Start sharing what you know.  

Aim to become someone who gives more than what she extracts.

In the beginning, just give and don’t ask for anything. When you start monetizing, aim for a give-to-ask ratio of 9 to 1. 

This builds trust among your existing audience.

If you don’t have an audience, start by asking 5-10 of your friends and family to get their help.  Maria Popova started Brain Pickings by sending an email to a few of her friends. Now it is a million-dollar business. I built a 13,000+ person email list getting help from friends and enlisting their help to introduce my free course to those they knew.

To build an audience also go where people are whether they engage with content and ask questions. Places like Twitter, Quora, Reddit, and LinkedIn.

When sharing, don’t hold back. Share almost all you know. This will increase your audience quicker than if you hold back.

Get people to pay for proximity i.e. a chance to get close to you via an exclusive community, organizing the ideas that you share freely, and helping them with implementation.

So, when you share what you know, people start sharing and this grows your audience and influence further.  

When your audience starts trusting you and is tuned into your message, when you make an offer, and if they are in the market for similar solutions, they’ll buy from you.

They’ll buy because by learning through you, they have already confirmed that you are the person to give people what they are looking for.

There are two primary ways to monetize your knowledge.

Selling your knowledge in person, 1-to-1, or 1 to many, like through group coaching and by building products like books and courses. There are other ways also like getting paid to speak on the topic you are an expert on. But that happens when you have deep expertise and reputation in a certain space.

Take an organic approach to monetization. Observe the questions people ask. People asking you a lot of questions on a topic within your niche is an opportunity for you. Make an offer around that topic.

There is no rule around when to make an offer. If you have an email list that you’ve built in the recent past then it’s ok to make an offer at around the 1,000 subscriber mark. If you are using an open platform like Twitter, you can do it somewhere between the 2,000 to 5,000 follower mark.

Hope you are able to help people, grow and earn well in the process.