Making Money From Content Growing More Common Even Among Traditional Professionals

More and more professionals are making money from content, even as they remain firmly entrenched in their traditional careers. 

For instance, recent nominee to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon disclosed making more than $40,000 in 2024 from posting on X alone.

The People Making Money From Content In The U.S. Government

Dhillon is at least the third person nominated by President Trump to disclose making money from the Elon Musk-owned X. She has more than 1.1 million subscribers on the social media platform, which she joined back in 2010.

A prominent Republican lawyer, Dhillon's feed is pretty tame compared to other Republican figures. She typically posts multiple times a day, everything from talking about knitting sweaters to asking if other people are having problems with their phone service (even tagging Verizon in the process). Still, her relatively run-of-the-mill content saw a huge boost in visibility recently and her post impressions helped Dhillon rack up $43,531 from X in 2024. At the same time, she disclosed earning more than $2 million from her law firm, whose clients include notably more contentious figures including Trump, Tucker Carlson, and even the platform X itself. 

Trump's National Institute of Health Director nominee Jay Bhattacharya reported earning $11,995 from X and another nominee for a position in the Department of Veteran Affairs, Sam Brown, reported earning $5,169 from the program. All three people committed to demonetizing their platforms if they are appointed to the role, though it's unclear if that's required (or if there are any guardrails in place to make sure they do it). 

There are likely others who make money in the U.S. government from content platform revenue sharing programs — these are just the three who have disclosed their earnings as part of their nomination process. And while they all likely have slightly different CPMs for how much their posts earn, X pays significantly less than other platforms for views.

Using Content As A New Revenue Stream

Other professionals have also found significant value in creating content to promote their brands. But it's not just about using content to lead to more customers — it's also about the revenue streams that come from the content itself. 

Like, for instance, single location gyms and training facilities whose owners create content that eventually leads to booming YouTube channels. It's a simple, symbiotic content approach that adds a revenue stream. It's almost like making a commercial that you get paid for when people watch.

Or consider Legal Eagle, a top creator on YouTube with nearly 3.6 million subscribers and nearly 1 billion views — who always finds a creative way to also promote his own law firm, which typically covers things mostly unrelated to the legal issues he discusses. These channels pull in hundreds of thousands to even millions of dollars over the course of their existence simply from the content itself. 

While YouTube is certainly one of the best platforms for sustainable, longterm monetization by professionals, it's certainly not the only one, either. TikTok is full of business owners, realtors — heck, even lawn care specialists — who have created content that both serves as its own revenue stream and clever promotion for their skills. Instagram is full of athletes who have gone on to monetize other parts of the platform. And Twitch is full of musicians and other personalities who basically just do what they would normally do but on a livestream — and make money from it. 

Is The Approach Different?

So if your goal is specifically making money from content, should you approach your online presence differently than if you're a traditional professional whose primary focus is your "regular" job? Yes and no.

To oversimplify, we can kind of put it into two buckets: people who are generally creative and want to use that creativity as a career, and people who have a skill that they can also make content about. There's a lot more trial and error for the people in the first category, because it can often take a long time creating content to figure out what sticks. Not always, but often (there's a reason they say your "first fifty" YouTube videos should just be about testing and experimenting with different things). 

However, once you do start to build your audience around the creativity that sticks, you also have a lot more potential paths to monetization, partnerships, and expansion. 

In the other bucket, you've got people who have typically built up a wealth of expertise or skill in a certain field. So they know their content will probably live in the same world as their expertise and the time they spend trying to "figure it out" can hopefully be mitigated by limiting at least that one variable. 

But it can also be hard for these people to remember that they ultimately are still there to create content that provides value to people, whether it's a heartwarming video of mowing an elderly woman's massively overgrown lawn for free, fitness content breaking down difficult goals into simple routines, or just a nice, clear explanation of an otherwise opaque topic. You still need to start from a place of providing value to people before you try to turn around and sell them on the other thing you really do for a living. 

And then there's the monetization opportunities. As a professional, you may be a bit more weary about some of the ways you choose to monetize your content. Like, you know, you may not also want to do sponsored content for your competitor or completely unrelated brands. It doesn't mean the opportunity is any less deep for monetization — it's just a bit less wide.

Still, we genuinely believe there's a sweet spot and a place for just about any professional looking to leverage content for personal and professional growth.