MAY 14, 2021

Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-a-week newsletter for content creators who want to be or already are content entrepreneurs. We talk aspiration, inspiration, revenue, audiences, tech, trends, and more to help your content business thrive.

full tilt

Creator Coins Are Great Community-Building Tool

What’s the news?

As the cryptocurrency market explodes, creator coins are becoming a burgeoning opportunity for content entrepreneurs.

What are creator coins?

Well, like most things in the crypto world, there isn’t a single definition or use case. For example, BitClout sells coins as investments in a celebrity’s fame. While Rally lets creators sell their own coins, determining how they distribute.

Why does that matter to a content entrepreneur?

Well, a model like Rally can be a great way to build and engage your community. (At this stage, a model like BitClout probably doesn’t matter to you.)

Tell me more

We’ll let Bremmer Morris, Rally’s CMO and CRO, do the honors. Here’s how he explained it to John Koestier in his TechFirst podcast:

“Each of these artists have an existing community of followers and people who are really excited about what they do. But right now, there’s not really a mechanism for those followers to show their support and also to participate in the economy of these artists.”

Gregarious Narain, who has a Rally coin, tells John in Forbes: “Creator coin feels like the wrong name. I think of them as community coins.”

The Tilt Talk and Advice

Can a content creator cash in?

In a way. Use them as a tool to cultivate and engage your community. Let people who have your coins gain benefits before asking them to redeem their coins.

How so?

The options are limited only by your creativity.

JVCKJ, the solo brand for Jack Johnson of the widely popular duo Jack & Jack, created the $PSTL coin. He invited holders to an exclusive Discord listening party before the release of his newest single.

Timeless and Timely newsletter publisher Scott Monty has a detailed program. Holders of 50 or more $MONTY coins get complimentary access to a premium edition of his newsletter. Coin holders also can purchase opportunities such as becoming a monthly sponsor of the newsletter or getting two tweets about themselves.

What else?

The Most Famous Artist (TMFA) recently offered up 20 $ART coins to a community member to develop 20 emojis for its Discord channel.

To entice his Facebook Game Development Group to move to Discord, Dave Young launched his $PLAY coin. Holders can vote on games to be developed or features to be added to a game. They also can join a premium incubator community or a professional gameplay coaching program.

What about The Tilt?

We’re bullish about creator coins too. The Tilt founder Joe Pulizzi sees $TILT as a long-term path to run the community’s economy. Our coins have been used to reward people for recruiting new subscribers (see below if you want in), giving honoraria to speakers in his Content Inc. book tour, and more.

What should you do today about creator coins?

While you’re building an audience, create your creator coin strategy. How would it operate? What benefits would be attractive to your community? Document all the possibilities.

– Ann Gynn

To learn more about how creator coins are working and how you can benefit from them, read the longer story.


YouTube Creator and Novelist Makes Surprising Addition to Her Content Business

Entrepreneur: Allison Raskin

Biz: Emotional Support Lady | Just Between Us (with partner Gaby Dunn)

Tilt: Bringing comedy and authenticity to breakups, mental health, and more

ESL Channel: Instagram Followers: 37.8K

JBU Channel: YouTube Followers: 679K Total Views: 174M

Rev Streams: YouTube, books, podcast acquisition, sponsored content, Patreon

Our Favorite Actionable Advice

  • Ask “Why should this content exist in the world?”: You must have a good reason to motivate you to create and your audience to follow you.
  • View yourself as a storyteller, not a content creator: That shift in thinking will lead you to create narratives that resonate better with your audiences.
  • Bring your audience along: Allison built a following at Buzzfeed. She brought them along with Just Between Us and now Emotional Support Lady.

Some of the Story:

Allison Raskin is best known for her comedy YouTube channel, Just Between Us, which she co-hosts with her former Buzzfeed co-worker and best friend Gaby Dunn. Launched in 2014, the channel has grown to over 675K subscribers.

But the 31-year-old content entrepreneur isn’t limited to YouTube videos. She recently launched a solo content brand – Emotional Support Lady, which includes an Instagram account and Patreon page. And she also creates content for her personal Instagram account (239K).

Allison and Gaby worked together as writers at Buzzfeed, where they also created popular videos. After quitting their jobs to do a pilot for MTV, they had more time to make more videos for their Just Between Us channel. “We both had a desire to make stuff. We thought of a relatively easy concept to turn out weekly and stuck with it,” Allison says.

Their channel features comedic and authentic videos about breakups, mental health, and sketches.

“Working at Buzzfeed certainly helped me get an initial audience, and then, after that, it was about putting out content consistently and doing my best to have a clear brand so people would have a reason to follow,” Allison says.

Allison and Gaby also have co-written two New York Times bestselling fiction novels and added the Just Between Us podcast in 2019.

Allison has always separated herself from the oversaturated influencer market by flaunting her authentic personality. Recently, she took her brand one step further by launching Emotional Support Lady, starting the Instagram account shortly before her fiancé left her. Her posts include stick-figure doodles about grieving an abrupt breakup, experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and motivational approaches that have helped her heal.

The Instagram account has grown to almost 38K followers. Allison also launched the Emotional Support Lady Patreon service, which now has 750 subscribers.

Her advice to creators who want to build and grow an audience? She says you could ask this question: “Why should this content exist in the world?”

