$10k MRR Debunking Election Misinformation · 2 Trending Markets · Rihanna Teaches You Marketing

Channing here. So. The day before the US election I ran a founder interview with a journalist named Isaac Saul. The timing wasn't a coincidence: his product aims to break people out of their political filter bubbles.

But more on that below. Here's what you'll find in this issue (browser version here):

• Isaac Saul is ~$2,000 richer than he was on election day. Learn how he's filling a gap in the info wars.
• In the news: Pieter Levels makes a bold prediction about the future of remote work. The latest paid newsletter platform. Is TikTok still banned?
• There's an indie hacker who scours the internet to find emerging products. Here are two trends you should take advantage of.
• There are 30+ proven distribution channels. This one is the second most popular.
• Rihanna can't teach you anything about marketing… right? A growth expert proves you wrong in about fifteen seconds flat.

Special thanks to Isaac Saul, Josh Howarth, Darko Gjorgjievski, and Harry Dry for contributing to this newsletter. Want to contribute a piece of your own? Check out this doc for an idea of what I'm looking for. —Channing

Isaac Saul Has Made $1000s Debunking Election Misinformation

I had something in mind with the timing of Isaac Saul's founder interview the day before the election.

He'd recently started Tangle, a paid newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum and attempts to cut through misinformation. Given the amount of misinformation we'd seen about the coronavirus, which isn't even a political topic, I knew we were in for something unprecedented with the coming election.

So with Isaac, I figured I was looking at someone heading toward incredible product/market fit. (At least in theory.) At the time he was doing about $8k/mo in revenue with 11,000 subscribers. And I was curious how things would play out with him over the next week.

Fast forward to today, and color me satisfied. Here's what Isaac just told me about his growth following the election:

Yes: all that in the space of about a week.

But he didn't pull it off using magic. One of his main engines of growth since the election? A Twitter thread. Just one. But it's not just any thread.

Isaac's "election fraud debunking mega thread" has generated more than 46,000 likes and 34,000 retweets. And it's approaching four hundred(!) tweets in length. Because as the Gish gallop of election misinformation has come in, Isaac has continued to meet people's demand for clarity by addressing the fraud claims one by one… by one… by one.

Of course, the election only happened a week ago. So there's a lot more to the story of how Isaac's grown to almost $10,000/mo. Including plenty of insights he's brought over from his years of experience working in the mainstream media world.

For those details, I'd recommend checking out Isaac's full interview from last week. —Channing

📰 In the News

🌎 Pieter Levels: "The greatest human migration in history will happen in the next decade."

💵 Nathan Barry's ConvertKit now supports paid newsletter subscriptions. Keep your eye out for still more platforms to throw their hats into this ring. ;)

💭 Starter Story just launched a directory of 2,000+ product ideas with data on market size, revenue potential, and more.

😂 TikTok says the Trump administration has forgotten about trying to ban it, would like to know what's up.

🗣 Indie hackers are weighing in on the latest feature rollout from Notion.

🧨 Trending Markets: Nano Influencers and a Special Kind of Crypto Token

Exploding Topics scours the internet to find emerging trends before they take off.

Two of the latest trends to take advantage of are nano influencers and non-fungible tokens. Here are some insights and analysis for both of them.

1. Nano Influencers

Nano influencers are social media influencers with roughly 1,000-5,000 followers.

17% of companies in one survey stated that they spend at least half of their marketing budget on influencer marketing.

And this heavy investment in influencer marketing has led to the average cost of a sponsored post going up by 53% since 2018.

Enter: nano influencers. Nano influencers tend to charge significantly less per post compared to influencers with a massive following.

Also, an industry study by InfluencerDB found that nano influencers got 2.4x higher engagement per post compared to influencers with over 10,000 followers.

What’s next:

Nano influencers are part of the Influencer Marketing 2.0 meta trend. As influencer marketing grows and matures, we’re seeing a number of influencer marketing-specific tools, platforms and strategies emerge. Other examples of this trend include Sparktoro, Heepsy, AspireHQ, and Upfluence.

2. Non-Fungible Token

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital representation of something with unique properties.

NFT forms of crypto collectibles, video game items, sports cards and digital art recently hit a total all-time sales value of $7.5M.

But what are they exactly?

NFTs are cryptographic tokens like Bitcoin. But unlike Bitcoin, they can’t be exchanged 1-for-1 with other units of that token. This is because each token represents a one-of-a-kind item.

For example, a piece of artwork is unique and therefore non-fungible. NFTs are now gaining traction as a way to certify ownership of each piece. In fact, Christie’s auction house recently sold its first NFT “Block 21” for $131,250.

Since they can’t be altered or counterfeited, proponents believe NFTs will be a more secure method for property ownership in the future. And, like Bitcoin and other tokens, they’re more easily transferable than traditional assets.

What's next:

NFTs are part of the Tokenize Everything meta trend. Fungible assets like USD tether and PAX Gold were the first to be tied to the blockchain. New, non-fungible examples of this meta trend include virtual land in Decentraland, collectible soccer cards with Sorare, and “.crypto” domains via Unstoppable Domains.

Check out the full post to see this week's other two exploding topics. And join Exploding Topics Pro to see trends 6+ months before they take off. —Josh Howarth

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

Yo! Every day I post the tweets indie hackers share the most.

My top pick from this week's tweets goes to Steph Smith:

Flex out. —Tweetmaster Flex

📊 Weekly Acquisition Channel: Product Hunt

I've analyzed all 487 Indie Hackers interviews and identified 34 acquisition channels that work consistently for founders. See Zero to Users for more details. Today, I'll be reviewing Product Hunt, a website which helped 78 different Indie Hackers founders get new users.

Product Hunt was launched in September 2013, and founders have had success with it ever since. Take Doorbell ($3k/mo), a tool for collecting customer feedback:

Product Hunt can be also useful for smaller side projects to give them an initial boost. This was the case with jQuery Card ($200/mo), a simple directory of jQuery plugins:

Product Hunt is a "product launch" website. Many people associate "launching" something with promoting it after you've just built it, without having pre-existing audience. Surprisingly, I've found that some of the most successful Product Hunt launches were those where the founder already had a pre-existing audience and used it to promote their launch. Some even did "pre-launches" before their "official" launch.

One such product was 1k Projects ($600+/mo), a marketplace to buy and sell side projects. Othmane, the founder, first pre-launched on Reddit and Indie Hackers:

He then used that audience to successfully launch on Product Hunt:

Don't dismiss Product Hunt if your target audience isn't there. The platform can be a great way of getting press. Hello Weather ($4k/mo) is a weather-forecasting mobile app, and they've seen this firsthand:

Journalists monitor popular websites for ideas to write about. And one of those sites is Product Hunt.

Go here to stay informed about the latest acquisition channels. Talk to you next week! —Darko Gjorgjievski

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

Rihanna's a great copywriter:

Go here for more more short, sweet, practical marketing tips. —Harry Dry

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

Tell me how I can make it better! Or help me out by contributing to it directly. —Channing