US college athletics rake in $5 billion annually through the NCAA: - **The US Supreme Court just ruled that student-athletes** can now make money off of their names, images, and likenesses. This opens up the playing field for products geared towards
US college athletics rake in $5 billion annually through the NCAA:
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The US Supreme Court just ruled that student-athletes can now make money off of their names, images, and likenesses. This opens up the playing field for products geared towards helping them enter the creator economy.
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Since the widespread rollout of Apple's new privacy policy, mobile ad spending has decreased by 1/3. Here's how founders running ads can survive.
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Founder Rik Schennink hit $20,000 in monthly revenue with his JavaScript image editor. After being hit with a trademark violation letter, he rebranded and bounced back stronger than ever.
Want to share something with over 80,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🏈 A New Kind of Influencer
from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch
After a recent court decision and rule change, popular student-athletes in the US are next in line to become top earners in the creator economy. The new ruling opens up opportunities for founders that never existed before in the realm of products for student-athletes.
Updating the rules
The no-background: The NCAA is the official regulator of US collegiate athletics. Since 1906, its bedrock principle of amateurism banned student-athletes from making money off their names, images, and likenesses. That rule has been hotly contested in recent years, as college sports have become a multibillion-dollar business built on unpaid labor supplied by student-athletes.
Big bucks: College athletics is a lucrative industry in the US. NCAA Division 1 programs, especially men’s football and, to a lesser degree, basketball, rake in more than $5B per year. College football alone earns more than $4B in annual revenue among the top five conferences.
What changed: The US Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA cannot bar student-athletes from receiving modest payments. That ruling was quickly followed by an NCAA rule change that allows student-athletes to pursue compensation for their names, images, and likenesses without endangering their eligibility or scholarship status. The Supreme Court said, in part:
The NCAA’s business model of using unpaid student-athletes to generate billions of dollars in revenue for the colleges raises serious questions under the antitrust laws. In particular, it is highly questionable whether the NCAA and its member colleges can justify not paying student-athletes a fair share of the revenues on the circular theory that the defining characteristic of college sports is that the colleges do not pay student-athletes.
A new crop of creators
New creators: The NCAA’s rule change instantly created thousands of new influencers with rabid fanbases. Within days of the rule change, popular student-athletes began to ink endorsements, share their Cameo accounts, create brands, and sign deals with influencer agencies.
Big earning potential: Miami quarterback D'Eriq King (who’s now begun selling NFTs thanks to the rule change) told The New York Times that he believes plenty of athletes will make six figures online via endorsements, autographs, fans seeking exclusive content, and more. In 2020, Axios published a potential annual earnings chart of the most popular student-athletes, revealing that a handful could earn upwards of six figures from their social media followings.
Why it matters: One of the key creator economy trends that SignalFire is watching is how creators are gaining power in the media ecosystem. While influencer marketing is nothing new, student-athlete influencers will show more brands that creators are valuable assets in connecting with customers. As that trend grows, the creator economy will grow as well.
Rush to serve: Companies serving the creator economy are keen to cash in on their new prospective clients’ fame. INFLCR, a student-athlete brand-building software platform, partnered with Koji to help clients earn revenue via its link-in-bio tech. The University of Arkansas hired the marketing firm Captiv8 to create a guide for students entering the creator economy to capitalize on their fame. Athlete-endorsement tech firm Opendorse also launched a best practices guide for student-athletes.
What’s next: It took more than 115 years for the NCAA to budge on amateurism, and we're already seeing athletes quickly capitalizing on their entry into the creator economy. And this is just the beginning. You can expect to see student-athletes take creative paths to earning revenue through the ever-expanding opportunities for creators. Twitch seems like the next logical step for student-athletes, many of whom are big gamers.
Are student-athletes now a part of the creator economy? Please share your thoughts below!
Subscribe to Indie Economy for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
💼 You can now apply for jobs and create video resumes on TikTok.
💳 Visa has partnered with crypto companies for digital currency transactions.
🍻 NYC is considering creating 24-hour nightlife party districts.
🤑 Here’s why Gen Z is ditching traditional investment for crypto.
🐟 TikTok has a catfishing problem, and it's worse than you think.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
📱 Surviving Apple's New Privacy Policy
from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko
Over 70% of iOS devices have now upgraded to a version of iOS that implements Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy policy. As a result of the rollout, mobile ad spending has decreased by 1/3 in the past month. If you're running iOS ads, here's how to survive.
Apple's ATT
Analyst Eric Seufert is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to Apple advertising updates. He rarely does 'how to' articles, but when he writes them, they're really good.
In his latest article on adapting to ATT, he lists six things that you can do to survive:
- Overhaul the creative production process.
- Use interest group targeting.
- Bid on top-of-funnel conversions.
- Revisit the product’s user onboarding and landing pages.
- Invest requisite resources into a conversion value model.
- Get much better at modeling from restricted samples.
The bottom line: You'll be working with much more limited data, and with visitors whose interests are less relevant to your product than before. Things that worked in the past, like bidding on conversions and having extremely relevant landing pages, might not work as well now.
