We recently connected with Giselle Lelux and have shared our conversation below.

Giselle, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Thanks to the pandemic it feels like everyone is now taking a chance with working from home and pursuing hobbies and passions in out-of-the-box ways and being a full time content-creator or influencer is at the top of the list for many.

So how do you do it?

I have seen, heard and witnessed every side of the answer to this question, so here is how I would do it.

Step 1: Tell yourself you can do it and tune everything else out.

This sounds so easy, but it is the one thing content creators of all sizes struggle with. Putting yourself out there is not easy, specially when you have no one to defend you or have your back and that is exactly what being a content creator is in the beginning.

You will be critized by your peers, your friends, your family and even random people on the internet as you get started and in order to succeed online you have to be able to turn all the negativity around your content or lifestyle into white noise.

Step 2. Find you Niche

What is it that you truly like to do? Finding your niche is finding what that it and creating content around that.

Growing up I would see printed on posters the quote “Do what you love to do and you will never have to work a day in the life” as a kid that was probably the cheesiest thing anyone could have said to me – as an adult, I will tell you that finding what you love is truly the easiest way to create content online.

Remember the hatred I mentioned in step 1? It’s a little harder for you to hear it if you are passionate about your craft and everything flows from this.

And it can really be anything. Do you love to travel? that’s a niche! Love food? That’s a niche too!

Step 3. Create a content strategy and put it in the work

Many who are not in the content creator space will tell you being an online influencer is silly and requires absolutely no work. This might be true for overnight sensations but 99.99% of content creators and not only working full time to make it work, they are working overtime.

There is so much that goes into having a successful content feed.

From the number of posts you have to create by week, to your hashtag strategy, editing, conceptualizing, understanding trends, shooting, it’s all work.

Something people don’t realize is that there are people out there who actually have degrees and work full time to mantain the social precense of brands and what they do is no different than what content creators must do to mantain and grow their social brand.

Step 4. Know your worth

A big part of being able to support a career as a content creator is being able to get, execute and negotiate collaborations, which can be very intimidating if you cannot understand your worth as a content creator.

So how do you do it?

My biggest piece of advice when it comes to this is to not be afraid to ask questions and to say no if something feels like to big of an ask,

And remeber, that even though you are not a full-time employee of whatever brand you are collaborating with, you should still be compensated for your time. Hourly employees do, so why shouldn’t you?

Giselle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Giselle Lelux and I am a content creator based out of San Diego, CA. My niche is lifestyle and highlight ways to live your best life on my feed. My favorite is introducing my followers to new places to discover in San Diego and with so many new businesses and events coming to the area there is somewhere new to visit every day!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

My biggest advice is to continue to post content rewardless of what the numbers look like. Do not get discouraged and continue to post. Even if something doesn’t perform well right away, it could still go viral!

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think the biggest thing that our society can do is start to recognize that creative is a full-time job for many and they should be recognized and paid like it. You wouldn’t make fun of a dentist or ask a carpet cleaner to clean your carpet for free. Why should creatives and artists be treated any differently?

Contact Info:

• Website: cityfashionblog.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/gisellelelux