🗞 What's New: Spotify's new creator fund

Creators can now register for acceptance into the program:

• The Spotify Greenroom Creator Fund incentivizes creators to create content for the platform's Clubhouse rival. Spotify plans to begin payouts later this summer.
• SEO software startup Moz has been acquired by iContact after raising $29.1 million in capital. Dru Riley highlights how agencies like Moz can help founders earn income faster than other business models, with less risk.
• Founder Blake Emal went from 600 Twitter followers to 45,000 in less than a year. Check out his top lessons on growth and sandwiches.

Want to share something with nearly 80,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🤑 Spotify's New Creator Fund

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Spotify has launched its creator fund, becoming the latest giant company to do so. The platform is tapping into the creator economy by incentivizing users to create unique content.

Spotlight on Spotify

What’s new: The Stockholm-based streaming giant recently debuted Spotify Greenroom, its live-audio competitor to Clubhouse. Spotify acquired the Locker Room app in March for ~$50M to compete in the increasingly crowded live-audio space. Functionally, Greenroom appears indistinguishable from Clubhouse. Spotify touts it as a way to give music fans an opportunity to engage with their favorite artists directly on the platform:

Greenroom Creator Fund: Spotify also launched the Greenroom Creator Fund, which aims to pay creators for building content and community on the Greenroom app. The fund hasn't yet disclosed how much money it has earmarked for creators. It's currently open for creator registration, and will begin payouts later this summer.

Payments: Spotify has been tight-lipped on the details, offering only that payments will be:

If it’s similar to Spotify’s payment schedule for music artists, creators can expect a measly $.003 to $.005 per stream (half the rate of Apple Music). Lack of transparency is also a huge issue. Spotify says that it “will contact you if you have earned money," and that “not everyone will earn a payment.”

What it means: Spotify joins a growing list of tech and social media companies, including Snapchat, Pinterest, and Clubhouse, that are offering payments to creators. As the space becomes more competitive, creators stand to benefit from increasing rates. Billions of dollars are flowing into the creator economy, and its growth is only just beginning.

Creator funds

Here’s a quick list of companies with funds aimed at creators across various mediums:

• TikTok started its creator fund in 2020 with $200M. It plans to grow that to $1B in the US over the next three years, and more than double that investment globally.

• Snapchat is paying out at least $1M per day to creators. The company claims it has created several millionaires as a result, including high-schooler Katie Feeney and 19-year-old Cam Casey.

• YouTube created a $100M fund for its new feature, YouTube Shorts, to be doled out through 2022.

• Pinterest launched a $500K fund in which creator-participants can earn $25K, and receive well as hands-on training to help them succeed on Pinterest.

• Clubhouse launched the Creator Grant Program, which aims to support and grow its emerging Clubhouse creators. Clubhouse also unveiled features that allow for tipping, tickets, and subscriptions.

What are your thoughts on the explosion of creator funds? Please share in the comments!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Economy for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🚘 A flying car has completed its first inter-city test flight in Slovakia.

📧 Facebook has launched its newsletter platform, Bulletin.

🏦 This crypto company wants to give a share to every person on Earth.

🦾 GitHub and OpenAI have launched an AI tool that generates its own code.

🧐 Norway is asking influencers to disclose when their pictures are retouched.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

💼 Agencies Could be the Solution to Your SaaS Problems

from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley

SEO software startup Moz has been acquired by iContact, an email marketing service, after raising $29.1M in capital. Dru Riley shows founders how agencies can help you earn income faster than other business models, with less risk.

Why it matters

Agencies help founders earn income faster. You may also find valuable problems to solve at scale with SaaS, or earn equity in clients.

Problem

Companies have short-term needs, lack internal skills, need to scale fast, or need to fill a fractional role such as CFO or CTO.

Solution

Agencies help companies solve these problems without hiring and managing large teams.

Players

No-code:

• 8020: Move faster without code.
• 021: Get your MVP built in 30 days.
• People First: No-code design studio.
• Ideable: Build the right product faster.
• Idea Link: No-code websites and apps.

Marketing:

• Digitalina: Generate leads from social media.
• Tetriz: Get more leads with sales automation.
• Optdcom: Data-driven digital marketing agency.
• Contentus: Content strategy and original content.
• Digital Voices: Influencer marketing campaigns with YouTube creators.

Storytelling:

• Lemonly: Get help explaining your story.
• Scribe: Get help writing, publishing, and marketing your book.
• Venture Narrative: Helps founders write narratives to inspire employees and attract customers.

Operations:

• ZenPilot: Operations experts for marketing agencies.
• Luhhu: Automate processes to save time and money.
• Automate Labs: Streamline and automate your company operations.

Predictions

• Agency owners will go from services to SaaS: See Bildr, Memberspace, Mailchimp, and Basecamp. All were agencies before valuable problems were found and solved at scale.
• Platforms will try to attract agencies to their ecosystems. See partner programs (Shopify Plus Partners), certifications (AWS), and affiliate programs (Quickbooks). Platforms can improve their ecosystems while maintaining high margins.

