APRIL 13 , 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

Should Content Creators Consider NFTs and Creator Coins?

What’s the news?

NFTs and creator coins have become media darlings of late. We love their potential too. What we don’t love? The technical jargon and explanations. Let’s remedy that.

What are NFTs?

NFTs are vehicles to secure investors in one-of-a-kind content assets. Think of an NFT like a digital ownership certificate.

Content entrepreneurs could create (i.e., mint) an NFT for their debut blog post from 10 years ago or their most popular podcast episode. (Forbes recently did this.)

Are NFTs like crowdfunding?

Kinda. The people who invest usually believe in your brand. Most likely, they are your “super fans,” as Peter Yang calls them. But NFT investors can reap exclusive perks from the creator, such as tickets to their events, meet-and-greets, etc. (See what Kings of Leon did.)

The NFT creator also can collect a royalty every time an investor sells the asset.

What are creator coins?

While NFTs have unique values, a creator coin can be exchanged for any other coin because they have the same value. Though creator coins can be purchased, they often are distributed on a non-cash basis.

Think of an entrepreneur’s creator coins like points earned through an airline’s credit card. The airline rewards the customer’s patronage with points that can be exchanged for their product. The program is designed to build loyalty among its passengers.

What’s the benefit of creator coins?

For entrepreneurs, coin owners are more likely to feel a part of your content brand. That’s one reason we minted a creator coin ($TILT), which currently is a reward for audience members who get others to sign up for the newsletter.

Creator coin owners can receive VIP subscriber benefits. They also can spend the coins for products and services like an online course or one-on-one coaching.

Should I get into the token game?

If you see it as a get-rich-quick solution, don’t do it. It’s a very long play, but it can be worth it for content entrepreneurs.

How should I start?

First, you must have an extremely loyal audience. After all, if you don’t have fans, who will want your creator coins or NFTs?

With a minimum viable audience, go the creator coin route. By issuing coins, you develop a stronger community of people who are eager to get and redeem more coins. (Technically, you could sell your own creator coins in the marketplace, but don’t rely on that for big income.)

Only when you have a large, rabid fan base, you could add NFT investors to your business.

– Ann Gynn

To dig deeper and get some great how-to resources, read the longer story.


Forget Jack: Anne of All Trades Masters Content

Entrepreneur: Anne Briggs

Biz: Anne of All Trades

Tilt: Teaching people skills that are becoming lost arts

Channel: Blog

Channel: YouTube Subscribers: 195K Total Views: 11.2M

Rev Streams: Sponsorships, classes, newsletter, merchandise, speaking, content creation

Inside Track to Success:

  • Tailor content to platform audience: “My YouTube audience is mainly folks interested in woodworking. Instagram is split pretty evenly between woodworking and farming, and my website/email list is my most engaged, core audience who is really there for everything.”
  • Work with sponsors you believe in: “I only work with brands I would purchase things from full price.”
  • Think big from the start: “Learn to make everything you do, all day long, explicit and repeatable.”

Some of the Story:

Anne Briggs has a simple goal – to teach people skills that are becoming lost arts, woodworking, farming, and repairing and building instead of buying new. But her path to Anne of All Trades actually began as a self-improvement project.

“I was using social media and my blog as an accountability tool – to regularly post, to finish projects, and to keep learning new skills,” she says. “I was honestly pretty surprised when my audience started growing.”

Anne of All Trades allows her to combine her passion for creating things with her hands as well as her desire to build community and help people. Authenticity and passion are at the heart of every instructional video, online class, blog, or public speaking event she manifests.

Her success has involved a multi-income source strategy. “Income needs to be diversified to provide any sense of safety or security,” Anne says.

She also reinvests all her sponsor revenue back into the business. And some of that money has enabled her to build a new platform: The School of All Trades, the educational component of her business, will have a dedicated physical structure and site where she will get to teach these fading trades to eager students. Plans are for it to open in late 2021.

Kimmy Gustafson

All the Story: To learn more about Anne Briggs, the content entrepreneur, and Anne of All Trades, the content business, check out this link to the longer story.

