Your Path to $1k+ Brand Deals, Even With a Small Audience

What if you could turn brand partnerships into serious income, even with just hundreds of followers?

Justin Moore, founder of Creator Wizard and author of Sponsor Magnet, is back to show us exactly how creators are landing four-figure deals without massive audiences. We’re talking about tapping into that $480 billion creator economy pie — and you don’t need a million followers to get your slice.

This episode covers what brands really care about (hint: it’s not your follower count), how to find the right decision makers, and how to structure deals that keep brands coming back for more.

Tune in to Episode 694 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

How to land $1,000+ brand deals with a small audience
The ROPE method for pitching brands effectively
Why UGC and short-form content changed everything for creators

Table of Contents show

Round 1: Small Audience, Big Brand Deals

The Power of Micro-Niche Audiences

Justin shared a perfect example with his coaching client Dr. Alex, who runs the Digital Pathology Place podcast. Her show gets hundreds of listens per episode — not thousands. But she’s crushing it with brand partnerships.

Here’s why: Her audience includes lab techs, hospital C-suite executives, and people at pharmaceutical companies. When medical device companies have $20 million marketing budgets to spend, they’re not just buying prehistoric trade magazine ads. They want to reach Dr. Alex’s highly targeted audience.

This mirrors what we’ve seen with previous guests like Brian Orr from HVAC School and Harry Duran’s vertical farming podcast. When you’re the only new media game in town for a specific industry, brands will pay premium rates to reach your audience.

It’s Not About Follower Count Anymore

The biggest shift in creator partnerships over the past few years are User Generated Content (UGC) and short-form content.

Brands now want 30-60 second videos they can repurpose everywhere — their websites, social media, and paid advertising campaigns.

When you create a video for $2,500, they’re not just buying one post on your channel. They’re buying an asset they can use across multiple platforms for months.

This changes the math completely. Your small following becomes less important than your ability to create compelling content they can reuse.

How to Find Your First Brand Partners

Step 1: Look for Existing Partnerships

Don’t start from scratch. Search through other creators’ content in your niche for sponsored posts. Look for hashtags like #sponsored or search YouTube channels for the word “sponsored.”

Companies already working with creators understand the value and have faster sales cycles. You’re not trying to educate them on influencer marketing — you’re showing them a better option.

Step 2: Survey Your Audience

Most creators make a big mistake. They pitch brands they personally love instead of brands their audience wants. Send out a Google form or post polls asking what tools, products, and services your audience uses.

If 30% mention one specific brand, that’s gold. Now you can pitch that company saying, “I surveyed my audience and a huge portion already uses your product.”

Step 3: Find the Decision Makers

Here’s Justin’s “magic search terminology”: Brand name + job title + “LinkedIn” in Google search.

Look for these titles at medium-sized companies (16-100 employees):

Influencer marketing manager
Partnerships marketing manager
Affiliate marketing manager

For smaller companies (under 15 employees), you might be reaching the director of marketing or social media manager directly.

Tools like Hunter.io or Apollo can help you find actual email addresses once you identify the right person on LinkedIn.

The ROPE Method for Pitching

Justin’s pitching framework spells out R-O-P-E:

R – Relevant: Tie your pitch to a current campaign the brand is running
O – Organic: Show content you’ve already posted that proves your audience likes their brand
P – Proof: Share results from other brand partnerships or affiliate performance
E – Easy to execute: Give them a concrete proposal they can say yes to

If you don’t have proof yet, use affiliate performance or even DMs/emails from people who took action based on your recommendations.

Package Your Proposals Right

Never give brands just one price. That forces them to evaluate you 100% on cost, and you’ll get dropped for cheaper options.

Instead, create three packages tied to their goals:

Awareness Package: Podcast mentions, back-catalog integration
Repurposing Package: Short videos they can use as ads (you don’t even post these)
Conversion Package: Newsletter mentions, Instagram stories with link stickers

Then offer Package 4 that includes everything. This gives them options while showing the value of working with you across multiple goals.

Avoid the Agency Trap

Justin strongly recommends handling your own outreach rather than working through influencer agencies or managers. The financial incentives are misaligned — they don’t care which of their 20 clients gets the deal, as long as they get their percentage.

Plus, creators who treat this as a real business consistently outperform those who just want to “focus on content creation.”

Post-Campaign Success

Here’s where most creators fail: They deliver great content, get paid, then never contact the brand again.

Always send a post-campaign report with both numbers and qualitative feedback. Share screenshots of positive comments, DMs, or email replies — even negative feedback helps brands understand market perception and improve their next campaign.

Round 2: Donate a Business Idea – Trend Sync

Justin’s got a business idea he’d love someone to build: Trend Sync.

Content creators constantly feel behind on internet trends, viral memes, and relevant events they could leverage for content. But they’re too busy working on their business to stay on top of everything.

So Justin’s suggesting a web app that analyzes your industry and brand voice, then delivers weekly email digests with:

Top 5 trending topics relevant to your niche
Suggested content scripts
Quick ways to tie trends back to your business

Think of it as your “extremely online assistant” that connects internet culture to your specific industry.

The first step would be creating listening agents for Google Trends, social platforms, and news sources, then using AI to match trending content with user profiles.

This reminds me of Pete McPherson’s approach to app development — identifying a personal pain point and turning it into a product others would pay for.

Round 3: The Triple Threat

Marketing Tactic: The Challenge Strategy

Justin’s newest marketing win is running paid challenges that almost break even upfront, then convert participants into high-ticket coaching clients.

His recent “10K Brand Deal Challenge” cost $15,000 in ads but collected $13,500 in registrations ($97 per person, with $197 VIP upgrades). So they started just $1,800 in the red.

But here’s where it gets interesting: 79 people registered, and 6 enrolled in his $2,500/month coaching program afterward. That’s a 7.5% conversion rate from a $97 challenge to a $30,000/year program.

The key insight: 75% of participants had already read his book, so they weren’t cold traffic. This led them to realize they should run book funnels first, then retarget book readers with challenge ads.

The challenge format works because it helps people overcome specific roadblocks (like “What do I say when a brand wants to hop on a call?”), making the natural next step obvious.

Favorite Tool: Wispr Flow

Wispr Flow is a voice-to-text app that formats dictation perfectly, no matter what application you’re using.

Click the icon, speak your email or social media post, and it appears properly formatted in whatever window is active. Justin uses it for everything — emails, YouTube descriptions, chat messages.

This could be huge for people who think better by talking than typing.

Favorite Book: Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less

Double Your Profits: In Six Months or Less by Bob Fifer is a 40-year-old business book with 78 practical ways to cut costs and increase sales.

Each tip takes just 2-3 pages, making it a quick read with immediate actionable advice. One section helped Justin audit his consulting expenses and reallocate several thousand dollars toward hiring an assistant instead.

What’s Next for Justin?

Justin just launched the Sponsor Magnet Podcast with his first guest being Nir Eyal (author of Hooked and Indistractable). It’s the only podcast dedicated specifically to sponsorship strategies.

He’s also bringing back Sponsor Games in March 2026 — a live event where his 8-step sponsorship framework becomes 8 interactive games with real role-playing practice.

(Check out Creator Wizard, Justin’s hub packed with free resources to help creators land sponsorships.)

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