- Carlynn Greene applied to more than 100 scholarships for college, and now helps others do the same.
- She has almost 1 million followers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, but saw views dip recently.
- She built an email newsletter last year, and explains how it has helped increase her income.
Applying to college was a stressful time for Carlynn Greene because she had to apply for financial aid to afford the steep tuition. She submitted more than 100 scholarship applications — and won 30 of them — which helped her graduate debt-free in 2021 from the University of North Texas.
Her experience made her think about other high-school and college students who were struggling to finance their educations. In 2017, she started uploading videos to YouTube with resources on how to pay for college, and later that year expanded to Instagram.
Greene’s content took off in January 2021 when she started posting on TikTok. Her videos primarily resonated with Gen Zers, who were stuck at home during the pandemic and looking for ways to afford undergraduate and graduate programs. Her audience relied on her to keep them informed of different scholarships, how to stay organized when applying to multiple opportunities at once, and application deadlines.
Even though the Texas-based 24-year-old eventually amassed a following of almost 800,000 on TikTok, she started to notice lower engagement on the platform last summer.
While some TikTokers have tried to combat the issue by making more SEO friendly content, Greene sought another solution. She was tired of repurposing her content to fit different social-media platforms, and wanted a one-stop shop for her followers to take advantage of the resources she offered.
She launched in September a free email newsletter, and asked her audience on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to check it out. In the past four months, she’s amassed 25,000 subscribers, who have access to her exclusive financial-aid resources.
“It’s a way for you to put your creator business on autopilot and make money even when you’re not working,” Greene told Insider.
A newsletter is a permanent place for creators to house all their owned and sponsored content
Since she began her creator journey, Greene has worked with with brands like Amazon, DoorDash, Walmart, and CollegeBoard. In 2022, she earned $48,500 from paid sponsorships, according to documentation verified by Insider.
Even though most of her money as a full-time creator is made through brand deals, Greene said this stream of income is unreliable in the long run — like with the college-application process, it requires her to pitch constantly — and she has looked for more stable, “hands-off” ways to build her net worth.
Greene connected in May 2021 with the platform Teachable, which helps creators sell online courses. Since that November, she’s earned $20,750 by selling courses on how to get college scholarships.
It was Greene’s contact at Teachable who suggested she explore the idea of a newsletter, when she noticed in summer 2022 that engagement with her TikTok videos had fallen.
“I saw how the TikTok algorithm wasn’t promoting my content as much as it was earlier, so I realized that I couldn’t be dependent on any social-media platform to push out my work consistently,” she said. “I wanted to be in control of my audience.”
She built a free email newsletter on Convert Kit, a website for building email templates, and sent the first iteration to subscribers in September 2022. She uses a scheduling feature within the platform to automatically push out her newsletter every month.
Greene said it’s helped increase her income by directing more of her followers to buy courses or sign up for other paid services that she offers, like essay editing and scholarship coaching.
“It’s definitely helped raise awareness of my brand because followers are constantly reminded that I’m around when they check their email,” she said. “Awareness equals money in my book, because now they’re more likely to invest in paid services.”
Greene thinks creators who are tired of shuffling between different social-media apps should start newsletters
Greene encourages other creators on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram to explore newsletters because it’s helped her build what she described as a more permanent community. She said it’s easier to keep in touch with her followers through her newsletter, since she can check her inbox for messages instead of answering DMs and comments across all of her social-media platforms.
“It helps centralize the process of engaging with your community,” she said. “That in turn helps your content evolve, because you’re more on top of what your audience wants to see from you and what resources they need.”
She also thinks creators are getting tired of being told to diversify across platforms, and believes that more will start looking for central hubs to house their content. A newsletter, she said, is easier to create than a full-scale website and can be automatically sent out.
“It’s the future,” she said. “So many of my followers tell me they find it a lot easier to navigate than social media, so that should tell you all you need to know.”
Here is an example of Carlynn Greene’s email newsletter from February 2023:
The newsletter reads:
Hi there carr!
Here are some scholarships due in February. You will be redirected to a Google document I put together that separates the awards by classification (such as if you are a high school student, graduate student, undergraduate, international, etc.)
February Scholarships
When you click the page, go to file > make a copy or file > download as PDF.
Not sure how likely you are to win a specific scholarship?
Don’t want to waste your time applying?
Then use my winning likelihood calculator to help with determining your chances!
I hope this helps and remember to consider using my personalized services to increase your chances of winning!
Share your wins + submit a scholarship (by responding to this email)!
- I would love to know if you end up winning a scholarship (it helps with inspiring other students to KEEP APPLYING)! Respond to this email if you do!
- Submit a scholarship you’ve found (that is due SOON) to share with the Scholarship Guru community!
Good luck, carr!
PS. To receive catered email messages specific to your background, then simply go to preferences (seen at the bottom of this email) and follow these instructions.
– Carlynn Greene | Scholarship Guru
Use my step-by-step scholarship strategies: Book | Program| Differences between them
Services: Essay editing | Application reviewing | 1-on-1 personalized advising
Free preview of my program
Socials: Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | LinkedIn
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