How to Make Money on Social Media When You Don’t Have a Large Following

The number one reason people say they cannot make money online is that they do not have a large following. If that thought has crossed your mind, this post is for you. Alston Godbolt runs a full-time internet marketing business with 789 Instagram followers, 4,000 Pinterest followers, and 47,000 TikTok followers — while competitors in his niche have close to a million. The count on your profile page has almost nothing to do with your income potential. What you are about to read will show you exactly why that is, and give you seven specific ways to start making money on social media as soon as this weekend.

You are going to get two things here: a clear explanation of why follower count is not the barrier you think it is, and a practical breakdown of every income method Alston uses as a working internet marketer — so you can pick the one that fits your situation and actually start.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Why a million followers means zero dollars if nobody is clicking and buying
The four-part email marketing system that builds your income base before you ever grow a big audience
A content strategy built around what your specific audience actually wants — not what you feel like posting
All seven ways Alston makes money on social media, explained in plain terms
Why UGC (user generated content) is one of the fastest-growing income paths for small creators right now
How to batch your content so you can appear every day without actually creating content every day
A way to figure out which of these seven paths fits the skills you already have — start at finder.platformproof.com

Why Your Follower Count Is Not the Problem

Here is the truth most people do not want to accept: you could have a million followers and make zero dollars. Someone with 789 followers can run a full-time business. The number on your profile is a vanity metric — it measures attention, not transactions. What actually matters is whether the content you create resonates with a specific audience who has a problem you can help solve, and whether you have a system that converts their attention into email subscribers and eventually into buyers.

Alston points to his own accounts to make this concrete. On Instagram he has 789 followers and nearly 9,000 posts. On Pinterest he has 4,000 followers but 154,000 monthly views — and he notes that the monthly views number is the one that actually matters for driving traffic. On TikTok he has 47,000 followers while other creators in his exact niche sit at 100,000, 200,000, or close to a million. That gap in follower count has not stopped his income. The reason is simple: he has focused on content that solves real problems, and he has built a system to capture the email addresses of the people that content reaches.

The goal is not to collect followers. The goal is to draw in people who have a specific problem you understand, and then move them off the social platform and onto something you own and control: your email list. That is where the income conversation really begins.

Step 1: Start Email Marketing Before You Have a Big Audience

If you are small — no following, no subscribers, no traction — email marketing is the first thing you should set up. Not later. Now. Here is why it matters more when you are small than when you are large: a mega-influencer can post anything and a percentage of their massive audience will buy. When you are starting out, you do not have that cushion. You need a more reliable system than hoping your next post performs well. Email marketing is that system. It lets you stay in contact with the people who showed interest, build trust over time, and sell them things they need without depending on the algorithm to surface your content on the right day.

Email marketing has four moving parts. Understand each one and you can set the whole system up in a weekend.

Part 1: The Landing Page

A landing page is a single focused page you create to collect email addresses. When someone clicks a link in your bio or below your video, this is where they land. The template Alston recommends is simple: “Do you want to learn X within Y without Z?” That one sentence formula tells the visitor exactly what they will get, how fast, and what they do not have to sacrifice to get it. If they click yes, they enter their name and email address and you give them something in return. That thing is your lead magnet.

Part 2: The Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free piece of content that solves one specific micro problem for your target audience. It can be a PDF guide, a short training video, an audio walkthrough, a checklist — the format is not what matters. What matters is that it genuinely helps your audience with something they are already trying to figure out. You offer it in exchange for an email address. That trade is the foundation of the relationship. When the lead magnet actually solves a real problem, people remember who gave it to them, and they open your emails.

Part 3: The Autoresponder

An autoresponder is a pre-written email sequence that goes out automatically to every new subscriber. You set it up once and it runs on its own from that point forward. These emails can point people to your best content, introduce them to products you recommend, or walk them through the information they need to understand before they are ready to buy. The autoresponder keeps the conversation going without you having to manually write to each subscriber. As your list grows, this becomes the engine that generates consistent income — even while you are not actively working.

Part 4: The Broadcast Email

A broadcast email is a one-off message you send to your entire list whenever you have something timely to share. New content just went live, a flash sale is running, you want to reconnect after a gap — broadcast emails handle all of these. Unlike the autoresponder which is evergreen and runs the same for every subscriber, a broadcast is live and current. It keeps the relationship fresh and lets you respond to what is happening in real time. The two work together: the autoresponder handles the evergreen nurture, and the broadcast handles the live moments.

