Knowledge & Insights

Start as a creator

Becoming a creator doesn’t start with a particular follower count. It starts with finding something you enjoy showing, explaining, telling stories about or putting into practice in your own way.

Perhaps you already have an idea. Or perhaps just an interest, a skill or a subject you like spending time on. Either can be a starting point. Some creators begin with expert knowledge, others with entertainment, everyday life, a passion or a strong personality.

What matters is not knowing on day one exactly how this will turn into a business. The first step is to find out what suits you and what you can credibly stand for in the long run.

Example: You’ve been into fitness for years but have never produced any content. Your first step doesn’t have to be a perfect YouTube channel. You could start by making short videos, explaining workout routines or documenting what works for you personally. Only then will it become clear which content suits you and what people respond to.

Or you’re a natural communicator but don’t want to make classic informational content. Personality, entertainment, lifestyle or personal and exclusive content can also be the foundation of a creator path.

You don’t need to look like a finished creator to get started. A good start means bringing your interests, opportunities and platforms together in a way that lets your own path develop step by step.

FansConnect24 helps you sort through these first options and shape them into a professional direction.

Topics & audience

You don’t have to appeal to everyone. A clear profile often emerges precisely when people quickly understand why they should follow you.

A topic gives orientation – to you as much as to your future community. That doesn’t mean reducing yourself to a single narrow keyword. What matters far more is that your content has a recognisable common thread.

A creator might, for example, combine travel, photography and personal stories. Another talks about training, nutrition and everyday life. Both cover several topics – yet each creates a clear overall picture.

Your audience often follows from exactly this combination. Age or gender are not the only things that matter. The more interesting question is: which people recognise themselves in your topics, wishes, problems or personality?

Example: “Fitness” is very broad. “Strength training for people who are short on time” is already far more specific. Likewise, “beauty” is general – “simple make-up ideas for everyday life” immediately gives your audience an idea of what to expect.

That doesn’t mean you have to commit forever. Creators evolve. But a recognisable direction makes getting started easier and later also helps with choosing platforms, planning content, collaborations and monetisation.

Good positioning doesn’t box you in. It helps the right people discover you.

Choose platforms

You don’t have to be active on every platform at once. The better question is: where does your content fit – and where can you reach the people who are interested in it?

Instagram, for example, works well for visual content, personal insights and building a community. TikTok can spread short, easy-to-grasp videos very widely. YouTube offers more room for in-depth content and videos that can still be found long after publication. Other platforms in turn can be interesting for community, premium content or direct monetisation.

Which platform makes sense therefore depends on several things: your content, your audience, the effort of production and your future earning opportunities.

Example: If you enjoy explaining things in detail, YouTube could be a good base. Short clips for Instagram or TikTok can then be cut from a longer video. That way you don’t have to create completely new content for every platform.

Another example: If your work relies heavily on personality and regular closeness to your community, you can use social media for reach and later add a direct-to-fan or premium platform.

The most common mistake is not choosing the “wrong” platform. The bigger problem is half-heartedly running too many channels at the same time.

Start where content, personality and audience fit well together. More platforms can follow once your system works.

Positioning & creator brand

Why should someone follow you in particular – even when others talk about similar topics?

The answer to that is your positioning. A creator brand is not created by a logo, colours or a name alone. It emerges from the overall picture of your personality, topics, attitude, style and the way you communicate.

Two creators can both talk about travel, for example, and still be perceived completely differently. One shows affordable spontaneous trips and practical tips. The other focuses on high-end hotels and special experiences. Similar topic – completely different positioning.

Personality itself can also become the decisive part of a brand. Humour, directness, expertise, aesthetics or a particularly personal style of communication can lead people to consume content precisely because of that person.

A clear creator brand later helps with more than building a community. Companies can also judge more quickly whether a creator fits their brand.

Your positioning doesn’t have to be artificially invented. Often it already exists – it just hasn’t been consciously put into words yet.

The strongest creator brand usually emerges where personality, content and commercial opportunities credibly fit together.

