It sounds like the dream: over 1 million followers across YouTube and Instagram, a treasure trove of high-value content, and a thriving multi-six-figure membership site. But for Emma Walker, a Barcelona-based entrepreneur and English pronunciation expert, there was a gap she couldn’t ignore: despite all her success, she wasn’t fully leveraging her content to drive sales.

In this consulting session, we uncover why even successful content creators struggle to monetize their platforms—and the simple strategies Emma learned to turn her audience into paying members.

Emma’s journey began with a simple idea: help English learners master pronunciation. As a linguistics graduate with a background in teaching English as a second language, she saw a glaring gap in resources for non-native speakers who wanted to speak more clearly.

What started as Instagram posts and short YouTube videos soon snowballed. With her engaging teaching style and a knack for explaining tricky topics (like why we say “car” instead of “cahh”), Emma built an impressive following: 850,000 subscribers on YouTube and 250,000 followers on Instagram.

But as her audience grew, Emma found herself pouring more energy into creating free content than promoting her paid membership. “I’ve always separated my value content from my promo content,” Emma confessed. “In my mind, it felt like I had to choose between helping my audience and asking for sales.”

Emma’s struggle is all too common among content creators: she was so focused on delivering value that she avoided making consistent offers in her content. While she had a welcome sequence for new email subscribers and a “Phonetic Friday” newsletter filled with educational content, these emails rarely included any calls-to-action to join her membership.

Even in her newsletter’s “life updates” section, where she mentioned working on projects for her membership, Emma wasn’t linking to her course or inviting readers to check it out. “People were actually emailing me to ask about my membership,” Emma admitted. “I realized I was making them do all the work!”

Emma had a loyal audience and a thriving membership site, but she was only converting a fraction of her followers into paying customers. With over 1 million followers and thousands of email subscribers, the potential for growth was staggering. The problem wasn’t the audience—it was the lack of structured offers and clear calls-to-action.

Here’s how Emma turned things around.

One of Emma’s biggest revelations was that value and promotion don’t need to be separate. Instead of keeping her promotional emails distinct from her newsletter, she began treating her newsletter as a space to showcase both her expertise and her membership.

The solution? Adding a "sponsored by" segment in her weekly email.

In this approach, Emma could include a small, non-intrusive call-to-action in her newsletter, such as:

"This week’s Phonetic Friday is brought to you by Emma’s Pronunciation Hub! Get exclusive access to over 100 in-depth lessons and pronunciation challenges. Click here to join now."

This way, Emma could continue delivering free value while gently introducing her audience to her membership every single week.

Emma also learned to experiment with how she presented her offers in her newsletter. Two main approaches stood out:

1. Ad-Style Promotion
2. Create a visually distinct block within the newsletter that resembles an ad, complete with an image, headline, and a clear...