You can now apply to access Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces: - **Accepted creators will be able to charge** their audiences for bonus content, exclusive access, and hosted Spaces. A limited number of creators will be accepted into this first round.
You can now apply to access Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces:
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Accepted creators will be able to charge their audiences for bonus content, exclusive access, and hosted Spaces. A limited number of creators will be accepted into this first round.
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The total market value of crypto rose 400% last year, totaling $1.4T. For founders looking to launch a crypto company, these latest ideas on Kernal are a great place to start.
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Founder Bram Kanstein's Startup Stash launched in 2015, and went on to become the highest upvoted product of all time on Product Hunt. Check out his advice for founders who have a new idea.
Want to share something with nearly 80,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🤑 Twitter Opens Applications for Creator Monetization
from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch
Twitter has opened applications for creators to earn cash by offering bonus content to their audiences. Only a small number of creators will be accepted into this first round as Twitter tests the features further.
Twitter monetization is heating up
The skinny: Twitter's new features, Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces, aim to appeal to creators looking to monetize their content. Super Follows allows creators to offer extra access and bonus content at a fee, and Ticketed Spaces allows creators to sell tickets for the Spaces that they host.
What it means: The premium features reflect a broader shift among social media companies looking to enable their users to earn revenue on their platforms, rather than risking creators moving their fans to competitors' platforms.
What’s next: Twitter wants to test both features with a small applicant group. Those accepted will be able to charge a range of prices for their exclusive tweets and hosted conversations (more below).
Race to $7.5B: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey aims to more than double the company's revenue by 2023. Twitter plans to hit that target with Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces, and its premium service, Twitter Blue, which offers such features as undo tweet, reader mode, and bookmarked folders for $3 per month. Twitter Blue is now live in Canada and Australia.
Payouts
Users that leverage Super Follows can charge $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 per month for their bonus content.
Twitter won’t take more than a 3% share until you exceed $50K in lifetime earnings on either Ticketed Spaces or Super Follows. Once you hit $50K, Twitter’s cut increases tremendously: The company will take 20% of creators' total earnings.
Twitter’s payment processor may charge currency conversion or transfer fees to receive payouts, and it may charge a fee for accessing the money. TechCrunch notes that both Apple's App Store and Google Play charge in-app purchase fees of 30%. Therefore, after hitting $50K, creators will only be keeping half of their earnings.
For Ticketed Spaces, hosts can charge as low as $1 or as high as $999. Twitter doesn’t offer specifics on group size limitations.
Qualifications
Eligibility criteria varies for Super Follows and Ticketed Space applicants.
To apply for Super Follows, you must:
- Be 18 or older
- Be a US citizen (for now)
- Have 10K+ followers
- Maintain a minimum of 25 Tweets every 30 days
To apply for Ticketed Spaces, you must:
- Be 18 or older
- Be a US citizen (for now)
- Have 1K+ followers
- Have hosted at least three Spaces within the last 30 days
Applications
You can find applications for Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows in the Twitter app under the new “Monetization” tab.
Here’s more info on Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces, including full criteria and information on applying.
Will you apply for Twitter's new monetization features? Share your experience in the comments!
Subscribe to Indie Economy for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🦸♀️ Marvel will offer rare comic collectibles as NFTs.
👟 Nike shares have risen to an all-time high after a reported $50B in sales.
💉 This blood test can detect 50 types of cancers, and is ready for release.
🏦 Citigroup has launched a new unit to help clients manage crypto investments.
🎤 Snap has closed a deal with UMG to bring major artists to Snapchat.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
💡 Crypto-Based Startup Ideas on Kernal
from Startup Ideas on Kernal by Joel Hansen
As crypto gets hotter, firms are struggling to keep up with hiring needs to manage the $1.4T (in Q4 2020) market. For founders looking to launch a crypto startup, these ideas can get you on the right track to strike while the iron is hot!
Hacker News for crypto
The reason: So many great ideas come from Hacker News, but there isn't a space for the crypto wave to shine. Cut through the noise, skip the jargon on pricing swings, and give readers the meaty news on what's happening in crypto. Spots like Reddit and Twitter threads are too obsessive of changes in price, and miss the mark on what's actually happening in the world of crypto.
