The feature is currently in beta, but is expected to be available soon: - **Founders will be able to contact** existing users more easily, as the new feature lets them opt-in to communications from your business. According to initial data, over 70% o
The feature is currently in beta, but is expected to be available soon:
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Founders will be able to contact existing users more easily, as the new feature lets them opt-in to communications from your business. According to initial data, over 70% of users say "yes" after being presented with this option.
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Rally, a platform that helps creators launch their own coins, reports that its top creators drive over $100,000 weekly. Dru Riley shows how social tokens promote deeper alignment between creator brands and their fans.
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Founder Shawn Wang hit over $121,000 in revenue from his book. His tip? Write your first book for reach, impress everyone, then go for the money on the second book.
Want to share something with nearly 80,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🧐 Facebook's New Log in Feature
from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko
Founders who advertise on Facebook will now be able to connect with users more easily through the "Log in with Facebook" button on the app. Here's how!
Facebook log in
The update: Facebook is now adding the ability for your app to also ask users whether they want to be contacted through Messenger after they log in.
Positive opt-in rates: According to initial data, over 70% say "yes" after being presented with this window.
The opportunity: You'll be able to more easily contact your existing users. Email marketing, despite being effective, is becoming saturated. Having the ability to contact people through an additional communication channel is a big deal.
For now, this feature is in closed beta. It will likely be available to everyone over the coming months.
Safari browser extensions
Extensions are a big acquisition channel: If you've read my Zero to Users report on acquisition channels that consistently work for founders, you'll know that "app plugins" rank #2 on the list.
The reason: Distribution. If you've been reading Indie Hackers, for example, you'll find a lot of examples of profitable Chrome extensions. Google promotes extensions because they increase the chances that people will continue using the browser. The same is likely to happen with Apple.
At its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced that Safari web extensions are finally coming to the iPad and iPhone.
The opportunity: Take a look at your desktop browser. How many extensions are you using? Now, those same extensions are coming to your mobile Safari browser. This is pretty new terrain, since Apple is the first company to allow mobile web extensions. If people use the mobile extensions in the same way that they do their desktop counterparts, things will get interesting.
We're likely to see founders making a ton from their Safari extensions if this takes off.
TikTok is growing faster than you think
According to recent data, TikTok is the fastest growing mobile app overall for a third month in a row (here are the March and April results).
Are you ignoring TikTok? According to a recent study, TikTok ranks high in driving Gen-Z purchases. Teenagers are not the only people on TikTok, though. Women aged 35 and older are one of the top-converting age groups on the platform right now.
Will you be checking out any of these growth opportunities? Share in the comments.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Acquisition Channels for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🎧 Spotify has launched its Clubhouse rival, Spotify Greenroom.
📈 US IPOs have already broken 2020's record.
📸 Oil companies are now turning to social media influencers for marketing.
🥤 Coca-Cola lost $4B in market value after a soccer star moved a Coke bottle to the side.
💸 The UK is edging closer to being a cashless society, with only one in six payments currently made in cash.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
🤩 Social Tokens Can Deepen Audience Connection
from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley
Rally, a platform that helps creators launch their own coins, recently reported that its top creators drive $100K+ per week within their creator coin economies. Founders can strengthen user connection by employing social tokens and making it fun.
Why it matters
Social tokens give brands and fans deeper alignment. Shared interests become shared outcomes.
Problem
Communities have shallow alignment.
Solution
Social tokens are digital assets backed by the reputation of individuals, brands, and communities. Alignment is emotional and financial.
Players
Social tokens:
Platforms:
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Rally: Helps creators, artists, and community leaders launch creator coins.
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Fyooz: Helps creators launch "Star Tokens."
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Roll: Helps creators mint social tokens.
Tools:
Predictions
- Activist investors will do things to realize long and short positions on social tokens. Elon added Bitcoin to Tesla's balance sheet and announced that they'll accept Bitcoin (before backpedaling). Hedge funds start rumors to realize short positions. We have crypto and TradFi (traditional finance) examples. This will bleed into social tokens.
- Creator coins will turn into community coins. Members will take it upon themselves to add value to networks. Social tokens will either cross this chasm or perish with creators.
- Social tokens will be a competitive advantage for communities. Tokens will lead to more aligned groups. Incentives are underestimated.
- "Social Token Manager" will become a common title. Cooper Turley runs a talent agency. Jess Sloss runs SeedClub, an incubator. New form factors lead to new roles, like DAO politicians.
Opportunities
Build use cases for your social token. Examples include:
- Exclusive access to goods and services ($TAPE)
- Access to advisory services ($BLAP)
- Voting rights ($COBRA)
- DM responses ($DOC)
Build ways for others to earn tokens. Examples include:
Build tools and infrastructure:
Other ideas:
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Data as a Service firm that finds fast-growing creators and communities.