FansConnect24 can help you work out exactly this overlap and develop it professionally.

Content strategy

More content does not automatically mean a better strategy. What matters is that content serves a purpose and can be produced sustainably.

A good content strategy answers a few simple questions: which topics do you want to cover regularly? Which formats suit you? What helps your community? And which content contributes to your positioning and your goals in the long term?

Instead of deciding spontaneously every day what you could post, you can define fixed topic areas, for example.

A fitness creator could regularly use four types of content: explaining exercises, showing their own progress, answering questions and giving personal insights. This creates variety without having to invent a completely new concept every day.

Individual pieces of content can also be used several times. A longer video can be turned into short clips, images, quotes or story content. Good planning therefore doesn’t necessarily mean more work – often quite the opposite.

It’s also important not to judge every piece of content by its short-term reach alone. A helpful post can reach new people for months. Personal content, on the other hand, often strengthens the bond with your existing community.

Strategy doesn’t mean squeezing creativity into a timetable. It creates a structure within which creativity can emerge more easily.

Revenue streams & monetisation

A creator business doesn’t have to live off a single source of income. It often becomes more stable when several suitable models work together.

One option is brand deals. Companies pay creators for content, reach or access to a particular community. In addition, there are UGC assignments, affiliate income, your own products and services, and direct-to-fan or premium content.

Which combination makes sense depends very much on the creator.

A creator with a small but specialised community can already be interesting for certain brands. At the same time, they could earn income through consulting, digital products or affiliate recommendations.

A creator with a strong personal connection to her community could use social media for reach and offer additional exclusive content via a paid platform.

Not every model suits every person. That is exactly why monetisation shouldn’t only begin when an enquiry suddenly lands in your inbox.

It pays to think early on: what services can I offer? Who might pay for them? And which sources of income suit my personality and my content?

The goal is not to build as many types of income as possible at the same time. It’s about combining sensible models step by step.

Professional structures

The more a hobby turns into a business, the more important the things become that you hardly see from the outside.

Content is only one part of a creator’s everyday life. On top of that come enquiries, appointments, contracts, invoices, approvals, platform accounts, files and communication with companies.

As long as only a few collaborations are running, much can still be organised spontaneously. With growing activity, however, problems quickly arise: which version of a video was approved? When does an invoice need to be issued? Which usage rights were agreed? When does an exclusivity period end?

Professional structures ensure that such questions don’t have to be clarified anew every time.

Example: Instead of managing brand enquiries via Instagram DMs, private email and WhatsApp all at once, there is one clear communication channel and a central overview. That saves time and reduces mistakes.

The same applies to content. Clean file names, versions, approvals and deadlines may seem unspectacular – but with several parallel collaborations they can make an enormous difference.

Professionalisation doesn’t mean more bureaucracy for its own sake. Good structures should take work off your hands and create more room for content and creativity.

Brand deals

In a brand deal, a creator works with a company to feature a brand, a product or a service in their content. What matters is not only the fee – but that both sides have clearly agreed beforehand what they expect from each other.

A professional collaboration therefore usually begins with a briefing. It should set out, for example, what content is to be created, on which platform it will be published, which messages are important and by when the agreed deliverables must be completed.

Just as important is the question of how the content may be used afterwards. Will the video only appear on the creator’s profile – or may the company also use it itself on Instagram, TikTok, its website or in advertisements? Such usage rights can have considerable commercial value and should therefore not simply be tacitly assumed.

Exclusivity often plays a role, too. A cosmetics brand may, for example, require a creator not to promote competing products for a certain period. The longer and broader this restriction is, the more it affects other potential income – and the more precisely it should be agreed.

Example: A creator produces an Instagram Reel and three story sequences for a sports brand. The brand also wants to use the Reel for its own social media ads for three months.

In that case, the collaboration consists of more than content production. Among other things, the following should be agreed: production and publication of the Reel, story content, fee, period of advertising use, usage rights and, where applicable, exclusivity with regard to direct competitors.