Shopify's new way to promote
Last week, Shopify held Shopify Unite 2021, a conference for developers. The company announced several new updates, including 0% fees for all Shopify apps making <$1M MRR. One thing stood out for me, however:
For developers looking to invest in accelerated growth, we’re excited to share that we’re expanding the capability of Shopify App Store ads by introducing awareness ads.
Search ads will now be called 'conversion ads.' Where conversion ads help target merchants with existing intent who are already searching for a specific type of app or have a certain need in mind, awareness ads can help inform merchants of opportunities they had not yet considered.
The opportunity: If you target e-commerce owners, Shopify is a channel to definitely consider. Also, if you're still in the idea phase and wondering what to start, consider app plugins. My Zero to Users research has shown that app exchanges like the Shopify App Store are a major acquisition channel for founders.
How to influence the influencers
Everyone's talking about the importance of influencer marketing, but nobody's talking about how to influence the influencers to have them promote you in the first place.
That's why this article by Amanda Natividad got my attention. She describes several interesting approaches on how to increase the chances of influencer choosing your product to promote:
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Your organic product placement will have a higher likelihood of success if you send your product to an influencer who has shown relevant interests.
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Do intel and contact people who work directly with influencers and celebrities. Examples: nutritionists, publicists, personal trainers, etc.
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Don't ignore the unboxing experience. YouTubers, for example, can build a lot of enthusiasm for a product through unboxings.
What are your thoughts on Apple's ATT? Share in the comments.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Acquisition Channels for more.
🧠 Harry's Growth Tip
from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry
When your product is unique, all you have to do is explain what you do as simply as possible.
Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.
Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.
🖥 Founder Rik Schennink's JavaScript Image Editor Hit $20K MRR
by Rik Schennink
Hi Indie Hackers! Rik Schennink here! I'm a 39-year-old frontend dev, and I live with my wife and two young kids in the south of The Netherlands (GMT+2).
Five years ago, I took a 70% pay cut and stopped all my frontend dev consulting work to pursue the dream of earning a living by selling web products. This year, I've finally reached the point where my income from products has surpassed my income as a consultant.
Pintura is a JavaScript Image Editor SDK. It's compatible with all popular frameworks, and helps your customers upload better imagery. I built Pintura in public on Twitter and Indie Hackers, and today, over 1K companies use it in their products, including Dropbox, Square, and ConvertKit. We recently hit $20K MRR.
AMA!
Isn't this just a frontend library?
In theory, this is indeed "just" a frontend library, and there are a lot of open source alternatives out there.
In reality, none of those open source image editors come close to the UX (and most of the functionality) that Pintura offers.
I differentiate mainly on user experience, and focus on a native look and feel on every device. Most open source solutions are very web-like, and don't work too well on mobile devices.
There are so many little 'gotchas' in this problem space. Some companies understand that having a developer use an open source solution (that they have to modify to their needs) is way more expensive than paying $649 per year for a solution that is, not only constantly maintained, but also includes direct and fast support for when things go wrong.
What's your customer acquisition strategy?
Initially, most customers came from me building FilePond in the open on Twitter. When I started building Pintura, people showed interest in it. Because of this, I immediately had some traction at launch.
I then advertised Pintura on the FilePond GitHub repositories (multiple repos for different frameworks) and product site. I'm now focusing on content marketing and affiliate partnerships.
Affiliate partnerships are perfect for bringing in good leads. I've partnered with a couple of developers of open source projects in the same space. Also, while content marketing is a long process, pumping out articles slowly increases traffic and eventually strengthens domain relevancy as well.
What's your top learning with content marketing?
I've found that the top performing articles are those that I base on Stack Overflow question popularity. I'll usually decide to write an article if I end up on Stack Overflow, instead of on a site with a definitive answer. This article on converting a file to a base64 DataURL is the perfect example. Its incoming traffic has slowly grown over time.
Other articles that I write are based mostly on fun CSS techniques that I encounter when building my products. They're usually hit or miss, but because content marketing can get a bit boring, I choose to write about the weird stuff that I enjoy, even if it doesn't do as well as other articles.
Why did you change your company name?
I received a trademark violation letter at the end of December 2020. They aren't fun. In short, the name "Doka" was already in use by a big corporation, and I had to stop using it.
"Doka" is a photography abbreviation for "dark room" in Dutch. I did search around a bit when I picked the name initially, but didn't find any comparable products.
I hired a lawyer who advised me to back down; the other company did have a case. I did not have the energy to pursue it any further anyway, so I decided to rebrand.
Here's what I learned from this situation:
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Don't communicate with the other party yourself. Have a lawyer handle it. As far as I understand, your own words can be used as evidence in a court case. This is not the case for communication handled by a lawyer.
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Before picking a name, search BOIP Trademarks register for EU trademarks, and The United States Patent and Trademark Office (US PTO) for US trademarks. Make sure existing registrations are in very different markets.
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Check different ways of spelling your company name. Make sure it's different enough in translations as well.
You can request a trademark clearance search to get a sense of whether your preferred name is free to use. These are usually done within a couple days, and the trademark registration process itself takes months.
Discuss this story.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Darko, Harry Dry, and Rik Schennink for contributing posts. —Channing