I have close to a million followers on TikTok and 500,000 on Instagram. By the numbers, someone would call me an influencer. I never set out to be one, and honestly, I think the word is fading. Regulators are starting to come after people who get paid to promote a product without disclosing it, and that will make “influencer” a liability, not a title.
So let’s drop the word. What actually matters is this: are you successful, or are you just visible?
Those are not the same thing. And most people online are optimizing for the wrong one.
Followers Don’t Pay You. A Database Does.
Here’s the truth behind my numbers. I didn’t get anywhere by chasing followers. I got there by pulling people out of social media and into a database I own.
My best campaign to date is AskLoral.com. Someone asks a question or requests at any hour of the day. I don’t care if they found me on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. The second they come into my system, I have their name, their phone number, their email. That’s mine. I can send them information, invite them to free events, hand them free reports, get them the first three chapters of a book.
Social platforms can change the algorithm tomorrow and cut your reach in half. A database you own can’t be taken from you. That’s the whole game.
If you’re building a following and not a database, you don’t have a business. You have an audience that belongs to someone else’s platform.
Your Setup Has to Be Exactly Right
The next mistake I see constantly: people making money as individuals instead of through a company.
You shouldn’t be the one making the money. The revenue needs to land in an entity, sometimes two, three, even four entities depending on what you’re selling and how much you’re making. The moment the money comes in through a company, you activate roughly 81,000 pages of tax code that a W-2 employee or a sole proprietor never gets to touch.
I had a client who made $660,000 and, because the entity structure was built correctly, showed a $260,000 loss. He got money back from the IRS on income most people would have been taxed hard on. That’s not a loophole. That’s the tax code doing exactly what it was written to do, for people who structure themselves properly.
“Companies get the best tax strategies. Individuals get the worst.”
This structure also protects you. Not from ever getting sued- nobody’s promising that- but from someone being able to come after your home and your personal assets because your entities are properly separated and not tied to each other.
Pick Something to Sell Before You Perfect Your Content
You need something to sell. If you don’t have your own product yet, be an affiliate for someone else’s. That’s exactly how I started. In 1996, I was the master distributor of the Cashflow game for Rich Dad Poor Dad, and I did it entirely offline because affiliate marketing online didn’t really exist yet. If it had, I would have used it.
I still run this play today. I’m affiliated with up to eight companies, one of which is mine. People stack revenue by promoting more than one, because once someone trusts you on one recommendation, two or three more from you convert easily.
The mistake most affiliates make is building content around the company they’re promoting instead of around themselves. Don’t do that. Build the brand around why you like the product and let people come to you first. I did this with Rich Dad Poor Dad. I built a brand called Choice Performance, then Money Camp for Kids, and people fell in love with what I was teaching before they ever bought the product I was affiliated with. Then I stacked more offers on top of that trust.
Start Today
If you’re serious about making money online without turning yourself into a personality for hire, do these four things this week:
- Pick one product to sell. Yours or someone else’s. ClickBank, direct affiliate programs, or a company you already believe in. You need a product before you need a strategy.
- Set up a way to capture contact information, not just followers: a landing page, a phone line, a simple opt-in. Get the name, the number, the email, off the platform and into your own system.
- Talk to a strategist about entity structure before the money starts coming in, not after. Waiting until you’re already earning six figures as a sole proprietor costs you money you’ll never get back.
- Build your own brand first, product second. People buy from people they trust, not from companies they’ve never heard of.
Broke folks build a following and hope it turns into income. Six-figure earners build a database, structure the entity, and let the tax code work for them instead of against them.
Never compromise. Never give up.
Go to AskLoral.com Ask a question, make a request.
