---
title: 'Fix These 8 Bad Habits and Make More Money as a Creator'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=6xsmQ0QSgAI'
video_id: '6xsmQ0QSgAI'
date: 2026-07-31
duration_sec: 1341
---

# Fix These 8 Bad Habits and Make More Money as a Creator

> Source: [Fix These 8 Bad Habits and Make More Money as a Creator](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6xsmQ0QSgAI)

## Summary

This video breaks down the eight most common mistakes that keep content creators from making real money, despite having large audiences. It covers both mindset blocks—like feeling undeserving or treating content as a hobby—and execution errors, such as relying on a single income stream or building followers without community. The creator offers practical mindset shifts, ethical selling frameworks, and funnel strategies to help creators finally get paid.

### Key Points

- **Followers don't equal income** [00:01] — You can have hundreds of thousands of followers and still make almost nothing without the right systems, habits, and money-making mindsets. Many creators look successful but feel financially stuck.
- **Mindset sets your income ceiling** [01:40] — Your subconscious beliefs around money determine your income before strategy or step-by-step plans ever will. Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money notes that people fall to the level of their beliefs and habits, not rise to goals.
- **Mistake #1: believing you don't deserve to charge** [02:53] — Creators often think they aren't expert enough or that people won't pay, while DMs show demand. The spotlight effect makes us think judgment is harsher than it is. Fix: screenshot thank-you and coaching requests into a 'proof I'm qualified' folder.
- **Mistake #2: comfort ceiling syndrome** [04:45] — Creators consistently hit the same income level, then slow down or go ghost after earning more. Gay Hendricks calls this the upper limit problem. Fix: pause and ask, 'Is this fear or is this unfamiliar success?' then anchor the new identity with one small action.
- **Mistake #3: believing selling is selling out** [07:08] — Worrying about authenticity leads creators to avoid launching or brand deals. Reframe selling as leadership. Use a three-point ethical selling standard: promote only what you use, create products that solve real problems, and only recommend what you'd share with a close friend.
- **Mistake #4: treating creation like a hobby** [09:16] — If you want to make money, you're running a business. Adopting CEO mode changes how you show up: you don't wait to feel ready; you sell, study, and evolve. Even at zero revenue, treating content as a business makes it pay you like one.
- **Execution mistake #1: platform without community** [11:07] — A creator with 150K followers can get zero merch sales, while someone with under 10K sells out. The difference is community, conversation, and trust. Posting for the algorithm attracts strangers; posting for a specific audience builds buyers.
- **Execution mistake #2: only one income stream** [13:02] — Relying solely on AdSense, brand deals, or affiliate income is fragile and capped. These aren't owned income streams. Create owned digital products—like a PDF or course—so you keep 100% of the profit instead of earning cents on referrals.
- **Execution mistake #3: no funnel** [16:59] — Creators who consistently hit an income barrier should set up a simple funnel. It lets you make more from the sales you already get. Structure: free value content → freebie (email opt-in) → email automation → low-ticket product → mid/high-ticket offer.
- **Execution mistake #4: creating but not selling** [19:12] — Many creators never tell viewers what to do or mention their offers. Sales content should be part of the regular rotation: use CTAs, link in bio, and repeat offers. The marketing rule of seven says people need to hear something about seven times before acting.
- **Why repeating offers works** [20:57] — On average, 74% of video viewers are new. Repeating offers helps new viewers discover resources that serve them and builds familiarity and trust, which leads to more sales.

### Conclusion

Making money as a creator requires more than good content: you need to fix internal mindset blocks and build systems that convert trust into income. Focus on community, own your revenue streams, and learn to sell ethically and consistently.

