The company will invest $1 billion in creator programs through 2022: - **Facebook will pay eligible creators for hitting milestones** when they use the platform's creator and monetization tools. - **MrBeast Burger, now available in over 800 locations
The company will invest $1 billion in creator programs through 2022:
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Facebook will pay eligible creators for hitting milestones when they use the platform's creator and monetization tools.
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MrBeast Burger, now available in over 800 locations in the US, Canada, and the UK, is calling for collabs on menu items. Dru Riley believes that million-dollar, one-person businesses like this one are a unique way to provide value at scale.
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Founder Andrew Gazdecki recently hit $630K in annual revenue with MicroAcquire, and has achieved over 400% growth since his last IH AMA. This time, he answers his top-asked question: Why stop bootstrapping and go for funding?
Want to share something with over 80,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
💰 Facebook's $1B Creator Fund
from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch
Facebook recently announced its plans to spend $1B on creator programs through 2022. For founders, these new tools could be a gamechanger for growth.
Making the big bucks
What’s happening: Facebook is spending big bucks to attract creators with new features, including its Live Audio Rooms (a Clubhouse clone) and newsletter tool, Bulletin. It also offers monetization products like Stars, which lets creators earn money by connecting with fans during live videos, and Affiliate, a tool that lets creators earn a commission from tagging sponsored products. Its investment includes new programs that pay eligible creators for hitting milestones when they use Facebook’s creator and monetization tools. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:
We want to build the best platforms for millions of creators to make a living, so we're creating new programs to invest over $1B to reward creators for great content they create on Facebook and Instagram through 2022. Investing in creators isn't new for us, but I'm excited to expand this work over time. More details soon.
What’s unclear: Ultimately, Facebook's goal is to foster a creator ecosystem that competes with YouTube. Alphabet's video platform recently surpassed Facebook in popularity in the US, according to the Pew Research Center.
While media coverage has widely reported that the $1B effort aims to pay creators, it’s unclear how much of that budget will actually be paid out to them.
What it means: Social media platforms are going all out to court creators. TikTok, Spotify, Snapchat, Pinterest, Clubhouse, and others are all deploying significant funds to pay creators. This illustrates how seriously companies are taking the risk of creators moving their fans off of social networks to monetize them, and how threatened companies feel by YouTube's popularity.
A new effort: The new program seems to be part of a broader effort to reshape Facebook’s image in an attempt to move away from the platform's controversy during the 2020 US election season. With this new fund, Facebook seems to be making a significant move towards empowering users and founders. But it’ll be a steep hill to climb: The Pew Research Center reports that about 3 out of 5 Americans distrust Facebook.
Bonuses: Facebook said its new, invite-only bonus programs will reward creators for sharing content that people enjoy. Presumably, its reward is cash, and not just a thumbs up. One program that will offer cash is Instagram’s Reels Summer Bonus, which pays US-based creators to make engaging content on Reels. It's clear that Facebook wants to encourage users to create content that competes with YouTube's diverse creator ecosystem.
Influence pays
Companies are pouring billions into their efforts to serve creators:
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TikTok plans to pay creators $1B in the US over the next three years, and more than double that investment globally.
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Spotify launched a fund in June to pay creators for building content and community on its new Clubhouse competitor, Greenroom.
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Snapchat is paying creators at least $1M per day. The company claims it has created several millionaires as a result.
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YouTube created a $100M YouTube Shorts fund that will be doled out through 2022.
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Pinterest launched a $500K fund where creator-participants can earn $25K and access hands-on training to help them succeed on Pinterest.
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Clubhouse launched the Creator Grant Program that aims to support and grow its emerging Clubhouse creators. Clubhouse also unveiled features that allow for tipping, tickets, and subscriptions.
Marketers want influencers: A new report projects that advertisers will spend $3.7B this year on influencer marketing, a 34% increase from 2020. The firm anticipates that advertisers will dish out $4.6B to influencers on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Still peanuts: The Information’s Kaya Yurieff notes that, while the increase of influencer advertising is big news for the creator economy, it’s still a small component of social media advertising. The Information reports that advertisers are expected to spend $59B this year on social media ads, and this will grow to $80B by 2023.
What are your thoughts on Facebook's influencer roadmap? 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
🌳 This lab-grown weed was created to get people hungry, not high.
🧐 Pegasus spyware was found on the phones of 180 journalists worldwide.
💻 Japan has set a new internet speed record of 319 Terabits per second.
📈 Dogecoin trading volumes rose 1250% in Q2 amid booming interest.
