Last year was the year where I built quietly. While people did see me on Substack livestreams, in general, I was at my house. There are some moments when you need to build quietly. This year signals a year of building more loudly. The products, services and community that I’ve built-I need to get these resources in front of people. With that in mind, there’s going to be a strong shift in my business and brand focused strategies. In particular, I’m focusing heavily on marketing and selling.
Disclaimer
*In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure and privacy policy here.*
Become a Creator Getting Paid
Have you wondered how people are leveraging the internet and making money online? Are you trying to figure out the best way to make money online that’s aligned with your personal brand, ethos and mission? Sign up for Creators Getting Paid. Creators Getting Paid is a community-supported resource and newsletter with access to all. There is no paywall. Please consider becoming a paying supporter of this project so all may learn. Go to https://creatorsgettingpaid.com/newsletter today.
Listen to the Episode
Show Notes
Here are the 5 changes and areas of focus that I’ll plan on doubling-down on in 2026.
Emailing from Beehiiv
At the time that I’m working on this episode, I’ve emailed my Creators Getting Paid newsletter direct from Substack. There’s a reason why that is, I’ve spent 4 years building out my list on the Substack platform. Currently, my newsletter is just under 5,000 subscribers. In the past year, in particular, I’ve spent a lot of time paying attention to the activity connected to my newsletter. What were the Click Through Rates-a huge factor in getting paid, what were the opening rates-how many people were actually reading the content and what were the rates of engagement? The results in some area were concerning but the most troubling issue that I was concerned about was how the changes to the Substack platform would impact my newsletter and community building. Substack is very clearly owning that it’s going to be a long-form social media platform and I love that. I love that I can download my subscriber list. I don’t love that the tools and innovation that I was hoping for on the platform doesn’t seem to be coming. So, I’m shifting to a different platform for emailing my list and that has the tools that I need to make the effort that I’m putting into it make sense.
Using Pinterest Again
Back in the day I was absolutely obsessed with Pinterest. I loved that it was fun to browse, I could find what I was looking for and that it lacked a lot of the noise that other platforms had. Pinterest is a visual search engine-it is NOT social media. While present day Pinterest does have issues such as a lot of bot activity, there is a solid community of users who love the platform and GenZ users are a huge part of that cohort of users. One of the reasons why I’m going back to using Pinterest is that users are reporting that it’s doing what it used to do-driving traffic to people’s websites. I’ve also checked content on the platform for the areas of focus that I plan on pinning about and those topics are way underserved on the platform. The content is insanely, surprisingly old and I think the reason why that has happened is that creators stopped using the platform and have lost track of Pinterest as a platform to use for their work. I’ve kept an eye on it and I plan on testing it out for 2026. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
Podcast Tour
Podcasting as a content medium is one of my absolute favorite ways to express myself, connect with other creators and build my brand. And let’s be real-I love to talk LOL! I’m in the process of figuring out which podcasts I would like to reach out to, the topics I feel comfortable and confident talking about and most importantly how I can best serve the audiences of the hosts that I’m in community with.
Adding a YouTube Channel
I have fought against having a YouTube channel. There are several reasons why, I feel like I don’t look my best right now, I have several projects that I’m working on and I don’t want to record in a super rigid way. Well, I’ve figured out how to co-mingle my projects, what I want to talk about and I’ve let it go regarding how I look-I’m working on my health and wellness and that’s going to take time to achieve the results that I’m looking for.
Leveraging Threads as a Marketing Tool
In a previous podcast I shared my view that Threads is the social media platform of 2026. I’ve been an active user but I haven’t actively shared my work on the platform despite going mini-viral numerous times on the platform. The views and reach has been wildly good for my feed. I’m looking forward to testing Threads out as a place to grow my audience and sales in 2026.