## Transcript

million times already. You can make money as a content creator even with under 1,000 followers. And it's true, but here's the part that most people don't talk about. You could have hundreds of thousands of followers and
still make almost nothing if you don't have the right systems, habits, or money-making mindsets in place. I see this all the time. Creators who look successful on the outside. They've built their followers to thousands, sometimes
hundreds of thousands, but they feel stuck financially on the inside, not being able to monetize off the platform that they've built. And it's not because create great content, it's because
they're unknowingly doing a few things that are keeping them broke. So, in this eight biggest mistakes that keep creators from getting paid and the exact mindset shifts, strategies, and actions you need to take so you can finally stop
under valuing yourself and start making the money you deserve as a creator. As if you need them and let's jump right in. Starting with the most important category, mindset. I know a lot of us want to roll our eyes at the word
mindset, similar to when someone says, "Niche down." Believe me, I was one of those people. It feels maybe cliché or woo-woo or like it's just some buzzword, and because of that it's mostly ignored when compared to practical strategies
and step-by-step plans. Now, if you relate to this at all, please listen when I tell you your mindset sets your income ceiling. You cannot outperform
your subconscious beliefs around money because that will determine your income long before your strategy or a step-by-step plan ever will. Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, discovered that most people don't
rise to the level of their goals because they first fall to the level of their they first fall to the level of their beliefs and habits. Unfortunately, I'm evidence of that. For the past 3 years of my business, I had the same goal, and
that's make a million dollars in 1 year. Every single year, I just kept going after that. And even 1 year, I got close. I got to 950,000. But, the reason I kept coming up short wasn't because of my lack of strategy. It's because I had
subconscious beliefs around myself, my identity, my business, and money that kept me stuck. Now, mindset might feel unsexy, but it's the foundation that determines whether your strategy will work. For some of us, our income ceiling
might be a million dollars. For others, it might even be a thousand dollars. Mindset block number one is the belief that I don't deserve to charge for this. This shows up constantly with creators. Maybe you've thought something like,
"I'm not expert enough, experienced enough, large enough, or this feels too simple. People won't pay for this." Meanwhile, your comments and DMs, or even people in your life, are asking you, "Hey, do you offer coaching? Can
you help me with this?" So, the problem isn't your skill, it's actually the of like something called the spotlight effect, where we think people are judging us far more harshly than they actually are. So, you're the one that's
enough to charge or you have enough followers before doing X, Y, and Z. While really, you already have followers that are thinking, "Oh my gosh, I want to work with you. You're the only person I trust. How can I get connected?" When
you believe you're not worthy of getting paid, you subconsciously price yourself low, avoid launching, never fully step into your value, or never even charging, asking for money at all. Now, there are no quick fixes for changing subconscious
beliefs that you've carried your whole life, but here's a simple first step that can start shifting this for you. So, I want you to go back through your comments, DMs, or emails, and I want you to screenshot every thank you, or this
helped me so much, or do you offer one-on-one coaching? Screenshot every message like that and create a folder on your phone called proof I'm qualified. Now, when your brain starts to tell you, "I'm not ready for this. I'm not expert
you to open that folder because that's the audience proving the exact opposite. If you're feeling you want to go a little deeper into this transformation value, then I definitely recommend reading The Psychology of Money by
Morgan Housel. Mindset block number two is comfort ceiling syndrome. This is when you consistently hit the same income level month after month. It could income level month after month. It could be 1,000, 5,000, or even $0. And then,
the moment you finally earn or offered some sort of payment, you slow down or go ghost. You procrastinate your next launch, you second-guess sharing a post or your offer, or just you don't even post altogether. Not because you're
unmotivated, or not because you hit burnout, but because you crossed the income level that your brain is comfortable with. Gay Hendricks talks about this in The Big Leap. It's called the upper limit problem. And like I
mentioned earlier, we take action consistent with the identity we believe we are, not the identity we want to be. So, if your subconscious identity is, "Well, I'm just a small creator." or "I'm not even a content creator." or "I
don't know enough to make real money." then even if you have the perfect money-making strategy, your brain will start to pull you back down to what feels familiar. This is why creators get stuck at the same income over and over.