🔌 Scientists have discovered how to charge devices using people's bodies.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
🤑 Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses
from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley
MrBeast Burger, now available in over 800 locations in the US, Canada, and the UK, is calling for collabs on menu items. Million-dollar, one-person businesses have advantages like flexibility and the ability to drill down on audience-first operations. This model could be key to helping founders provide value at scale.
Why it matters
These are strategies and tactics to build leverage.
Problem
You need to find a unique way to provide value at scale.
Solution
Ask yourself:
- What am I best at?
- What am I most interested in?
- What can I stick with the longest?
Find your highest point of leverage. Eliminate, automate, outsource, or delegate everything else.
Players
Predictions
Opportunities
- Find a way to provide unique value at scale. What can you stick with? Compounding takes time:
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Joe Rogan signed a $100M deal after a decade of podcasting.
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Annie Duke earns $50K per speech after decades of playing poker.
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Beeple sold an NFT for $69M after 5K consecutive days of releasing art.
- Build an audience first. This is a common pattern for million-dollar, one-person businesses. Paula Pant taught thousands to invest in real estate for free before earning $1M from her course. Trust can be monetized in many ways.
- Keep it simple. Mike Perham lets enterprise clients contact him only once per quarter for support. Sam Schrup says that his job is to eliminate support emails. Mike and Sam invest in scalable documentation. Complexity costs, especially for teams of one.
Key lessons
Haters
"These are million-dollar, one-person jobs, not businesses."
We looked at value ladders and the shift from leveraged to passive income. Play and work are often indistinguishable to those above. What feels like play to you and work to others?
"These people have help."
Mike reached $1M in 2017 as one person. Taylor made more than $1M each year from 2014 to 2017 with no employees. A purist may still be unsatisfied if these guys so much as had an accountant. We'll ignore the purists. Don't miss the lesson on leverage.
"These are outliers."
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Our examples emphasize judgment over innate abilities.
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: Raise Curiosity With an Anti-Trend
by Ivan Romanovich
When we encounter something unusual, we make assumptions. This increases curiosity as we predict what it might be. The curiosity causes us to read on to see if we are right.
Discuss this story.
💵 Founder Andrew Gazdecki Wants to Sell Your SaaS
by Andrew Gazdecki
Hey everyone! I'm Andrew Gazdecki, founder of MicroAcquire. This is a follow up from my last AMA, and my company has grown over 400% since then.
MicroAcquire is a startup acquisition marketplace that helps bootstrapped founders meet potential buyers without any commissions or fees. Here's where we are today:
AMA!
How did you get your first 1K users?
Cold calling and cold emailing. I didn't track conversion rates, but they were high. MicroAcquire was actually free for users for about a year, so there were customers waiting when it came time to release a premium plan.
When did you know that MicroAcquire would stick?
Honestly, I didn't think it would work, but I believed it should exist for startups and founders. Other options to get acquired lacked innovation. My secret is being passionate about the problem I'm solving. I truly, truly enjoy running MicroAcquire more than I can put into words. We're building MicroAcquire for startups, not buyers. Every decision we make is in favor of helping founders exit successfully.
Our purpose is to help founders succeed. Our mission is to build the world’s most founder-friendly startup acquisition marketplace. Our vision is to bring the entire startup acquisition market together with trust, transparency, innovation, efficiency, simplicity, and ease of use.
How did you define and grow your audience?
I was very specific in defining my audience: Startups, specifically bootstrapped ones. The more specific you can be with your customers in the early days, the better.
As far as growth, here's the secret: Content. Lots of it.
What's your biggest mistake?
Not hiring help on customer support sooner.
How do you handle sellers over-valuing their projects?
We're building a few data-driven valuation tools to help. One specifically will give a valuation range based on your revenue metrics. For example you connect Stripe, enter expenses, and we give a valuation range based on growth, churn, and revenue compared to other startups that have sold on the marketplace.
We've also released a lot of educational material showing founders how to properly value their startups.
What made you decide to stop bootstrapping and accept funding?
My personal ambition, and the opportunity to help thousands of founders. I've already sold a couple companies, so I'm looking to swing bigger this time.
Favorite books on business?
What's next for MicroAcquire?
We're going to be rolling out a lot of new third-party services to help founders get acquired:
- Ability to hire legal counsel
- Ability to hire an M&A advisor
- Ability to hire help with due diligence
- Data-driven valuations based on real market data
- Streamlining legal docs (LOI, NDA, etc.)
We have some big plans, but our goal is to build the Zillow of M&A.
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, Dru Riley, Ivan Romanovich, and Andrew Gazdecki for contributing posts. —Channing