A second example: A creator is sent a product free of charge and is asked to test it without obligation. Here too, it should be clear from the outset whether a publication is actually owed or whether a product has merely been provided.

The more clearly deliverables, fee, usage rights, deadlines and approvals are agreed before the start, the more professional and conflict-free the collaboration can be for both sides.

UGC & creator content

Not every collaboration with a creator revolves around their reach. Sometimes the content itself is the actual product.

UGC – user-generated content, or brand content produced by creators – is often created for a company’s social media, websites or advertising campaigns.

A creator can therefore be interesting even if their own community is still small. What counts, for example, is camera presence, storytelling, credible product presentation or the ability to produce short videos that blend naturally into social feeds.

Example: A skincare brand needs five short videos for its own Instagram and TikTok ads. The creator doesn’t necessarily have to publish these videos on her own account. She produces the material according to the briefing, and the company uses it on its channels.

This also changes the pricing. It’s not just about how many people the creator reaches themselves. What matters is the production effort, the number of variations, usage rights and potential use in advertising.

Another example: A hotel can engage a creator to produce photos and videos during a stay, which are later used on the hotel’s website and social media.

UGC thus opens up an additional source of income for creators – even without a large reach of their own.

Fees & usage rights

What does a creator post cost? The honest answer is: it can’t be determined from the follower count alone.

A fee can be made up of several components: creating the content, publishing it on a creator channel, production effort, reach, usage rights, exclusivity and the duration of the collaboration.

A short video published only once on the creator’s account is commercially something different from the same video that a company then uses for paid advertising for twelve months.

Example: A fee is agreed for producing a video. If the brand also wants to use this video for social ads for six months, separate usage rights can be agreed for that.

The same applies to exclusivity. Anyone who is not allowed to promote a competing brand for three months may be giving up other collaborations. This commercial effect also belongs in the calculation.

For creators, it is therefore important not just to ask: “What do I get for the post?” Companies, in turn, should communicate transparently where and for how long they want to use content.

Clear agreements prevent both sides from later having completely different ideas about what a fee actually covered.

Briefings & deliverables

A good briefing isn’t meant to stifle creativity. It’s meant to prevent two sides from discovering at the end that they expected something completely different.

The briefing sets out what a campaign should achieve and which conditions apply. This can include the target audience, key messages, preferred platforms, product features, no-gos and deadlines.

The deliverables, on the other hand, describe specifically what is to be delivered.

Example: One Instagram Reel of up to 60 seconds, three story sequences of at least three frames each and five edited product photos.

That is far clearer than “We’d like some content on Instagram”.

Even so, a briefing should leave a creator enough room to bring in their own voice and style. If every word is prescribed, creator content quickly loses exactly the credibility for which a company works with creators in the first place.

Approval rounds should also be clear in advance. Who approves the content? How many rounds of revisions are planned? When is a deliverable considered accepted?

The more specific the conditions are before the start, the more creative freedom can develop within those limits.

Creator selection & matching

The creator with the biggest reach is not automatically the right creator for a brand.

A good selection therefore doesn’t begin with the follower count, but with the question: what should the collaboration achieve?

Is it about awareness, trust, high-quality content, sales or access to a particular community?

After that, it becomes much easier to check in a targeted way which creators fit. Relevant factors can include topics, audience, tone, content quality, platforms and how the creator has come across with brands so far.

Example: A small outdoor brand might benefit more from a specialised hiking creator with 20,000 highly engaged followers than from a general lifestyle account with 500,000 followers.

With UGC, the creator’s own reach may even be secondary. What counts above all is whether a person can produce convincing content for the company’s channels.

Personal fit matters, too. A collaboration feels more credible when the product, the creator and their previous content clearly fit together.

Creator matching therefore doesn’t mean searching through as many profiles as possible. It means deriving the right selection criteria from a brand’s specific needs.

Plan campaigns

Ideally, a creator campaign doesn’t begin with the question “Which influencers shall we use?”, but with the question “What do we actually want to achieve?”

A clear goal makes all further decisions easier.

