Hi it’s Ange!
Welcome to the 4th issue of Passion & Creator, the newsletter about emerging trends on the exciting vertical of the Creator/Passion Economy.
It’s been a year that I did not publish a new Creator’s Digest 🤦🏾♂️! Sorry for this long disappearance, I tried different things and formats during this year, thought about the vision of Passion & Creator… I think I will speak about it on monthly issues about the evolution of Passion & Creator, stay tuned 😉!
So, I come back on this format, with some adjustments 😎!
Feel free to reach out if you’d like to share comments, or questions. Don’t forget to like this post above and share it with your friends and colleagues. 😉
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The breaking news with Snapchat+ and others news
The fundings and exits to watch with 6 new rounds and $146M raised
The top content to read, see and listen with the Creator Economy Reports of 2022
Let’s talk about Creator Economy with the different parts of the Creator Economy
The creator of the week with Bertilla Nevida
Have a good reading 💁🏿♂️!
💰 With +1M subscribers in less than 40 days, Snapchat has made a pretty good bet on paid subscriptions?
The social media powerhouse just announced that their new feature, Snapchat+, has hit and surpass the million of subscribers in the world, in less than 40 days since the official launching.
What is Snapchat+? The paid feature, launched officially at end of June, offers new visual elements, such as backgrounds for bitmoji avatars, custom app icons; enhanced interactions either with your favorite creator, like priority replies to celebrities snaps, known as “Snap Stars”, or your personal network by pinning another user as a “#1 Best Friend” and new features like Snapchat for Web, the desktop interface of Snapchat.
⚠️ When we speak about 1M in the world, we speak about users in North America, Europe and the Middle-East.
Why that matters?
1️⃣ They found their key to unlock upfront paying behavior of the end user
It’s the first paid feature that the social media offers: “Snapchatters” will pay from end of June $3.99 per month through different plans 😂! It is not the first social media to try paid features: for example, Twitter launched last year its own subscription service, Twitter Blue.
Contrary to Twitter Blue, when Twitter generated $4M in a year, Snapchat succeeded to generate $5M from 1M users in a month! Huge difference 😮!
In other social medias, they don’t find a such successful direct monetization way. In fact, for now the successful monetization tactics are when an end user (you, me, anyone) pays indirectly the social media through % of commissions on goods sold, after consuming content (the livestream shopping model); or when the brand pays upfront through social ads.
With this achievement, Snapchat prove that this model is sustainable (for the moment ?), and they could live upon their end users.
2️⃣ Snapchat revenues growth could take a new direction for H2 2022
Since Snapchat+ is launched, their 2022 in-app revenues reached $7.3M: 68% of this revenue has been generated in a month, and it’s coming from recurring revenues streams! To comparison, the app only generated $63k within the app at the June 28, before the launching, coming from one-off purchases. These figures speak by themselves: it could become one of the best revenue stream of the company, and maybe the stock price will feel the difference 😉, who knows..
For the short term, given that Q2 2022 Snapchat figures were not very good, Snapchat+ will be fresh air for the company. For the long term, it will be a B-plan, considering that nearly all their revenues are coming from their ads solutions like Snap Ads, Sponsored Lenses and Filters.
3️⃣ Careful of the launching effect?
According to Statista, in 2021, there are +300M of Snapchat daily active users, and +500M monthly active users. When you see that 1M users could generate $5M, the calculation in termes of revenue forecast could be easy and seems fairytale 🤩! My question is the breakdown of this M of users: what is the portion of Snapchat power users within it? It’s a very important question.
I don’t think like a big % of users will pay $3.99 per month for knowing who has reviewed their stories or have a quick answer from their favorite singer in the social media. Yes, we have influencers, superfans, but we’ll see in the future that there will be enough of them.
On the other side, Snapchat doesn’t have activated Snapchat+ all over the world. What’s about the growth areas in Africa, Asia or LATAM?
🗣 Tell me in comments of the Creator’s Digest what do you think about it, and let’s see in December how Snapchat+ impact the company 😉
🖋 Snap says Snapchat+ now has 1 million subscribers, introduces new features
And some other interesting news…
Big names bets now on the “link-in-bio”: Creators can now directly sell Shopify merchant products with Collabs or live video interactions with fans with Cameo Live, embedded in Koji.
Jellysmack expands into FinTech solutions for creators with JellyFi
A new virtual creator in the game: an AI-powered rapper signs with Capital Records
Last week, the Creator Economy startups collectively raised $146M (at least, given that we have an undisclosed amount this week) on 6 rounds!
🟪 Overtime (2016 / USA 🇺🇸)
#Sports / #Gaming / #Livestream: Helps young athletes & gamers to make streams of their tournaments.
Raised a Series D of $100M, co-led by Liberty Media Corporation and Counterpoint Global, and followed by Winslow Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Blackstone and Sapphire Sport.
🟪 Buzzmint (2021 / UK 🇬🇧)
#Web3: Helps creators develop their NFT collections & tokenized projects.
Raised a undisclosed Seed round, led by Ayre Ventures.
🟪 Auddy (2020 / UK 🇬🇧)
#Audio: Helps audio creators promote & enhance their podcasts.