Together, these four parts give you a system that converts social media attention into email subscribers, and email subscribers into buyers — regardless of what your follower count says on any given day.

Step 2: Build a Content Strategy That Pulls People Toward You

Content strategy is not about posting random things and hoping the algorithm rewards you. It is about identifying the specific questions your target audience is asking, creating content that answers those questions well enough that they click to learn more, and then funneling that attention to your landing page. Here is how to build that strategy from the ground up.

Start With Your Audience’s Real Problems

Every piece of content you create should answer a question your audience is already asking or solve a problem they are already trying to solve. If you are in the make-money-online space, that might be: how do I get started with no experience, what tools do I need, how do I avoid the common traps? If you are in the basket weaving space, it might be: where do I source materials, how do I handle this specific technique, what patterns work for beginners? Get specific about the problems. That specificity is what makes your content land with the right people instead of everyone and no one.

Once you start building an email list, Alston recommends sending a direct question to your subscribers: what are your biggest wants and challenges right now? Their answers become your content calendar. You stop guessing and start creating exactly what your audience is asking for.

Study What Works in Your Niche Without Copying It

Follow other creators in your space. Watch what gets engagement, what gets shared, and what format performs consistently. If tutorials where someone is demonstrating a skill while talking through a problem work really well in your niche, that is a data point worth using. You are not copying the content — nobody likes a copycat and it does not work anyway — you are identifying the format and approach that resonates with your shared audience and then creating your own version of that.

Post as Often as You Can, Especially Early On

Alston recommends posting as much as possible when you are starting out — up to five videos per day if you can manage it. The higher the volume, the more chances you give the algorithm to show your content to new people. Five posts per day means five separate opportunities to reach a viewer who has never seen you before. It also means you get better faster: you will learn through real data what resonates with your audience and what falls flat, and you will develop the skill of creating content simply by doing it at high volume.

Reply to Every Single Comment

When you are small, every comment matters more than you might realize. Replying to every comment does two things: it builds a genuine personal connection with that individual viewer, and it signals to the platform that your content is generating real engagement. Someone who feels seen and acknowledged by a creator is far more likely to follow them, share their content, and eventually become a buyer. That personal bond is something large accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers cannot replicate at scale — it is one of the actual advantages of being small.

Show Up Every Single Day

If Alston had one tip for someone who was not going to do email marketing or build a detailed content strategy, it would be this: show up every single day without exception. Daily presence signals to the algorithm that you are an active creator worth showing to more people. It also compounds your skills — the creator who shows up imperfectly every day improves far faster than the one who disappears for weeks and then comes back with one polished post. Show up every day whether you feel like it or not. The feeling follows the action, not the other way around.

Batch Your Content to Make Daily Posting Sustainable

Here is how Alston actually manages daily posting: he creates all of his TikTok content on Saturday, then edits and schedules the videos throughout the week. To his audience, he appears every single day. In reality, he creates content on one day per week. Batching removes the daily pressure and makes consistency achievable for people who have jobs, families, and other commitments that do not pause for content creation. You do not have to create every day — you have to post every day, which is a very different and much more manageable task.

Not sure which income path fits what you already know?

Answer a few quick questions and find your match at finder.platformproof.com.

7 Ways to Make Money on Social Media

With email marketing set up and a content strategy that funnels people toward your landing page, here are the seven specific income methods Alston covers. These work at any follower count — some get traction faster than others, but none require a big audience to start.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is Alston’s top pick for beginners and the method he recommends as the fastest path to a first commission. The product already exists. It is usually already known to potential buyers. You do not have to handle product creation, customer service, inventory, or fulfillment. You find a company with a product your audience needs, get your affiliate link, and earn a commission on every sale that comes through your link.

The key that separates people who earn with affiliate marketing from people who do not is this: you have to connect a solution to a real problem. Dropping a link in your bio without context does not work. Teaching someone how to solve a specific problem they are already struggling with, and then naturally pointing them to the right tool, does work. If you understand the problem your audience is trying to solve, affiliate marketing gives you a product to offer without building anything from scratch.

2. Digital Products

Digital products are Alston’s second favorite income stream, and the one with the highest ceiling for creators who build their own audience. An online course, a coaching program, an SVG file collection, a template pack, a blueprint, a step-by-step guide — all of these count as digital products. The appeal is that you create the product once and sell it repeatedly on an automated basis. There is no shipping, no inventory, no physical fulfillment. When someone buys, the product is delivered instantly.

