Posted by 
Most marketers know you need to first choose a niche, know in advance how you’re going to monetize the niche and THEN start making content.
But what if someone does it backwards by first building a large following and then trying to figure out how they’re going to monetize that following?
That’s what u/ooiie asked on Reddit the other day. Their post begins with this:
My wife has built a pretty cool TikTok account up to 250K followers. A handful of her videos have 10M+ views while many others are in the 1-9M range.
It’s Harry Potter edits. She does all kinds of editing from movies and games.
How can we monetize this?
They also mention the account is completely faceless and that they’ve tried unsuccessfully to sell merchandise.
How would you answer this question?
Over a hundred marketers weighed in. I’ll save my favorite answers for last, but first let’s list some of the more common answers…
- Sell the account for money
- Organically integrate merch into HP clips. For example, Harry getting a sweater or t-shirt
- Use call to actions in the captions, comments or in the video itself
- Livestream on TikTok doing live edits and people will donate
- Promote products through rollouts and effective marketing
- Add an eBay store using products from AliExpress
- Start creating new content with your face, talking about different topics, theories, thoughts, etc. about the Harry Potter series
- Add a Patreon account with exclusive content
- Get sponsors and place ads
- Make longer form content and post on YouTube
- Reach out to SaaS companies who have editing tools and see if you can get sponsorships through them
- Offer your own custom edits through services like Fiverr and Upwork
- Ask for $1 donations from every follower
- Omnichannel over to OnlyFans and keep the theme working for your revenue
- Create a paid info community
- Offer a channel evaluation service
- Offer to teach others how to create these videos, scripting, growing the channel, etc. in a course or a one-on-one mentorship
- Feature magic academy fantasy novels with quick book reviews because this is a good audience for it, booktok is huge and lots of authors would pay for the exposure
Several Redditors volunteered to buy her TikTok account or hire her to help them do their social media, while others suggested she beware of copyright infringement.
ggn0r3 gave a popular answer on how to monetize the channel:
“How I use the Harry Potter Method to build TikTok accounts to 250K followers starting from scratch without having to show my face or doing cringey dances for views”
Buy full course: $997
SwimOld5053 added:
Sure, but I can sell you a course about how to actually make your own course of your Harry Potter tik tok building secrets.
And then perhaps a course on how to take a course on how to build a course… This is true Reddit thinking.
ItsRellzBeats offers lots of suggestions:
Maybe do more intricate longer videos with a face behind it on YouTube to monetize some of the crowd over there without having to affect your current viewers.
Ideas –
Character Development Review / Review about the sets / Character history and family line / Favourite Film / Character/ Scene and why / On set footage review / Interesting facts regarding filming / Interesting facts about the actors /
As someone else said this is definitely a bloated market but if you can get people wanting to watch you or your wife and attach to the face behind the content then I’d definitely be way more easier to monetise on YouTube. You can also upsell during these videos or get better sponsors.
Iliketodrive****s offered perhaps the most unusual idea:
F*** every answer here.
High ticket retreats.
I can make you $100,000 profit in a weekend. I’m an event marketer and I have done this 10 times in a row for a concert hall and I believe that I can do this for vou with just a few posts. 30 tickets to an aspirational retreat at $4,000 with a 70% gross profit margin. I’II do it for free for you for the first one if you give me a testimonial. You could easily do this 4x/year. Like… in Wales, at a castle, everyone dressed up… sh** would be fire. We could do a whole Harry Potter game in the castle like a mystery. Send me a Dm
Good answer, but again the question of legal rights may come into play.
tipit_smiley_tiger has something interesting to say:
There is a ratio for monetizing:
For every 3 contents you give to the consumer, you can do 1 ask to the audience.
So, it’s okay to monetize if you follow this ratio.
Not sure if this means to have a call to action in every third video, or to have a separate video for the ask. Also, I’d love to know why they think 3:1 is the magical ratio for every niche.
Corriedotdev has the right idea:
Look at Harry Potter YouTubers and see what they are marketing to make revenue. Copy pasta their recipe.
It’s always good advice to find out what’s already working for others.
Whynotthebest writes:
Your best bet is to use your content/account as proof that you can create content, edit videos, run social, create and market merch, etc. I would not expect the THING you created to be the money maker, but the evidence that you know how to create/mange THINGS.
This is great if she wants to be a freelancer or land a job.
OptimisticByChoice makes a good point. Emphasis is mine:
Perhaps plug the merch in a quick second after the video.
Perhaps find a partner to shout things out in exchange for $$
Don’t be afraid of alienating the audience. Lose 50,000 followers but the remainder become an income stream! That’s cool.
Nearby_Orange6578 offered stellar advice we should all remember:
Start showing your face. It helps. I grew my Instagram account from 0 to 123K without really showing myself, but also without ever making money. I changed that 3 months ago and doubled my followers (250K now) and am now selling videos to brands in my niche. Trust me, it’s worth it, and your followers will get used to it if you gradually start showing yourself.
Also, reach out to companies yourself. My first deal came from a cold email sent to a company that I thought was a good match.
Faceless = little or no money
With face = more followers, more money
Don’t be afraid to approach companies and say, “Hey, I think we might make a good fit!”
tkfx2000 may have had the best advice of all:
So you built a following around somebody else’s intellectual property, and now want to monetize that. … that is going to be tricky. Affiliate sales links are probably the only reasonable option. But realize that any given moment, the hammer of copyright can fall upon you and take, at best take the monetization, and at worst, everything you own. If you really want to run it as a business start another channel and use what you have learned to build your own Intellectual Property.
Ouch. There’s always that one person bringing everybody else back to reality.
Finally, the most upvoted answer came from ali-hussain
Make videos with Harry Potter LEGOs. Put a note this video used these LEGO sets and use your affiliate links: https://www.lego.com/en-us/page/affiliate-program
Bunny_Baller_888 added:
saw at.T.Tok video Lego pays up to 1000.00 for affiliate market referrals but have to look up the stipulations.
If you combine your current Harry Potter content with Harry Potter Legos and include your affiliate referral link then you could easily pull this off since the lego is a perfect match for this niche. Just go to the lego website and search up affiliate. Just make sure you include the word affiliate partners or affiliate somewhere on the profile or content so you don’t get banned or called out for being misleading.
Harry Potter Legos? I have to admit I could have worked on this problem for a month without hitting upon that answer.
Do you have a pressing marketing question? Then you might want to post it at Reddit/r/Entreprenuer and see what happens.