IndieHackers - 🗞 What's New: Make your tweets work

Twitter has published its Agency Playbook:

• The playbook details how to run a successful Twitter campaign. With Twitter users being 53% more likely than the general population to buy a product first, founders can use these tips to get ahead.
• Are you the person who can't stop talking during a movie? With its revenue-sharing model, film commentary startup SideStream claims to help creators monetize 43x faster than ad-based platforms.
• Founder Ai Ching Goh bootstrapped 2 companies for the last 10 years. Her top tip? Always make time to learn, even if you have a million other things to do.

Want to share something with nearly 85,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

📱 Make Your Tweets Work

from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko

Twitter has published its Agency Playbook, a checklist on how to run a successful campaign on the platform. For founders looking to grow their audiences, this advice from Twitter is a goldmine.

Twitter's tweet advice

The news: Twitter's Agency Playbook is out, and it details how to run a successful Twitter campaign. It includes some pretty interesting insights on creating Twitter ads. Here are some of Twitter's best practices:

1. Keep tweets short with not many hashtags. Try to stick to 50-100 characters per tweet.

2. Mix the types of posts that you create. Twitter rewards variety. The company has provided an interesting calendar with tweet ideas that you can use:

The opportunity: According to Twitter, its users are 53% more likely than the average population to buy a product first. In other words, they're early adopters. If you want to get started on the platform but don't know what to post, these tips from Twitter are a great place to start.

Pay less for ads

The news: Business Insider has published an interesting article on the rising ad costs across platforms. The publication talked with various agencies, trying to estimate the year-over-year increases of different platforms:

• Google: 108% increase.
• YouTube: 108% increase.
• TikTok: 92% increase.
• Facebook: 89% increase. The average CPM was $11.
• Amazon: 20% increase between the first and second quarter, for an estimated 80% per year.
• Snap: 64% increase.

The bad news: Yes, ads are getting more expensive.

The opportunity (and good news): There's an interesting correlation between not-so-popular acquisition channels and the increase in cost. Amazon and Snap were at the bottom of the list, for example. I couldn't get any data for Twitter or Microsoft, but my guess is that it's between 50-80% as well.

If you want to pay less for ads, it might be a good idea to include a less popular platform in your mix if you're a bootstrapper. We'll cover one "less popular" platform below, which is actually way bigger than you think...

Amazon ads

In one particular area, Amazon is bigger than LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Twitter combined. It's not retail. It's not the cloud. It's ads.

The news: Amazon's ads business has grown by a whopping 87% year-over-year, and netted more than $7.9B last quarter. Just for a comparison, here's how much Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn made in ads last quarter:

• Twitter: $1.19B.
• LinkedIn: $1B.
• Snap: $982M.

Amazon made more than all of these three combined in the last quarter. Think about that.

The opportunity: Amazon Ads is a huge paid acquisition channel. Fortunately for us, it's self-serve (available for all to register), and most of it is performance-based. This means that we can directly measure the ad performance after creating an ad.

Digital products? Yes, you can use Amazon to promote digital products. Just type "antivirus" or "learn German" into its search bar, and you'll see a bunch of sponsored posts. A lot of e-books also promote themselves using Amazon Ads.

You could create a combo, for example, where you sell a Kindle e-book along with a software license. When people buy the e-book, they get the license for free. You can then promote the e-book using Amazon Ads, bidding for relevant keywords in your niche.

What's your top tip for making tweets work? 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

👀 Over $600M worth of crypto was stolen in a massive digital heist.

🎶 China plans to ban karaoke songs with "illegal" content.

🏙 Emirates has shot a new ad on top of the world's largest building.

💳 Venmo credit card users can now turn cash back rewards into crypto.

🍺 This vegan, alcohol-free protein beer is meant to aid muscle growth.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🎬 SideStream is the Twitch For Movies

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Live film commentary startup SideStream is winning creators over with its revenue-sharing model. The platform says that SideStream creators can generate earnings 43x faster than on ad-based platforms.

Lights, camera, talking!

SideStream for creators: SideStream is like Twitch, but for movies. SideStream hosts can browse a library of films, schedule an event, and sell tickets to fans that want to hear their commentary. The company is tapping into the $50B creator economy, where more than 50M people generate revenue on various platforms.

The advantage: While other streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ allow co-viewing, they greatly limit the number of participants. On SideStream, hosts can launch parties with as many as 10K people. Epic Meal Time founder Harley Morenstein, whose cooking show is known for creating high-calorie meals, has already publicly endorsed the service ahead of the platform's launch this fall.

Commentary-as-a-Service: It's an open secret that people don't care what show or game their favorite influencer is streaming, as long as it includes commentary. In the end, people are paying for the influencer more than the action on screen.

How it works: SideStream’s movie prices are fixed, but hosts decide their commentary fee for an event. After selling three tickets, a host receives 75% of the total net proceeds of each ticket sold. Up to 10K viewers can join an event to interact with a host onscreen. Viewers can independently adjust the volume of both the host, and the movie, to their preference. Horror appears to be the most popular film genre on SideStream.

Film buffs and more: One of my favorite parts of attending the Sundance Film Festival is the ability to hear directly from the creators of a film. It offers an intimate opportunity to learn fascinating background information, behind-the-scenes insight, and unique perspectives that you’d never otherwise hear. It seems that SideStream could benefit from that same exclusive allure, as well as influencers’ own perspectives on the films their fans love.