Alston specifically recommends against selling digital products on platforms like Etsy, because they take a cut of every transaction and you lose control of the customer relationship. Selling on your own platform — even a simple setup — means you keep more of each sale and you own the customer data. He says to comment “digital products” on his YouTube video if you want a dedicated tutorial on how to set that up.

3. Physical Products

If you already make something tangible, physical products are a direct path to sales. Alston uses basket weaving as his running example: if you make baskets, you have an obvious physical product to sell. The tradeoffs are real — you have to collect payment, package each item, and ship it to the buyer. That process adds operational complexity and time that digital products do not require. But if your audience is specifically looking for a physical thing you produce, and you can fulfill it reliably, physical products are a legitimate income stream that pairs well with social media content that shows your process and craft.

4. Merchandise

Merchandise is a way to sell branded physical goods without handling any fulfillment yourself. Platforms like Teespring (now called Spring) let you upload a design, set a price, and they handle everything else: payment processing, printing, packing, and shipping. You supply the concept and they run the operation. If design is not your strength, Alston points to Fiverr as a place to find affordable designers who can create t-shirt or hoodie concepts based on your brand. Once the store is set up with designs, it is a near-automated operation — someone finds your content, likes your brand, buys a shirt, and the platform handles the rest.

5. User Generated Content (UGC)

UGC is a newer income model that has gained significant attention on TikTok, and it works differently from all the other methods on this list. Instead of promoting a brand’s product on your own channel, you create content for the brand that they then post on their own social media profiles. A company like McDonald’s might hire you to film a short, natural-feeling video about a new product, pay you a one-time flat fee, and then post that video on their own account — not yours.

The reason brands pay for UGC is that authentic-feeling user content performs better than traditional advertising and costs less than hiring professional actors. Your follower count on your personal account is largely irrelevant for UGC work, because the content lives on the brand’s page. What matters is your ability to film compelling, natural-looking content on camera. That makes UGC one of the most genuinely follower-count-independent income streams available to social media creators right now.

6. Brand Deals and Sponsorships

Brand deals and sponsorships are the more traditional version of the creator-brand relationship, and the opposite of UGC in structure. Here, the branded content lives on your channel, not the brand’s. You have seen this pattern countless times: a creator opens a video by saying something like “this video is sponsored by [company name]” and offers a discount code or special link for their audience. The brand pays for that placement and the access it provides to your specific audience.

Sponsorship rates do scale with audience size, so this income stream grows as you grow. But even creators with smaller and highly targeted audiences can attract niche brands who want access to exactly that audience. A creator with 5,000 followers in a very specific hobby niche may be more valuable to a brand that sells products for that hobby than a generalist creator with 500,000 followers spread across many interest categories.

7. Membership Communities

A paid membership gives your most loyal audience members a way to pay for closer access to you and to each other. Platforms like Patreon or YouTube Memberships let you create a tier where subscribers pay a recurring monthly fee — Alston says you can start for as little as five dollars per month — in exchange for exclusive content, early access, live sessions, direct interaction, or community access that non-paying followers do not get.

The membership model rewards consistency more than any other income stream. Members who pay monthly expect ongoing value in exchange for that recurring payment. Creators who show up reliably and create genuine value for their community maintain strong membership numbers over time. Those who go quiet or reduce the quality of their exclusive content see churn. If you are already committed to daily presence and high-volume content, a membership is a natural way to monetize the loyalty you build with your most engaged viewers.

Honest Drawbacks

Each of these seven income streams has real limitations worth knowing before you commit time to one of them.

Affiliate marketing is fast to start but your income depends on a commission structure and product quality you do not control. If the company changes its payout rate or discontinues the product, your income from that program drops. Digital products give you full control but require real upfront time to create something genuinely useful — a bad digital product gets refunded and damages your reputation. Physical products add fulfillment complexity that eats into your time and scales poorly unless you bring in help. Merchandise margins are thin on low-price items, so you need volume to generate meaningful income from a print-on-demand store. UGC pays well per deliverable but requires ongoing pitching to brands, which is its own part-time job. Brand deals are appealing but harder to land consistently until you have a track record and a niche-specific audience. And membership communities need a steady output of exclusive content to keep subscribers paying month after month — the model punishes inconsistency more than any other.

None of these income streams are “set it and forget it” in the way people often hope when they first look at online income. Each requires ongoing effort. The ones closest to automated are digital products sold through an email sequence, and merchandise on a print-on-demand platform. But even those need content on the front end to drive traffic into the funnel.

Which of These Is Right for You?

