.

As I mentioned above, creators are entrepreneurs. If you don’t treat your creator business like a business, then your own business will treat YOU like an employee rather than an owner.

What does that look like?

It looks like waking up every morning and knowing that you need to put your time into the business for it to run. Without your own involvement, your fingers on the keyboard, sales won’t happen.

It basically means you’ve created a job for yourself.

Don’t get me wrong – creating a job for yourself is still often preferable to working for someone else! But you take things a step further. You can treat your business like a machine.

Treating your business like a machine means creating systems to minimise input and maximise output.

Your goal as a creator should be to spend YOUR time doing what only YOU can do better than anyone else.

Everything else is an input that you should try and automate or outsource. That’s easier said than done, but that’s the north star.

For most creators, that looks like creative work and relationship-building.

You should create processes and systems that take repeatable, non-creative and non-relationship tasks off of your plate.

Creative work and relationship building are where your genius comes through. Those are the tasks that you can do better than anyone else.

Systems allow you to maximise your time for those tasks.

Conclusion

On the surface, the PARTS model is very simple – and that’s by design! But it takes true dedication and investment of time and energy to get these PARTS in place and working together in concert.

But if you’re committed to becoming a professional creator, this is the roadmap. Bookmark it, reference it, even build some documents to help you work through it.