If you have a good answer, people will follow you because your content is serving a purpose in their lives. Once you have a good answer, the next step is to do it. “Make stuff. And be open to things. Once you start to view yourself as a storyteller vs. a content creator in one specific type of medium (like YouTube vs. TikTok) more and more opportunities will present themselves.”

– Bonnie Azoulay

All the Story: To learn more about Allison Raskin, the content entrepreneur, and Just Between Us and Emotional Support Lady, the content businesses, check out the longer story.

Know a content creator who’s going full tilt? DM us or email ann@thetilt.com.


quick talk

Caught on … Entrepreneur

“Wantrepreneurs don’t build thriving businesses; hard workers and grinders do.” – Jeff Shuford


things to know

Money
  • YouTube loves on Shorts: YouTube takes $100M to take on TikTok. It plans to pay creators who craft Shorts, its less-than-year-old short-form video experience for creators who shoot short, catchy videos on their mobile phones. (CNet)
    Tilt take: It’s an interesting move considering YouTube’s recent seemingly reduction in pre-roll ad revenue for creators of videos less than two minutes.
  • Partner up through social: Half of marketers say they use social media to grow business partnerships, according to the 2021 Social Media Industry Report. (Social Media Examiner)
    Tilt take: If you can make the case as to why it’s good to partner with your content business, a lot of marketers are willing to listen.
Audiences
  • Welcome everybody: Pronouns matter to many. In some countries, Instagram has rolled out the pronoun selection option for profiles and likely will go global with it. LinkedIn also may be planning something similar. (tl;dr marketing)
    Tilt take: Think about how to make your content inclusive. Start by looking up or ask your audience members’ preferred pronouns. And if you can’t find out, default to they/them. Note your preferences in your own profiles.
  • Get real: Grow your audience through authenticity. How? Stay real in a filtered world. Promote other brands (and content) you love. Be attentive and responsive. Use videos so people can see who you are and how you engage. (Forbes)
    Tilt take: Don’t think of authenticity as a noun. Treat it like an action verb. Building a business based on your voice requires being real. Your audience will appreciate it and respond accordingly.
Tech and Tools
  • Text subscribers pay: When advertisers were hard to find, the hosts of podcast Buckeye Talk turned to their phones. They created a $3.99 monthly subscription through Subtext. They send texts on football and food, and their subscribers send texts to share their comments and ideas for the podcast. They earned over $50K in the first couple of years. (Simon Owens)
    Tilt take: Though Buckeye Talk is the property of a media company, Subtext is an interesting tool to connect with your audience and add a revenue stream at the same time.
  • One more podcast network: The new HubSpot Podcast Network is designed to help podcast audiences more easily find the shows that pique their interests. It launches with Entrepreneurs on Fire, Business Infrastructure, Being Boss, The MarTech Podcast, The Salesman Podcast, and My First Million. (HubSpot)
    Tilt take: As brands look to grow their audiences, more will look to acquiring or partnering with established content brands.
And Finally
  • Own your creator destiny: Mark Stenberg and Max Tani had an epiphany: “Over the last year, our media consumption has shifted from publications to almost exclusively newsletters and independent writers … The individual writer is now an economic force to be reckoned with … and with this new autonomy comes new options.” (Medialyte)
    Tilt take: Mark and Max’s media consumption behavior change reflects the future of content. Talented writers and other content creators no longer have to rely on media to earn an income. They can start their own content businesses.
  • Gift with (NFT) purchase: Gary Vaynerchuk intends his newly launched VeeFriends to be a blueprint on how to bring value using NFT tech to cultivate your community. Owners of the tokens can purchase his art drawings AND get three-year access to his VeeCon, an event focused around business and creativity. (PR Newswire)
    Tilt take: Gary’s latest play illustrates the power of NFTs to bring added value to the purchased asset. But, more interesting to content entrepreneurs, that added value can revolve around community building.


we’re a stan for Dan Lewis

The man behind the popular daily newsletter Now I Know, has grown his subscriber base to over 100K subscribers. With quirky and fascinating content like how orange carrots were originally purple one day and a piece about how students in a Bard College Prison Initiative won over Harvard in a national debate championship in 2015 the next, he entertains and informs his audience.

While Dan has taken Now I Know to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, in the past year, he’s focused all his content in his newsletter (and his day job at Warner Media). He seeks reader donations through Patreon where he offers monthly plans ranging from $1 to $50 a month. According to that page, he has over 660 patrons bringing in over $1.4K a month.

Oh, and there’s one more fascinating fact. Dan has been doing Now I Know since 2010. Yep, 11 years next month. Why? “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. I love to share all the interesting things I learn about, and I now have a great way to do it,” Dan writes on his Patreon page.

Why we’re a Stan: We love Dan’s content tilt: interesting stories that most people don’t know. And the stories cover a strange, wide-ranging gamut, from serious to funny to aha moments. It’s compelling even though it’s not timely content. We’re also wildly impressed that he’s been publishing for 11 years. It’s no surprise he’s built an audience of over 100K.


the business of content

Hear what Joe Pulizzi, founder of The Tilt, has to say in his weekly podcast, Content Inc. (It’s worth the eight minutes.) This week, he discusses why we need to start killing some of our channels and focus on being better in fewer places.

In the latest This Old Marketing, Joe and Robert argue again about the future of NFTs and social audio.


the tilt team

Your team for this issue: Joe Pulizzi, Ann Gynn, Laura Kozak, Dave Anthony, and Mackenzie Pippin, with an assist from Bonnie Azoulay.