Should a new product become known? Is content needed for social ads? Should a particular target group be reached? Or is it about building trust in a brand over the long term?

Then budget, creator selection, platforms and deliverables can be planned sensibly.

Example: For a product launch, five creators could show different use cases within the same week. For long-term brand positioning, on the other hand, a collaboration lasting several months with a few selected creators may be more credible.

The schedule also belongs in the planning early on. Shipping products, producing content, approvals and publications all take time. Overly tight timings often lead to unnecessary pressure and weaker content.

A good campaign also defines before launch which deliverables are expected and which criteria will be used internally to judge whether the collaboration was successful.

The clearer the goal, the fewer decisions have to be made on gut feeling later on.

Collaboration & deliverables

Once suitable creators have been found, the part of a campaign that is often underestimated begins: ongoing coordination.

Briefings have to be distributed, questions answered, products shipped, deadlines monitored, content reviewed and approvals documented.

Especially with several creators, a multitude of small tasks quickly builds up.

Example: A campaign involves ten creators, each producing one Reel and three story sequences. That doesn’t simply mean ten publications, but numerous individual deliverables, deadlines, approvals and possibly rounds of revisions.

A clear structure therefore helps both sides.

Creators know:
What do I have to deliver, and when?

The company knows:
Which content is still missing, what has already been approved and when will it be published?

It’s also important to phrase feedback specifically. “We don’t like it yet” hardly helps a creator. A note such as “The product in use should be more visible in the first ten seconds”, on the other hand, is something they can act on.

Professional campaign work often shows less in the idea itself than in how reliably the many small steps between briefing and publication are organised.

Creator Guide

A creator business rarely comes about in a single step. That’s why we’ve put the most important questions into an order that’s easy to follow.

It starts with the question: what do you actually want to do? Interests, knowledge, personality or a business idea can be the starting point.

After that come topics and audience, suitable platforms, content and positioning. Only on that basis does it make sense to ask which sources of income are possible and how they can be combined.

1. Find your direction

   What do you actually want to do? Which topics, skills, interests or business ideas could form the foundation of your creator business?

2. Develop content & audience

   Which content suits you - and which people do you want to reach with it?

3. Choose platforms & channels

   Social media, subscription, premium content, direct-to-fan or live: which channels could suit your model?

4. Build monetisation

   Which revenue streams are possible - and how can different models best be combined and built up?

5. Create professional structures

   How do you organise your creator business so that accounts, security, rights, processes and key decisions stay clearly regulated and, as far as possible, in your own hands?

6. Develop collaborations & business further

   How can brand partnerships, UGC and other collaborations sensibly become part of your creator business and open up additional opportunities?

Example: Someone starts with short food videos. After a while, it becomes clear that recipe videos work particularly well. Brand deals, UGC assignments, affiliate income or their own digital products can later grow out of this.

Another creator builds a very personal community. For him, direct-to-fan or premium offers may also make sense.

The Creator Guide is therefore not meant to be a rigid set of instructions. It’s more like a map: you can see where you currently stand and which questions will become relevant next.

Not every creator path looks the same. But good decisions become easier once you understand which options exist in the first place.

Questions & answers

Many questions around the creator business sound complicated, even though the most important points can often be explained quickly.

Sometimes you don’t need a long explanation – just a clear answer that makes the next step easier to understand.

In focus

The creator economy is constantly changing. New platform features, business models, legal developments and changes in marketing can become relevant for creators and companies.

That’s why “In focus” is not a classic basics article. Here we pick up on developments that are currently interesting and put them into context in an understandable way.

It’s not about passing on every piece of social media news. The key question is: what does a development mean in practice for creators or companies?

If a platform introduces new monetisation features, for example, it’s not just the announcement that matters. More important is: who is the feature available to? What requirements apply? And has it actually created a relevant new source of income?

The same applies to changes in advertising disclosure, platform rules or new content formats.

We summarise such developments in our own words, put them into context and link transparently to the original source.

This keeps “In focus” up to date without turning FansConnect24 into a mere copy of other media’s news.

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