Opportunities

• Show your work. Your portfolio lowers doubt about whether you can do the job. You build authority as you share. Eddie Lobanovskiy gained 200K+ followers by posting his work on Dribbble.
• Build reusable systems and assets to become more efficient. Agencies sell on value and become more efficient over time. Jeff Lerner earns $100K+ per month running the same playbook for local personal injury attorneys. Stodzy has a similar model.
• Find valuable problems to solve with high-leverage business models. Moz emerged from an SEO agency. Spiffy emerged from a marketing agency. Drrac went from cloning websites to selling courses.
• Use inbound marketing to build your top of funnel. Shane Young's 100K-subscriber YouTube channel guides clients to PowerApps911. Brent Weaver gets 5–15 qualified leads from each talk he gives. Dan Runcie has a free newsletter and consults. Pick a channel and focus.
• Build a value ladder. Create do-it-yourself, done-with-you, and done-for-you offers. Flavio has a blog (free), books ($), courses ($$), and bootcamps ($$$). Prospects will trust you more when you've made and delivered on promises before. Books and courses also have zero marginal costs.

Key lessons

• Agencies have less risk (and reward) than SaaS companies. They also have higher customer concentration and marginal costs. But it's a good place to start.
• Common paths to agency ownership include working at an agency, being an expert employee, working for a platform such as Webflow, or outsourcing from day one.
• Agencies have high lifetime values and can justify making sales that don't scale. They can send personalized messages, do spec work, and answer one-on-one questions.

Haters

"This business model sucks."

Agencies are far from perfect, but may be underestimated. Productized services are valuable and sellable businesses. Agency owners can find valuable problems to solve with digital products, SaaS, and marketplaces. Some take equity in clients.

"Location-adjusted wages won't last. What about timezones and culture?"

Premiums can be captured based on timezone and cultural preferences. Cultural understanding matters more when writing copy versus code. Some teams are timezone agnostic.

Links

• Built to Sell: A business novel on an agency owner who built systems and sold his business.
• Systems for Growing Your Digital Agency: Standardize your sales process.
• Ensuring Stability for Digital Agencies: Build recurring revenue streams.

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 a Common Problem to Ask a Question

by Ivan Romanovich

Use a common problem to pose a question:

Discuss this story.

🚀 Founder Blake Emal's Insane Twitter Growth

by Blake Emal

Hi, I'm Blake Emal. Let me take you back to September 2020.

• I had ~600 followers on Twitter. Probably mostly bots or family members.
• I couldn’t figure that app out to save my life.
• I wanted to grow an audience so that I could share my projects with the world.

Zip forward with me to the present day:

• I have 45K followers on Twitter.
• I got my dream job as CMO of Copy.ai.
• I started another company on the side: Float transforms your Notion doc into an online course instantly.

Happy to answer any and all questions you may have, especially about sandwiches!

How did you grow your Twitter account so fast?

I've been creating content online for six years. I've put in a lot of effort, and figured out a LOT of things that didn't work.

I'm a huge believer that quantity leads to quality. I prioritized publishing 10 tweets per day at first. Then, I collected data on the topics and formats that seem to click with my audience. With consistency, your Twitter account will slowly snowball. Don't get discouraged by long periods of very slow growth.

Last note here: Create based on formats and topics that you LOVE. If you try to chase trends, you'll get bored and quit. The initial uptick in traction isn't worth it.

Do you schedule your tweets?

I only schedule threads and tweets that I want to send early in the morning for my overseas audience. Most of my single tweets are spur of the moment and don't involve a ton of planning or scheduling. When I do schedule, I use Typefully.

I try to keep my tweets as short as possible. I edit down at least 50% of my original tweet, but I don't follow any strict code for character count.

What advice do you have for someone who's brand new to Twitter?

1. Spend 30 minutes per day leaving thoughtful comments on related accounts (preferably on accounts just barely above you in follower count).

2. Tweet many times per day (around 10) to start learning what topics and formats seem to work better. Double down on those and scrap the rest for now.

3. DM five new people every day. Don't ask for anything. Just start a conversation and see what kind of content you can create for them.

How did you drive followers to your app without being too sales-y?

The Float lifetime deals (LTD) were sold only to a limited group of people (about 80 customers).

We sold about half just from random tweets that I put out, saying "I have X amount of LTDs available. Who wants one?" The other half came from a livestream that I did with a very popular Notion community. I did a demo and presentation, and the LTD was the only call-to-action.

What kind of content performs best for you?

The types of content I've mostly leaned on are:

• Deep dive threads on actionable marketing advice.
• Short, punchy tweets about marketing, startups, and productivity.
• Build in public updates about my current side projects.

For metrics, I rely heavily on the rate at which users that visit my profile actually hit the follow button.

Likes and retweets help me gauge certain topics that may merit longer-form content, but they aren't the core metrics.

What's your favorite sandwich?

Excellent question. Having lived in both France and the US, I need to give a sandwich for both.

France: Jambon-Beurre Parisien. Simple, elegant, and delicious!

US: Philly cheesesteak.

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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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, Dru Riley, Ivan Romanovich, and Blake Emal for contributing posts. —Channing