Motif investing has become the new talk of the town especially for investors who are used to active investing. Motif investing has made it easy for investors with little upfront fees and minimal deposit amounts to start building their own theme based portfolio.

The popularity of motif investing comes from the fact that it brings full flexibility for investors when it comes to building their own ETF-type of investment product without the high transaction fees and commissions that are associated with ETF trading.

Although motif investing might look easy, there are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to building the motif. Simple factors such as the type of stocks to choose and the weightage given to each of the stocks in the motif can bring about huge differences in the performance of the motif.

Making money from your motif

As more and more investors are starting to get drawn into motif investing, the early movers have a distinct advantage of promoting their own motif and also making additional money.

Officially called the 'Creator Royalty Program', this is a unique feature that allows investors to enroll into the program and start making additional money when an investor buys the motif.

At the time of writing, the Creator Royalty Program awards the motif creator $1 every time an investor buys or rebalances the motif that was created. This means that with just 50 - 100 investors who invest in a motif, the creator of the motif can look at making $50 - $100 additionally.

Despite motif investing being relatively new, there is no doubt that competition in the creator Royalty Program is fierce and in order to even think of making some serious money from your motif, it has to really stand out.

How to sign up for the creator royalty program?

Before signing up for the creator royalty program, investors need to first open an account with Motif Investing. The account needs to be funded and also needs to be approved.

The picture below shows how to join the Creator Royalty Program and it takes a few days for the account to be approved in order to list your motifs under this scheme.

Readers should bear in mind that once their account is eligible for the Creator Royalty Program, they need to add their already created motifs under this scheme, even if some of the motifs are already being listed for public view and investing.

Once the account is made eligible for royalties under the Creator Royalty Program, investors can begin adding their motifs to earn royalties. To do this, click on the “Add motifs to program” tab.

All motifs are eligible under the Creator Royalty Program but the motifs need to be created from scratch.

At any point in time, you can edit/remove the motif from the being listed under the Creator Royalty Program. The motifs that are listed under the Creator Royalty Program can also be edited to show whether the motif is publicly searchable or not.

The reason for using this option is that you can keep the motif limited within a private circle of investors rather than making it available for everyone.

Once your motif is listed, it becomes searchable in the database and comes with tons of statistics. When potential investors want to buy the motif, they pay $9.95 where if you motif is listed under the Creator Royalty Program, you get a royalty of $1.00 when the motif is purchased.

Investors should remember that because the motif listings are publicly available, you are not compensated when investors buy single stocks or ETFs listed in the motif. Furthermore, there are no royalties paid when the motif is sold.

How investors view your motif?

Investors can view all the list of motifs that are publicly available. However, this list contains a mix of professionally created motifs as well as motifs from individuals. To browse through the motifs that are created by individuals, you can click on Community Motifs option to view the list of all the motifs.

The motifs can be sorted by a number of factors including sorting the motifs based on the highest number of purchases.

Before you can view the details of the motif, you are required to read and accept the risk disclaimer.

A typical motif looks the one listed below, with the description as well as full details of the listing of the stocks in the motif and the weightage.

As one might already realize, the fact that stock listings in the motif is publicly available even before the motif is purchased makes it easy for investors to simply copy the stocks and build their own motif accordingly.

As a motif creator you also get full control such as posting updates about your motif. Likewise, investors also have the option to comment on the motif and rate it as well. This can be found under the “What Others Think.”

The chart below shows further additional information about the Motif including the percentage of people who bought or customized the motif as well as the investor sentiment about the motif.

Why promote your motif?

There are a number of reasons a motif can be popular but the most important aspect is in promoting the motif, regardless of how good your motif is. Without creating some buzz around your motif, chances are that the motif will simply get drowned among a host of other motifs as well.

One of the simplest things that can be done to promote the motif is to being with having a good description, image and a name of the motif. The more complete the details of the motif are, the better the chances that the motif can be listed in the community motif page.

There are also different categories for the motifs such as the Top Performers, Most Purchased, Highest Dividend Yields. These are some of the easiest of categories that you can focus on when creating the motif in order for it to be listed.