Not because they aren't capable, but because they haven't expanded the identity that can actually hold more. Now again, there's no hacks for expanding your identity or re-wiring beliefs in your brain just like that.
But, here's a simple first step that can help you break through your comfort ceiling. So, the moment you notice yourself pulling back, procrastinating, avoiding posting, delaying a launch, pause and ask yourself, is this fear or
is this unfamiliar success? Just naming it and catching it interrupts the pattern. And then, anchor the new identity with one small action that reinforces who you're becoming. So, just post a piece of content. Launch that
digital product. Pitch one brand. Hit publish on the one thing that you have been putting off and say, "Hey, done is better than perfect." Tiny actions like this will help shrink your fear and normalize the success your brain isn't
yet used to. And if you, again, really want to understand and overcome your own upper limit, then I suggest reading The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. It explains exactly why your brain panics when you exceed your familiar income and how to
expand the identity that can actually hold more. Mindset block number three, you're somebody that believes selling is selling out. Now, maybe you've heard criticisms like creators are sell outs or brand deals ruin authenticity or
selling digital products is such a cash grab. And when you care deeply about your audience, those sort of comments hit hard. You might worry, "Oh, what if I launch a course and people leave or unfollow me? What if I take brand deals
and someone hates the brand or thinks I'm a sell out? What if I share an affiliate link and I think I'm a sell out?" This mindset comes from a good place. It means you care. You want to protect trust. You want to serve your
audience and your people and your community well. So, here's a reframe. Choosing yourself and valuing your work is not selling out. It's stepping into leadership. You can actually build trust by partnering only with brands you stand
behind and saying no to all the rest. Recommending affiliate products that you actually use. Creating digital products that your audience is asking for or you wish existed and no one else was making them. This is what ethical selling looks
like. This is what serving your audience looks like. And I'll break down exactly how to sell this way later in the video. In the meantime, let's go over a simple mindset shift that can help you. So, instead of asking, "What if selling
makes people trust me less?" Ask, "How can I sell in a way that builds trust?" Then create a three-point ethical selling standard. This is like a personal checklist you follow every time
you promote something. So, I only promote something I personally use or believe in. I only create products that genuinely solve a real problem for my audience. Or I would recommend this to a close friend without hesitation. When
you follow your own standard, selling stops feeling like selling or manipulation and starts feeling like leadership and clarity and service. Again, if you need to redefine what ethical selling means, I recommend
looking into To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink. It breaks down the psychology of selling in a way that feels empowering, ethical, and aligned. Mindset block number four, treating creation like a hobby and not a business. Believe it or
not, if you want to be a content creator or you have the intent to make money with content creation, you're running a business, period. And the moment you decide, "This is not a hobby. This is not a side hustle. This isn't me testing
the waters. This is my business." Everything changes. It changes your whole perspective of how you're showing up in every aspect of what you're doing. you feel like it or waiting to sell when
you feel ready or skipping systems because it's oh, it's just Instagram. When you step into like an entrepreneurship mindset or CEO mode, sudden you're showing up differently. You don't wait to feel ready. You show
up, you sell, you study, you learn, you evolve. Even if you're making zero dollars, even if you're confused, even if no one is watching, even when you treating your content as a real business, it starts paying you like one.
beginning because I felt like I was stuck for like a year and a half and I think when I finally said, "You know what? This is not a hobby for me. This is going to be my business." That's when I started to think about it as a
business and I was like, "Oh, what if I niched down like this? What if I created everything started to click. Now that we've tackled the biggest mindset blocks, it's time to talk strategy. I know, the moment you've all been waiting
video a thumbs up. It's going to tell yourself found this video valuable. And if you learn two new things by the end of the video, consider subscribing. This is a simple way that you can support my
channel and it allows me to continue to create free content like this for creators every single week. Execution mistake number one, not building a platform that's connected to community. Now, this one can be painful and