Revving up the revenue

Hybrid model: SideStream doesn’t want to compete with Netflix, Hulu, or Disney+. Instead, the company sees an opportunity to become the first platform to harness the power of its revenue-sharing model that doesn't force hosts to compete for ad dollars. SideStream says that it will benefit both large- and small-scale influencers by helping them generate earnings 43x faster than on ad-based platforms like YouTube or Twitch. Neal Tiles, SideStream cofounder and CEO, had this to say:

Traction: In December, SideStream entered into a partner licensing agreement with Universal Studios, allowing the platform to offer popular movie titles like Scarface, Happy Gilmore, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Ted. The company also earned a development grant from Android Television’s Innovation initiative in June 2020, opening it up to millions of customers around the globe.

SideStream investors: SideStream is running a crowdfunding campaign through August 2021. 294 people have already invested more than $242K.

Replicate Twitch? If SideStream can model Twitch’s success, it’ll soon be a household name. Twitch generated about $300M in ad revenue in 2020. And in just the first quarter of 2021, Twitch generated about $103M through in-app purchases worldwide.

Historical models: Mystery Science Theater 3000, an American television comedy series, developed a cult following in the 1980s that persists to this day. Created by comedian Joel Hodgson, MST3K fans tuned in to hear commentary from human and robots hosts on Comedy Central and The Sci-Fi Channel. A recent crowdfunding effort will revive the show once again on Gizmoplex.

Why it matters: Creators are steadily gaining power in the media ecosystem. Fans want a personal connection to gamers, creators, and influencers, as opposed to interacting with faceless media corporations, according to SignalFire. SideStream is yet another opportunity for creators to gain influence and generate revenue.

Would you host on SideStream? Share your thoughts below.

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

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

The first thing you do below the fold is to make concrete the value that you promised above the fold.

The second thing you do is to handle your customer's biggest objections. Group together recurring objections, and use their own words to handle them.

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

💲 Ai Ching Goh Has Bootstrapped For the Past Ten Years

by Ai Ching Goh

Hey everyone! I am Ching, cofounder of Piktochart and Piktostory. Piktochart (founded in 2011) is mostly known as an infographic maker, and we help professionals communicate impactful stories. Piktostory (founded in 2021) is an easy video content creation tool that focuses on repurposing.

I've been quietly following the progress of a few startups here, and thought I'd share our 10-year journey! We're a four-day work-week company with a fully remote team of 40+, and have been bootstrapped for 10 years.

AMA!

How did you get your first few users?

Hustle, and a lot of it. I reached out to everyone I knew, including friends and previous contacts at agencies. I also went to lots of startup competitions to get advice and a feel for the product's weakest points. I did everything possible to come up with content (I learned SEO as I went along), but 10 years ago, I was just pumping content without much research.

Did you ever consider getting funding?

Many times! In 2014, we got term sheets. We ultimately decided not to go down that route because my cofounder and I had no intent to build the next unicorn. Our intent was to scale the business in a profitable way and build products that people would love. We also strive to make it possible for everyone working for the company to maintain healthy, balanced lives.

When did you know it was time to hire your first employee?

We actually hired the first developer and graphic designer at the same time. We came off of Demo Day and knew that we had to keep building. We went the normal route of hiring by posting on job boards and interviewing people face-to-face. I now cringe when I think about the questions I used to ask! I wasn't very good at making it clear what the company was going to be and not going to be. That, my friend, is not a smart move.

As founders, we've got to keep reminding ourselves why we exist, and communicate that back to the rest of the team.

What's your demographic for Piktostory and does it overlap with Piktochart?

We were looking into storytelling and trying to find another medium. The contenders were between no-code immersive websites and videos.

We went for videos in the end because, true to the reason of promoting storytelling, we felt that people were looking to connect in an authentic and real way. Nothing beats videos for that. This thought came pre-pandemic!

Piktostory is geared for the individual video content creators: Coaches, founders, course creators, etc. Piktochart has a wider spectrum of users, but there is an overlap with Piktostory's users too!

What was your journey to your first $1K?

It was pretty fast actually. We entered beta in December 2011, and had already gotten some press coverage. When we launched around March 2012, there were free users who were waiting to pay for the Pro tier, which gave them more templates and assets. I remember that there were three paying customers on the first day we went live!

The earlier days were filled with growth-hacking before that term was even coined. I did a lot of content marketing, invested somewhat in SEO and PR, and basically went from blog to blog requesting that they review our product. No special sauce, just the normal hustle.

Our first 1K paying customers was a bit of a hack as well. At that time (June 2012), we were approached by Appsumo. We figured that there was nothing to lose to get our product in front of 500K early adopters (at that time). We signed up, and I believe we were one of the best selling products that year.

We did not repeat any lifetime deals after 2012, so those were really the early adopters. This helped to do a few things for us:

• Gave us the confidence to keep going.
• We got a lot of feedback, which ultimately led to a form of product-market fit.
• The people who were using us also referred us to their friends, and word-of-mouth was the highest source of traffic we got in the first year.
• I singlehandedly answered support tickets through the end of 2012, which was great. I got a lot of feedback, digested it, and worked nimbly with a very small team.

Any advice for new founders?

1. Validate constantly: Test your best ideas in the smallest way possible.
2. Know exactly what you want to be: This includes how big, how fast, what makes you unique as a team, product, brand perspective, etc.
3. Don't stop learning: Make time to keep growing. Read, get a coach, listen to a podcast. Commit to learning even if it seems like you have a million other things on your plate.

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 Darko, Priyanka Vazirani, Bobby Burch, Harry Dry, and Ai Ching Goh for contributing posts. —Channing