Making Money Selling Fan Signs / Shoutouts

If you’re a model on Twitter or some other form of social media, you’ve probably seen models posting fan signs or shout outs. This is a common practice for gaining exposure and traffic, as well as an item for customers to purchase. Fan signs generally include the model in the photo, holding a piece of paper or art up that promotes the username/name or brand of another person. Along with this photo the model may also promote the brand or person within the body of the post which would be a shout out. Fan signs and shout outs go hand in hand, due to the fact usually fan signs include shout outs with them. Shout outs do not necessarily require a fan sign each time since they can be text based.

How To Produce The Fan Sign

Many models find that piling up their fan sign orders and taking them all at once makes it faster and easier to do. To ensure variety in the photos you can do outfit changes if you’d like but they are not required. Customers ordering fan signs will often order them in a similar fashion to custom photosets, many will have specific poses or body parts they would like accentuated.

Be Aware of How The Fan Sign Will Be Used

Keep in mind that the fan sign will more than likely be used publicly within the accounts of the purchasing party. Another thing to keep note of is that if a name seems odd or somehow model specific, you should definitely look up the name to make sure the person doesn’t intend to use the fan sign to run a catfish account with your photos and use the fan sign as “verification.” Fan signs can either be hand written, drawn, printed out, done with stickers, etc. Let your creativity shine in your fan signs! The more personalized it is, the more on brand it will be for your sales and the more likely you will be to get repeat purchases.

Charging Vs Free Fan Signs For Popular Brands

While charging for fan signs is a very common practice, many models also find it helpful to create fan signs for popular brands and accounts to gain attention and potentially get exposure from their followers via re-tweets or re-posts. Creating fan signs for sites that you sell your content on, stream your live shows from, or direct your customers to can help you gain a favorable reputation from that website/account and get more free promotion among their followers. Fan signs can also be a great way to show your customers you appreciate them supporting you online or offline and can be a great add-on incentive for fan clubs, contests, and other store item purchases.

Watermarking Your Fan Sign

Yes! You should always watermark any photo or video content that you produce! Make sure you notify customers before purchase that the content will be watermarked. Alternatively, you can also write “cute notes” on the fan sign to avoid cluttering the photo with a sign and watermark. I would personally write something like “Aerie Saunders Loves (Customers Name)” or “(Customers Name) is Aerie’s King!” Something cheesy but cute that incorporates your name will go a long way in avoiding your photos being used for catfishing.