- Token-gated access to in-person events.
- Build a service for social tokens. Can Cooper represent everyone? Can Jess incubate every social token? No. We'll need more domain experts as the space grows.
Key lessons
- Social tokens are a cultural on-ramp to crypto, alongside NFTs. Financial and cultural doors lead to the same place. No-code is a gateway drug to code. Creator coins are a gateway drug to crypto.
- Art economics vs. product economics. Beeple sold a $69M NFT. Could he have sold $69M worth of books, games, or clothes? Maybe. Yet he sold $69M of status. Art economics can turn 1K true fans (and a few whales) into tens of millions of dollars, instead of tens of thousands. With leaderboards, social tokens may inherit properties of both worlds.
Haters
"What happens when creators pass away?"
Social tokens can outlive creators if they cross the chasm from creator to community coins.
"Emotional and financial alignment comes from stocks too."
How early can you invest? Can you have a material impact on public companies? Do you feel connected to other shareholders?
"Social tokens over-financialize social exchanges. Some things should not be turned into market exchanges."
Whether you're right or wrong, this is our new normal. You can try to ignore it, learn to cope, or leverage it. Creative destruction leads to good, bad, and productivity gains.
"What about the mental health of creators when coin values drop?"
Communities can help shoulder the burden if they cross the chasm. Public CEOs deal with this now. Granted, we have thousands of public companies compared to (potentially) millions of tokens. The law of large numbers is bound to lead to horror stories.
"This is a fad."
We have many billion-dollar (and soon) trillion-dollar cryptocurrencies launched by solo founders and small teams. Each has its own culture, community, and roadmap. Sound familiar?
"This is just like ICOs."
Most social tokens have use cases. Roll and Rally also use vesting to discourage pump and dump schemes.
Links
More reports
Go here to get the Trends Pro report. It contains 200% more insights. You also get access to the entire back catalog and the next 52 Pro Reports.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Trends.vc for more.
📰 Title Tip: Use Contradictions
by Ivan Romanovich
Contradictions spark interest, making people want to read more to understand why.
Discuss this story.
📒 Founder Shawn Wang Hit $121K+ in Book Revenue
by Shawn Wang
Hey indie hackers! I'm Shawn Wang, and I launched the Coding Career Handbook almost a year ago. Since then, I've been focusing on long tail revenue, while keeping my day job as a part-time creator.
Since launch (day, month, cheatsheet) I've been consistently hitting around $1-2K a week in infoproduct revenue with a high price point ($59 for just the book and $249 for the book, community, and behind-the-scenes). Here are some of my "long tail" secrets!
The background
I spent about 600 hours writing the book. I think creators should spend equal time marketing as they do creating. I probably still have a long way to go, especially considering that I plan to release a second book this year. Here's a screenshot from last month's revenue:
Off the top of my head, these things helped extend the tail:
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Run a Twitter: This is definitely extra work, and I'm not sure how many sales it helps to drive, but having a dedicated book Twitter helps me stay current in people's minds without making my main account too spammy. Being tagged is great for social proof.
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Run a podcast: I ran a podcast that helped extend the reach of content I'd already worked on.
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Run a paid community: My middle tier is a high signal/low noise Discord and Circle community focused on tech careers and part time creation. Monthly calls, meetups, and daily chats help drive word of mouth.
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Blog: 1/4 of my book was prior blog posts that did well, so adding a mention to the top of the post helps drive traffic for people who want to read more.
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Make appearances: I appear on other creators' platforms at least once a month; it turns out that podcasters like inviting authors to chat. The caveat here is that I've had zero luck cold pitching. The appearances that I did were all already scheduled.
What was your main distribution channel?
I don't check my stats, so I don't know what the main contributor was. However, I generally subscribe to the idea that people have to hear about you at least 3-4 times before they decide to buy your stuff. So I just put out as much as I can given the time limits that I have, and let the cards fall where they may.
Tips for starting and growing a community?
Show up every day, propose relevant topics, respond promptly when someone engages, and commit to doing it for at least a year. I'm almost at the point where my community is somewhat self-sustaining now because of putting in the hard work upfront.
I choose not to screen members because it would take more work than I could afford, but in an ideal world, I would interview everyone as they came in so that I could engage them better.
What would you do differently in regards to your book?
If I could do it again, I'd write a short book: Make it 100 pages, price it at $9, and art design the heck out of it (because everyone judges a book by its cover and illustrations). I made the mistake of aiming for the high end when I set my pricing.
In writing a book, you can either go for money or for reach. I naively went for money. The better play is to write your first book for reach, impress everyone, then write the second book for money.
You can find Shawn's private creator community here.
Discuss this story.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Darko, Priyanka Vazirani, Dru Riley, Ivan Romanovich, and Shawn Wang for contributing posts. —Channing