The business: Help build a crypto-focused Hacker News for people to find and share strategies of what's happening in this huge wave.
Next step ideas:
- Get Pomp (or another big name) behind it.
- Start looking into a community keyword search algorithm.
- Scope out forum groups that are looking for a deeper dialogue or newsletter round-up.
NFT fund portfolio
The reason: Everyone knows that the NFT space is blowing up, but unless you're an artist, tycoon, or crypto genius, you probably don't know where to start. Build or invest in a platform that solves this issue!
The business: Just like an ETF or index trackers, you could pool your funds together to invest in a consolidated portfolio of NFTs that one of your trusted peers manages. On the flip side, you could also DAO up and start your own fund. This could be filtered by type of NFT (genre, style, format, artist, brand, etc.), risk level (established NFT creators vs. newcomers), origin, etc.
Blockchain-based IPO for music artists
The reason: Instead of musicians signing with a record label and getting a cash advance in return for giving a share of the royalties to the label, musicians could sell a share of their royalties publicly on a platform, and buyers would get the royalties in proportion to the amount invested.
This idea could also be applicable to writers who wish to sell a share of their book ahead of its independent launch, as famed writer Tao Lin once did.
Want to test out Kernal, or share a startup idea to get featured in next week’s issue? Sign up here or drop me a line at hello@joelhansen.com.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Startup Ideas on Kernal for more ideas.
🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week
📈 From one to 767 paying users in three weeks, no marketing. Posted by Baptiste Arnaud.
🚨 Somebody stole our work, but the community came to the rescue. Posted by Dagobert Renouf.
📧 My personal experience with cold email. Posted by Siddhita Upare.
🤩 Side business sold in five hours to another indie hacker! Posted by Rosie Sherry.
📝 Don't just build in public, be strategic. Posted by Welly Mulia.
📱 Posting on social media every day. Posted by Ben Issen.
Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.
🏅 Founder Bram Kanstein Holds a Product Hunt Record
from the Listen Up! IH newsletter by Ayush Chaturvedi
Founder Bram Kanstein launched Startup Stash in 2015, and it went on to become the highest upvoted product of all time on Product Hunt.
Startup Stash is a curated directory of tools and resources for startups and entrepreneurs. Bram launched it on Product Hunt as a free resource, and sold it in 2017 to start working on NoCodeMVP, an actionable validation course for founders.
The origin story
Bram was an early user of Product Hunt, and began posting about products frequently. Many of the products he shared would end up becoming "product of the day." This helped Bram connect with many founders, as they would often thank him for helping them gain exposure.
He began collecting startup resources and tools, and his bookmarks list ballooned to over 600 links. He tidied it up to 400 startup resources, then launched it as a directory site on Product Hunt.
He launched it as a basic WordPress site with 40 orange square blocks, each listing a specific category of tools:
The point was not to make it beautiful, but to make it useful and provide value, Bram says:
I really think that if you deliver value with your product, people don’t really care what it looks like or what it was built with.
Bram believes that what skyrocketed Startup Stash to the top of Product Hunt was his passion and empathy for helping founders access essential resources:
Launch it to the right people. Talk to those people in the right tone of voice. Show that you understand their problem and how you’re serving them.
The course
After selling Startup Stash in 2017, Bram started working on his NoCodeMVP course. He posted a landing page on BetaList and started collecting emails, gaining a list of 2.5K+ pre-launch subscribers for the course. He also talked about the course on Reddit, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
One user asked Bram for some real examples of the course modules, saying that it wasn't clear on the landing page. Bram replied by sharing the first eight videos of the course for free:
The eventual goal of NoCodeMVP is to really help people get started, and also help them figure out if they’re working on the wrong idea."
Lesson for indie hackers
Here's Bram's advice:
If you have an idea, [find] the smallest thing you can do to learn the fastest about it. Ask yourself 'how can I determine if I should pursue this idea four weeks from now?' The answer to that question shows you what to do from tomorrow through the next four weeks.
Check out the full episode on the Indie Hackers Podcast here.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Listen Up! IH for more.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?
Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.
Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.
Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Joel Hansen, and Ayush Chaturvedi for contributing posts. —Channing