Now, this one can be painful and confusing for creators and I've seen looks a little something like this. So, we have two creators. Let's say they both launch merch. This creator has over 150,000 followers and gets zero sales.
This one has under 10,000 followers and sells out their merch completely. The difference was the community. The creator with the 150,000 plus followers creator with the 150,000 plus followers grew by chasing trends instead of
conversation. They posted for views instead of value. They never replied to comments or DMs. They created content for like an algorithm, not people or posted viral content that was attracting strangers instead of an ideal audience
or buyer. They basically built a following, but that following doesn't actually know the creator and doesn't trust the creator. Community is what trust the creator. Community is what converts. Conversation is what converts.
Clarity is what converts. This creator who had under 10,000 followers, yeah, it was a smaller community, but they knew their audience. Their audience knew them. They were talking, replying to comments every day. They were replying
to DMs. They were building a community, creating content based off of audience feedback, replying to questions that are in the comments with videos, showing up on their stories, and they focused on creating content that wasn't chasing
algorithm and views, but was serving a specific group of people. So, if you want more money, stop building a platform and start building a place where people feel like they belong. Your audience will guide what sort of value
you can bring to them, and again, how to sell to them in a way that feels like value service leadership. Now, execution mistake two, only having one income stream. This is another reason why so many creators stay broke or at one
specific income level. And that's because they're depending solely on one income stream, just AdSense or brand deals or TikTok views, affiliates. Now, when you do that, your income is fragile and unpredictable and capped. Not only
that, but all of the income streams that I mentioned are not income streams that you own. I had a student in my BSP community. For those of you who don't know, I have the BSP model. It's my course that I offer to content creators.
It's basically the Ivy League college for creators and inside the BSP model, there is a Slack community. I had a student in BSP who was in the fashion student in BSP who was in the fashion industry and over the past year or two,
she was posting consistently and her main income stream focus was affiliate income. She would create a post and say comment this and I'll send you the link the link to this handbag. I'll send you the link to my skirt. Right? So she was
focusing on affiliate marketing and she was getting some sales with it, but it was like stuck at $100 or less per month with some spikes around the holidays. Affiliate marketing is one of the hardest ones to grow to such levels and
also maintain at that level. So I had to kind of like break it to her, "Hey, we like, "Okay, well I'll take on brand collabs." I'm like, "Yes, but that's do a certain amount of brand collabs every month. What if we created a
digital product for you instead? This is something that you own. You could sell passively in your link in bio and you could start making passive income from your digital products and passive income from your affiliates. But the cool thing
own it. You get 100% of the sales, whereas if you're referring a skirt that's $30 to someone and you get 50 cents, you're getting your audience to pay that $30, but you're only getting 50 cents. Let's pick something where you
own it and you could get 100% of that investment. So that's what we did. We created a digital product for her and it was so easy. All she did was she created her document in Canva and then she exported that as a PDF, uploaded it to
her Stan Store, which she was already using and listed it to sell within literally a few seconds. So Stan, who is also the sponsor of this video, is literally the number one tool that I recommend to every single creator all
the time. Stan is literally the tool that I wish existed when I started my have made making money so much easier. I remember in the beginning of my journey, remember in the beginning of my journey, I had a website, a domain, and then the
website actually needed a separate digital product store, so I actually was also paying for Shopify. And so I had all of these different tools that I was paying for, email list, this, this, and it added up. And the fact that you can
in one place for one predictable price every single is amazing. Not only that, but when you set up your digital products, your courses, your coaching, you can offer so many different things on Stan, but when
many different things on Stan, but when you set that up to sell, you get 100% of each sale. Other platforms will take a percentage of your sales, or other link in bio tools will take a percentage of your sales, and so you're actually not
earning 100% of that, whereas Stan does not take from you or take from your audience. Stan is a tool that is built for creators by creators. The founder
CEO John, he was a creator himself, and this is the tool that he wish he had, so he built it, and I think it's one of the most amazing things out there. I'm so honored to be an ambassador for them, to have them sponsor this video. So if