You do not have to pick all seven at once and you should not try. Start with the one that aligns most closely with what you already know and can teach right now. If you are good at explaining a process in writing, a digital guide or PDF might be your fastest first product. If you already use and genuinely recommend specific tools in your niche, affiliate marketing lets you monetize those recommendations immediately. If you are a maker with a tangible skill, physical products or merchandise connect naturally to the content you are already creating.

The question is: which path fits your existing skills and situation? If you are not sure, finder.platformproof.com asks you a few short questions and matches you to the income path that fits what you already have. No guesswork, no long research rabbit holes.

Find Your X

Alston’s whole point in this video is that the barrier most people think is stopping them — not enough followers — is not actually the barrier. The real barrier is not having a system that converts attention into email subscribers, and not knowing which income method to start with. Both of those are solvable this weekend.

Start with finder.platformproof.com to find out which of these seven income paths fits the skills you already have. Then pick one. Set up your landing page, your lead magnet, and your autoresponder. Start posting content that answers real questions your audience is already asking. Reply to every comment. Show up every day. That is the whole system — and it works whether you have 100 followers or 100,000.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I really need a large following to make money on social media?

No. Alston makes his full-time income as an internet marketer with 789 Instagram followers. The metric that matters is not the size of your audience — it is whether the content you create connects with a specific group of people who have a problem you can help solve, and whether you have a system (email marketing) to convert that attention into a buyer relationship over time.

What is the fastest income method to start with on social media?

Affiliate marketing is the fastest starting point for most people because you do not need to create a product. You find an existing product your audience needs, get an affiliate link, and start promoting it in your content. You can have your first affiliate links within 24 hours and begin earning commissions as soon as your content drives a sale. The speed comes from the fact that the product, the sales page, and the payment processing are all handled by someone else.

Why does Alston recommend against selling digital products on Etsy?

Etsy takes a percentage of every sale. When you sell digital products through your own setup — your own website or checkout — you keep a much larger share of each transaction. You also own the customer relationship and the email data, which matters for building a long-term business. Platforms like Etsy can also change their terms, raise their fees, or suppress your listings, all of which are outside your control.

What goes in a lead magnet and how do I create one?

A lead magnet should solve one specific micro problem for your target audience. It can be a PDF guide, a short video training, an audio walkthrough, a checklist, or a template. To create one, identify the single most common question your audience asks or the most common mistake they make, and answer it or solve it thoroughly in a format they can consume in under 15 minutes. When the lead magnet genuinely solves a real problem, people remember who gave it to them and they open your follow-up emails.

How often should I post on social media to grow without a large following?

Alston recommends posting as often as possible in the early phase — up to five videos per day if you can sustain it. More posts mean more chances for the algorithm to surface your content to new viewers. As you identify what resonates with your audience, you can reduce volume and increase focus on what works. Batching your content — creating everything on one dedicated day and scheduling it throughout the week — is the most practical way to maintain high posting frequency without disrupting your daily life.

What is UGC and why does it not require a large following?

UGC stands for user generated content. Brands pay creators to film natural-looking videos or take photos featuring their products. The key difference from a standard sponsorship is that the content goes on the brand’s social media page, not yours. Because the audience seeing the content is the brand’s audience — not yours — your personal follower count is mostly irrelevant. What brands are looking for is someone who can create compelling, authentic-feeling content on camera, not someone with a massive following on their own account.

How much should I charge for a paid membership community?

Alston says you can start a paid membership for as little as five dollars per month per member. The right price depends on what you are delivering inside: exclusive content, live access, direct messaging with you, community tools, and early releases all justify higher pricing. Many creators start at a lower price point to attract their first members and gain data on what members actually value, then adjust pricing as the community grows and the value inside increases.

Is email marketing really necessary if I already have social media accounts?

Yes, especially when you are small. Social media platforms decide who sees your content based on their algorithm — and that algorithm can suppress your reach, change its rules, or lock your account at any time. Your email list belongs to you. No algorithm controls who receives your emails. This is the core reason Alston calls email marketing the most crucial part of a small creator’s business: social media gets you in front of people, but your email list is how you keep them and how you build a business that is not one algorithm update away from collapsing.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “HOW TO MAKE MONEY ON SOCIAL MEDIA | DOES A FOLLOWING COUNT MATTER?” — YouTube, youtu.be/y8Oe33dtJYU
Teespring (now Spring) — print-on-demand merchandise platform referenced in the video
Fiverr — freelance marketplace referenced for merchandise design work
Patreon — membership platform referenced for paid community monetization
YouTube Memberships — native channel monetization feature referenced for paid community