Jim Louderback: The Platform Helping Mid-Level Creators Pull Down Six Figures a Week On Snap – Plus Old Media Titans vs. Scrappy Underdogs (Again)

BY JIM LOUDERBACK

This Week: How to make six figures on Snap, Izea’s surprising study on how much we trust creators, and what to do when your creator career wanes. Plus, Montana bans TikTok, new Reels features and much more. It’s the third week of April 2023 and here’s what you need to know.

Grinding For Crystals: Snap has turned super-lucrative, at least for authenticated creators. I sat in on an eye-popping Rich Greenfield-moderated creator panel (free reg) with Savannah Demers, King Bach and Tati Bruening. Bach said creators can make way more on Snap than YouTube and six figures in a week is not uncommon. It’s all about crystals, added Savannah, the more you post, the more crystals you get. Want more crystals? It’s all about “how good is your clickbait”, she added. Crystals mean money, explained Tati, redeemable for ten cents each. Rich and I will be talking about this and more on stage at VidCon – see you there! And in related news Instagram plans to expand Reels revshare with many more creators “soon”.

Established Media – Embrace or Obstruct? Brian Morrissey with a thoughtful essay on how Barry Diller and other traditional media titans are girding for war against AI and Large Language Models. It’s a familiar story that played out repeatedly during the rise of the creator economy, and typically leads to heartbreak for the courtroom crusaders. Remember when Viacom sued YouTube in 2007 and famously shunned the popular platform until a settlement in 2014. Bad strategic move, as the MTV parent lost an entire generation of kids – and subsequently had to buy Awesomeness and VidCon to rebuild relevance. But that won’t stop the old guard from trying – thus accelerating their slide into irrelevance.

We Trust Creators More Than Celebrities: That’s just one of the surprising conclusions from Izea’s new “Trust in Influencer Marketing” study. Fielded in mid-December 2022, it finds that even older consumers are jumping on the “buy from influencers” bandwagon. Best platforms? Still YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, but TikTok is rising – and GenZ leads the way. Good stuff, but directional, not predictive.

Your Trip is Short: Let’s face it, the creator lifecycle is even shorter than an NFL player. Very few YouTubers from 2010 – for instance – are big now. The shelf-life for TikTokers is even more fleeting. What do you do? One option: work for other creators behind the camera. Or get a job and create for the company too (NYT$). Companies are waking up to the unique value that creators can bring – even training their employees to create on the side. Just make sure you don’t sign your rights away when you take the job.

QUIBIS:

• Instagram rolls out new Reels features, including a “What’s Trending” section, updated analytics and better editing tools. 
• Patreon lays out its “creator-first” approach to generative AI tools.
• Montana votes to ban TikTok – perhaps Missoula (where Hank Green and VidCon reside) will secede.
• New Twitch CEO meeting with creators, wants to improve sponsor options.
• Instagram’s Creator Marketplace is in trouble, but plans to expand access to brand agencies (how about approving my application?)
• One of my favorite media reporters, Janko Roettgers, rises from the Politico ashes with a new newsletter and site. Subscribe today!
• NeimanLab explores why video podcasts are a big thing.
• Creator Juice shares details on how creators use the money it invests in them.
• Twitter relaunches Super Follows – lowers barrier to entry to 500 from 10k.
• New social network for creators – CreatorLand – wants you to sign up. Alas, I could only get on the waitlist and it didn’t recognize my LinkedIn followers.
• Passionfruit rounds up the top five video editors for TikTok.
• Not Good: Meta Verified doxxing its users. Doesn’t anyone there understand creators?
• Good interview with Lionsgate’s director of digital marketing about the right way to run a TikTok brand account.
• A tearful farewell to DreamSMP.
• Substack Notes is cool and worth checking out – but not sure it will do a better job killing Twitter than Twitter itself.
• BBTV proves that the skeevy MCN will never die. 
• Paid membership for creators explored in detail.
• I didn’t even know there was an “International ASMR Day”, but YouTube did.
• A16z releases a rosy “state of Crypto Q1 2023” report. I found the zero-knowledge part particularly fascinating.

GENIES:

• ChatGPT is a reasoning engine with knowledge. But that’s likely to change.
• Stability.AI releases next version of Stable Diffusion – called “XL”. Try it now.
• Facebook developing AI-generated “Advanced Stories” to get you to post more content.

Tip of the Week:

• Meta shares details on how to optimize your campaigns for Facebook and Instagram.
• Everything you need to know about whitelisting and dark posts.

Where’s Jim: This week I’m hosting Creator Squared at The Nab Show Monday and Tuesday (Vegas baby) and then speaking at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy on April 22. Then hanging out first weekend at Jazzfest NOLA! Hope to see you at one of these awesome events.

Thanks for reading, and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here! 

If you’re interested in working together as a sponsor to reach the leaders in the creator economy, check out Inside the Creator’s sponsorship packages and/or email me at jim@louderback.com.

And don’t forget to listen to The Creator Feed – the weekly podcast Renee Teeley and I produce – get it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher!

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