Raised a $3M (£2.5M) Seed round, led by Pembroke VCT and followed by previous investors Haatch Ventures, Brick Capital Ventures and The Future Fund.
🟪 CreatorDAO (2022 / USA 🇺🇸)
#Web3 / #FinTech: Gives creators access to capital & mentorship in exchange for % of future earnings.
Raised of Seed of $20M, co-led by a16z crypto and Initialized Capital and followed by numerous VC firms such as Hack VC, Shima Capital or Alchemy Ventures and several business angels like the celebrity Paris Hilton, the former talent agent Michael Ovtiz or the DJs The Chainsmokers.
🟪 Pinata (2018 / USA 🇺🇸)
#Web3: an NFT distribution platform.
Raised a Seed of $21.5M, co-led by Greylock and Pantera Capital and followed by Volt Capital, OpenSea and Alchemy Ventures.
🟪 Smartfluence (2018 / USA 🇺🇸)
#InfluenceMarketing: helps creators to connect with brands and advertisers for social campaigns
Raised $2.15M in Seed, led by PACA Ventures.
If you want to see the previous rounds of 2022, their investors, and discover other companies of the Creator Ecosystem, do not hesitate to check my +600 organisations Creator Economy Database (still in progress), by clicking on the link below 👇
As it’s been a while I did not write any digest, I think the best I could do is to share you the best reports about Creator Economy written this year! Read them & save at least 30h of personal research (at least.. 😇)!
🖋 The Creator Report 2022 by the link-in-bio platform Linktree
🖋 The New Creator Economy: A guide on Web3 creator platforms by the venture builder Antler & the venture capital firm Speedinvest
🖋 Investing in the $100B Creator Economy by the venture builder Antler
🖋 The State Of The Link-In-Bio Market 2022 by the sales intelligence platform Influencers Club
📱 Your $200 000 MBA on the Creator Economy by Antler’s Global Community Manager Ollie Forsyth
👨🏿💻 Tell me what do you think about this content in comments and what kind of subjects would you like to be treated in this section!
🛍 The different areas of the Creator Economy
The #CreatorEconomy isn’t one concrete block. It’a constellation of small groups gathered around one thing 👇
Bring value through content and monetize this content to their audience!
I’m thinking about writing a post about the different archetypes of creators but Zealous has done the job before me 😄
What could we take from that?
➡️ The importance to understand the meaning of the word “Creator”.
All the creators are not influencers, but all influencers are creators: it is affirmation where people are not all agreed on it, especially about the fact that influencers = creators.
Influencers only answer to one of the three main goals of a creator could have: Entertain
For me, a Creator is a person who create content for a specific audience, and successfully monetize it.
For me, influencers is part of the Creators.
We could think that a creator is a person who use content to either Educate, Inspire or Entertain an audience and then monetize it to this audience be sustainable.
➡️ Knowing who I am is key for the Creator-Market Fit
With this chart, we could understand the concept of legitimacy for creators to publish certain types of content or use certain monetization ways.
(i.e. the Influencer who're selling courses, or the Expert who're making endorsements)
When you create content, you have 3 goals to pursue: Educate, Inspire or Entertain.
A creator could pursue two or all of them, but one goal of them is priority.
Depending of his main goal, he will be in the one of these four areas; will find his target persona, his positioning, his monetization possibilities and have to focus on it.
➡️ There is room for everyone
Depending of who you are, and what motivates you, you’ll always find an audience.
For my side, I liked to help people understand concepts, I love the world of creators and different areas.
So, I documented all my knowledge I could see, hear and read about Creator Economy ecosystem.
I am in the Expert Economy 🤓
For another creator I really liked, Jason Chin a.k.a. Easlo, he helps people leverage the potential of no-code and inspire everyone to use the potential of no-code to develop a personal business.
He helps them by offering Notion templates and others things.
He is in the Enthusiasm Economy 🤲
We both liked to help people become better, but we have our own ways to do that.
And you, where are you? Tell me in comments of this issue 😉
👉 The Twitter thread of Gregarious Narain, CEO of Zealous, who create this very good Creator Economy chart: click here to access to the tweet
Sometimes, it will be a creator that I used to follow, sometimes, it will be a emerging creator that I want to support.
Today, let’s speak about online writing with Bertilla Nevida!
Bertilla used to work in corporate IT, but her love for writing pushes her to quit her day job and launch her own business, where she helps creator-focused brands to get more web traffic.
Based in India, she shared me her article on LinkedIn weeks ago, and i found this article very useful.
The kind of article I wish I read some years ago.
Why? Because if you love writing and you also want to make your time profitable, she will give all the opportunities to make money from your writing.
And it’s not just for the non-fictional writers, like me, but also for fictional writers.
It’s very important because, nowadays if you want to make money with your writing, you have first in mind either the paid subscriptions of tech-focused newsletters, or sell numerous fictional books on Amazon.
But, it’s not black and white: you could find your way, test different things and find the monetization format that will be the best for you. 😉
That’s it for this week!
Do not hesitate to reach on Twitter or Linkedin if some content really touched your curiosity, or if you want to suggest your sources 😎
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See you next time 🙋🏿♂️ !
Ange Michael AHYI