Besides the above, promoting your motif on your social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn can be a great way to spread awareness about your motif within your immediate circle of friends and families.

With the Creator Royalty Program, investors should bear in mind that the higher volume of investors that are interested in the motif, the bigger the chances for the original motif creator to make more money. Thus, driving traffic or raising awareness to the motif is essential.

Tips to promote your motif

For investors who are thinking about promoting their motifs under the Creator Royalty Program, here are some tips to help get your started. However, the most important aspect is that as a creator you need to be certain about the motif that you create.

Because competition is often very fierce, investors need to make their motif stand out and there is no better way than to build motif based around an investing theme or an idea. Another factor to bear in mind is the effort and the costs that go into promoting your motif.

Remember that the royalty one can get is just $1 per motif purchase or rebalancing. Therefore spending too much of time or even money in promoting your motif will be illogical.

Create a social media buzz

The first step is to have a social presence and the easiest way to get started is by promoting your motif to your friends and family via Facebook and Twitter. Make sure to add some detailed description about the motif, what it is and the returns one can expect.

Build a blog

There is no better way to promote your motif by creating a blog. Using a free blogging platform such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com you can create your own mini-website or a blog and write in more detail about your investing theme or the motif.

One of the benefits of promoting your motif via your blog is that you can add more information about your investing idea while also making your blog available via search as well. This makes it easy for random investors looking for your specific style or theme of investing discovering your blog and thus eventually buying your motif.

Because the only effort required here is just your time this can be a cost effective way to promote your Motif.

Reach out to other bloggers

A quick search on the internet will show tons of financial bloggers and there is no shortage of the websites and the blogs depending on the investing style of your choice. If you follow a certain specific strategy such as having a high number of growth oriented stocks or have value investing as a strategy, you can reach out to potential bloggers who believe and write in the similar style.

There is no better way to have your motif featured than to have an established blogger or a financial write talk about your motif and promote it in their blog. This can bring a steady flow of targeted traffic that can have high level of engagement with your motif.

Be active!

While it is essential to remain active in terms of promoting your Motif, you also take time to constantly update your Motif frequently. The more frequent updates your motif has in terms of informing the investors about the changes or any news based on the stocks in your motif, the better the chances that people will be more interested in your motif.

Treat your motif like a professional ETF

As mentioned earlier, there needs to be a balance between the amount of time and money you can spend in promoting your motif due to the fact that the royalty you can earn is just $1 every time someone buys the motif.

Therefore, treating the motif like a professional ETF can be a simple way for those who are stuck for ideas. While you can ignore the advertising aspects of promoting your motif, you can focus on other factors such as looking for trending news items related to your stocks listed in the motif or the category and create some hype around it.

Use social charting tools

Website such as Stocktwits and Seekingalpha are great places to network with like-minded investors and also attract potential investors to buy your motif. Therefore signing up for a free account at these sites and creating your own analysis based on the stocks listed in your motif can be a great way to generate interest.

The above tips should help investors to get started with their motif and promoting it in hopes of attracting new customers or investors to buy the motif which can create a reasonably steady side-income besides your own investments.

However, as with anything investors need to find a balance between their own investing and promoting the motif. Spending too much time into promoting your motif can no doubt impact your decision making process on focusing on your main investments.

While you can earn $1 every time a motif is purchased or rebalanced, there are also some tax implications as well which also needs to be considered. At the end of the day, it is up to the investor on whether they want to really take the time out into promoting their motifs especially if one takes into account the tax factor as well which could really diminish the returns unless one talks about big volumes of transactions taking place.

In terms of volume, investors will need to have at least 100 investors who consistently buy or rebalance the motif and therefore the benchmarks are quite high when it comes to looking at any meaningful returns in the first place.

Besides the Creator Royalty Program, you can also earn additional income by bringing in referrals as well, which can be a great way to tie this into your existing motif promotion plan as well. This will help in improving your referral fees for bringing in new investors to sign up with Motif investing.

At the end of the day, there is no dearth to the trading ideas and Motif investing is a great platform that allows regular investors a shot at creating some really unique investment themed ideas. The fact that the motif creators can also look at generating some income on promoting their motifs can help in building some additional income as well.

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