you're going to expand your income streams, definitely 100% check out Stan. because creators who make real money, they're not waiting for brands to pick them, or waiting to get monetized on a platform.
and selling now because they know they have value that they could offer their sitting on the value. They're creating something from it. Execution mistake Now if you're somebody who is consistently making a set amount of
able to break through that barrier, maybe it's a thousand dollars a month, you might be ready to set up funnels. This is where a lot of creators are losing money without even realizing it. Because with funnels, you actually don't
have to sell more. That's the great part. You can just make more with the sales you're already getting. So a funnel is simply the journey that somebody goes through from discovering you, trusting you, buying from you, and
you, trusting you, buying from you, and then buying from you again, and again, and again. Your funnel doesn't have to be complicated or techy, either. A simple, high-converting creator funnel could look like this. You have your free
value. This is the content that you post. You're posting it for free, you're value left and right, you're dropping nuggets every day or every other day, you don't have to post every day. But, you have free value. That free value
leads somebody to your freebie. This is something small that solves a micro problem for your audience. It's a free resource that they could download in exchange for their email list. Then, you could set up an email automation so that
after they get this freebie, maybe down the line, they are up sold to a low-ticket or entry-level product. This could be anywhere from nine dollars to twenty-nine dollars. This product is like a quick win that you can guarantee
someone in the next seven days, thirty days. Just that funnel alone, you could start making some more money. You could even add a mid-tier offer. This might be something priced a little higher or even upsell to a high-ticket offer, like
one-on-one coaching. If you're curious about funnels, I have a whole video that breaks down step-by-step how you can set that up. And the cool part, you can set it up through Stan, too. I know I don't have to bring them up again, but you can
through Stan, too. Again, if you're selling a digital product through their store, you already have the systems in place to send them to another digital video walk-through and the video that I have on my channel showing you how to
that linked above. Now, execution mistake number four, you create, but you don't sell. So, many creators think they're not making money because the algorithm hates them, or their content isn't good enough, or maybe they need
more followers. Now, while there is validity to creating good content, that good is subjective, good is going to be perceived by your audience. And I know there is truth to needing followers to make sales, but what I have noticed is
often the reason they aren't making money is because they're never telling people what to do. They're never talking about the products that they have, the gems and gold nuggets that's just simply
sitting in their link in bio. Now, I'm not saying every video you create needs to sell and talk about your products, or sell, sell, sell, sell, or optimize for conversions. That's not what I'm saying, but it should be part of your regular
content rotation. Are you making sales-driven content at all? Have you even mentioned your offer or your affiliate link in this past week? And even if you have mentioned it, do you have plans to mention it again next
week? Are you using calls to actions on your post? Download my free resource here link in bio. On top of that, do you have your income streams easily digging through your website or all these bajillion links to find it? If
you've watched my videos before, you know that I talk about my offers often in every single one of my videos. Why is that? On average, 74% that? On average, 74% of my video viewers here on YouTube are
new to my channel. Yes, there's 25% of you watching who probably already know about the BSP model or my 12-month creator guide, or you're sick and tired of hearing me talk about how much I love Stan. But, repeating the offers I
genuinely believe in, and know bring the most value to my viewers, actually helps your growth and helps new viewers find the resources that are meant for them. Repeating offers, this is backed by something called the marketing rule of
seven. It's a classic principle in advertising that says people need to hear about something around seven times before they remember it, trust it, and take action on it. Not because they're ignoring you, but because our brains are
overloaded. Attention is scattered these days. Most people watch content while multitasking, doing dishes, in the shower. So, if I only mention an offer one time, I'm actually making it harder for new viewers to find it and benefit
from it. Repeating creates familiarity, and familiarity builds trust, which means more sales, more impact, more viewers actually getting the help they far, I want you to include the secret emoji in your comment below, and watch
you'll like it. Thanks so much for watching. See you in the next one. Bye.