Know a content creator who’s going full tilt? DM us. Old school? Email ann@thetilt.com.


quick talk

Caught in … Entrepreneur

“I often say that starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and building an airplane on the way down.” – LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman


things to know

Money
  • Harmony of content and ads: Bustle.com’s launching a new shop-within-the-content feature. The twist? A “shop” click opens a sidebar with the details and options – not a new site. “We’re not glomming a shop onto the existing website, we’re baking commerce content natively into the website experience,” Bustle Digital Group told Digiday.
  • Shorter possibilities: Facebook now lets Pages have in-stream ads for videos at least one minute – the previous minimum was three minutes. Eligible Pages must have at least 600,000 total minutes viewed in the past 60 days and five-plus active videos. (Search Engine Journal)
  • Don’t sell the sale: Only 18% of advertisers say podcasts work for increasing sales. More persuasive? Sell the positive impact on brand awareness, recall, preference, or favorability (Mobile Insider).
Audiences
  • What happens off Twitch: Unprecedented for any social platform, allegations to Twitch of egregious behavior by its members committed on other platforms or in real life will be investigated. “We feel that this is a necessary step to protect our community,” Twitch said.
  • Lessons from guy’s Twitter growth plan: Jeremy Moser’s 30 minutes a day for 30 days led to 2.5 million impressions and this advice: Tweet less. Engage more. Be friendly. Be supportive. And have fun with it. Oh, and use the DM feature (Entrepreneur).
  • Insta head gives UX tips: Adam Moseri, Instagram head, took to Twitter #ThisWeekonInstagram (yes, we think it’s ironic too) to share little-used tips: 1. Long press Explore tab to search. 2. Double tap Profile tab to switch accounts. 3. Press and hold a story to pause it.
Tech and Tools
  • Go native better: The new video editor in TikTok’s ad manager dashboard makes it easier to create ads with a native feel on the platform. Expect audiences to react well.
  • Violative View Rate: That’s the new metric released by YouTube to show the percent of its total videos that violate its guidelines. Latest results? 16 to 18 of every 10,0000 videos are violators, a 70% drop since 2017.
  • Power up likes: The time for Instagram Powerlikes – likes from accounts with big followings – is shortly after a post is published. Create power partnerships (paid or unpaid). A Powerlike service provider explains.
And Finally
  • Netflix your business: Use original content to engage an audience on your platform. Offer exclusive content through paid subscriptions. Create strategic content-sharing partnerships. (More: Business2Community.)
  • Sorry, something went wrong: The recent 20-minute outage on Facebook and Instagram sent their fans to Twitter to vent. How can you make sure your followers never have a need to vent? Own your community. (USA Today)


we’re a stan for Leslie Mosier (and Doug the Pug)

 

Leslie Mosier is an amazing content entrepreneur. Her content business? Doug the Pug. In fall 2014, she created his Instagram account. Among their secret to early success? Leslie explained to USA Today:

“I would have these photo shoots of Doug and email the big Instagram accounts that I thought he could be featured on, like Pugs of Instagram. On my account at the time, it might get 500 to 1,000 likes. But on their account, it would get 40,000 to 50,000 likes.”

As Doug gained fame, Mashable wrote about him, bringing in even more fans. By April 2015, Leslie quit her graphic design job and made the Doug the Pug brand her full-time business. In 2016, they landed a book deal and went to The New York Times bestseller list (Doug the Pug: King of Pop Culture). They struck partnerships with brands for calendars, shoes, stuffed animals, and more. He’s appeared in videos with music celebrities. And he even has his own meet-and-greet events. Doug the Pug’s lucrative success also let them found Doug The Pug Foundation in 2019. Its mission fits Doug well – to bring joy to children suffering life-threatening illnesses.

Here’s where Doug provides digital joy: Instagram (18M), TikTok (5.8M), Facebook (5.9M), YouTube (476K), Twitter (2.7M). And Leslie has her own channels, too: TikTok (982K), Instagram (102K), Twitter (4.1K).


the business of content

You don’t have to sell, but you should have an exit plan. Hear what Joe Pulizzi, founder of The Tilt, has to say in his weekly podcast, Content Inc. (It’s worth the five minutes.)

The boys get contentious over the new Facebook leak and argue over the valuation of Clubhouse on the latest episode of This Old Marketing.


flex your tilt

We’re launching this feature soon. But we need your help. Let us know who to feature (self-nominations are encouraged). Use #TheTilt. DM us. Or email Ann@TheTilt.com.


the tilt team

Your team for this issue: Joe Pulizzi, Ann Gynn, Laura Kozak, Dave Anthony, and Mackenzie Pippin with assist from Kimmy Gustafson