How To Make Money as a Birth Worker Before Getting a Doula Certification
Are you ready to get your foot in the door and make money as a birthworker (even if you don’t have your doula certification yet)?
If you’ve been wondering how to stop making excuses and start making money TODAY as a birthworker, then get out a pen and paper, this blog post is for you.
The 3 questions we answer in today’s blog:
I haven't finished my doula certification yet, how can I start making money now?
What are your thoughts on being a brand ambassador or doing affiliate marketing for birth products that you love?
How can I involve my seven-year-old daughter in my birth doula business? She's been listening to all of the videos and the podcasts and she is totally hooked!
Every Friday, I answer your biggest questions right here on the Birthworker Blog AND the Birthworker Podcast.
To submit a question for next week’s podcast, click here.
Question #1: “I haven't finished my doula certification yet, how can I start making money now, or how can I at least get my foot in the door?” -Trinity
You don't have to be certified to make money as a birthworker, and you don't even have to be certified to start attending births. Click here to listen to my episode with Emily Edwards from the Good Birth Co where we discuss doula certifications.
The doula profession is not regulated, so you are not required to be certified before you attend births. Now, that's not to say that training is a bad idea. I host a doula training program where I mentor doulas called Birthworker Academy, so of course, I know there is value in education for birthworkers and for doulas. It’s arguable whether or not the certification itself is helpful in any way, shape, or form. So short answer: just start attending births before you're certified.
The next thing that I would say is to start offering coaching calls. Spend a few hours this weekend and add private one-on-one coaching calls as a service on your website. It could be a 45-minute, non-scripted, pick-my-brain session, anywhere from $50 to $200. It’s so simple and quick to add to your website, and it doesn't take any prep work. You don't have to create any videos, handouts, resources, or anything. Just write a quick sales page, a place where they can pay you, a couple of emails automated on the backend, and, boom! You are ready to start making money through coaching calls!
Regardless of what you choose to do, start thinking about how you're going to use my three-pronged strategy of attending births in person, live online offers like coaching calls or live workshops, and passive online offers. Passive offers don't require you to actually show up at all. You just create them once and sell them forever. It could be an eBook, a pre-recorded childbirth education course, affirmation cards, or audio meditation downloads. It could look so many different ways, but the key to sustainable, burnout-free birthwork is not needing to constantly be on call to pay your bills.
Question #2: “What are your thoughts on being a brand ambassador or doing affiliate marketing for birth products that you love?” -Jocelin
First, let me explain the difference between sponsorships and affiliate marketing. Sponsorships, aka sponsored posts, would be where a company pays you $500 to make a couple of reels, grid posts or even a podcast episode about their product. You're not getting any commission, they're just paying you to create content for them and endorse their product. $500 is definitely on the low end, I'd like to see that get up closer to thousands of dollars for posts.
Affiliate marketing is where you have a little more free range to promote whatever you're promoting. If someone does end up purchasing that offer from your content, you get a commission on the backend.
Sponsored posts can be a great source of extra income, but to be honest, for the vast majority of people, it's not going to bring in life-changing income. When most doulas start out, I see them radically undercharging for sponsored posts. I've even seen doulas do sponsored posts for free, which at that point, that's not even a “sponsored” post. A business will reach out and say, “Hey, I'm going to send you something for free. Can you make a post about it?” So many doulas will just respond with, “Yes, let me make a post about it. You don't have to pay me any money, just send it to me for free and I can make a post about it.” That's radically undercharging for your worth.
Another issue can be coming off as inauthentic. Sometimes the sponsor will want you to say certain things, come off a certain way, use a certain filter, etc., which is not going to come off as authentic. Your followers will be able to tell the difference. They might even unfollow you if you're doing too many of these inauthentic sponsorship posts. Just be careful to integrate these sponsored posts into your content really smoothly and authentically so you don't seem too salesy.
Disclaimer: I'm all about multiple streams of income. My three-pronged approach is all about multiple streams of income, but I also want you to be mindful of the impact that you want to have on the birth community. In my business for example, if someone offers me $2,000 to promote their jewelry brand, that's not helpful to my business at all. That's not growing birthworker.com. That's not reaching more doulas and getting them into Birthworker Academy. I don't want to be money hungry for that $2,000 at a detriment to my big business vision and goals.
On the other hand, I love affiliate marketing. I love it, especially when you're just starting. What it looks like is promoting somebody else's offer with a discount/coupon code, and then getting a commission if somebody purchases using your code. That's something that I did when I very first started. As I was making my first birth course online, Autonomous Birth Academy, I knew it was going to take a while to make that, so in the meantime, I was an affiliate for another birth course. I was essentially selling another birth course to my followers, to my students, to my in-person clients too before I had my own birth course to sell. So affiliate marketing is definitely a good way to start getting used to writing emails, creating sales pages, and promoting offers before you have something of your own to create.
I also love affiliate marketing because we can't be everything to everyone. We can't and we shouldn't be. There will be pieces that your clients and followers are interested in about birth, pregnancy, postpartum, etc. that are not in your area of specialty. For instance, if people come to me asking about breastfeeding, I can be really honest and say my specialty is honestly in mindset and autonomy. I could help you nail the mindset part and really give you the foundation to avoid a traumatic birth experience, but when it comes to having an amazing breastfeeding experience, I'm going to refer you to someone else. I'm not going to pretend I'm the best at everything in the world, and my clients deserve the best.
If you are a birth doula, you could become an affiliate for a postpartum course, a breastfeeding course, or a preconception course. Maybe like how I did it, if you’re in the process of making your own childbirth education course but it's going to take you 6 months - 1 year to actually produce, promoting somebody else's birth course could make you that extra income.
Whatever you choose, I think sponsorships and affiliate marketing can be phenomenal as long as they feel authentic for you and your business. That's the most important thing.
Question #3: “How can I involve my seven-year-old daughter in my birth doula business? She's been listening to all of the podcasts and she is totally hooked.” -Darnesia
I love when I hear that kids are listening to the podcast too, or even when my students listen to the videos inside the programs with their kids. I love it. Darnecia’s daughter is seven years old, and I think that one of the most impactful things a seven-year-old can do to help their mom be a doula is to start normalizing birth with their peers. That is going to have a ripple effect that has the potential to change millions of lives.
I'm guessing that they want to attend births with you, hold babies, and all of that fun stuff. As fun as that sounds, I don't necessarily think that's the best thing a seven-year-old can do for the birth community as a whole. Besides normalizing birth with your peers, there are a couple of other things that kids can help us within our doula business. That could be food prep for our postpartum clients, putting together client welcome baskets and postpartum gift bags, putting together flyers, stuffing envelopes, and putting stamps on papers, little things like that are actually going to go a really long way.
I would personally hold off on having them attend births with me for a while, because birth is such a sacred space, and I’m not going to invite my own kid into somebody else's birth. There are so many ways that children can help impact the global birth community without actually attending births. Of course, that's going to come in the future. I think Darnecia already has a doula in the making, but let's start by normalizing birth with her peers.
Thank you so much for reading. I will see you right back here on Wednesday with another amazing episode and blog post. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.