JANUARY 28, 2022

Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs. Each edition is packed with the latest news, strategies, and tactics, plus inspiring creator stories and exclusive education, all to help you create, grow, and monetize better.

Features in this issue (view online):


full tilt

4 Ideas To Attract Email Subscribers, Not Just Social Media Fans

When a social media platform unexpectedly goes down, the creators who rely on them often go into panic mode: They have no way to reach their audience. And that’s not the only time your social audience can disappear. The platform can wipe out your account, or your account can be hacked.

Some are quick to point out those outages are perfect reminders that the people who have their audience’s email addresses don’t need to sweat the disruptions.

But how do you entice your audience on social to give you their email address? Here are four ideas.

1. Offer a freebie: Give your audience something they value in exchange for something you value (i.e., their email address). It could be a checklist, a quiz, templates, etc. Creators also develop subscriber-only content that goes deeper than their publicly available content.

2. Add pop-ups to promote subscriber-only content: Promote your content offer with pop-ups on your site. Because they suddenly appear on the static site, visitors are more likely to notice them. Schedule your pop-ups to launch halfway through the average time on page. Launching them within a second of when the visitor arrives is less likely to work because they haven’t had enough time to know what your site and content are all about.

3. Add a CTA button on your site: Calls to action (CTA) are phrases that encourage users to take an action. They can work well for subscription content offerings like a newsletter or ongoing special offers. In the CTA, indicate briefly what those who give you their email will receive. Offer more details on the sign-up form page that’s linked to in the CTA. The CTA link should take them to a form to sign up.

4. Convert followers from other platforms: If you already have a big following on social media, ask them for their email addresses. For example, share excerpts from your newsletter content and ask them to subscribe. Or simply let them know about the freebies or other benefits they could receive by giving you their email.

No matter which vehicles you use to attract subscribers, one thing must occur: You must give or promise to deliver something that your audience truly needs or wants. Otherwise, they’ll just stay a follower or move along to someone else’s content

– Bonnie Azoulay Elmann

To learn how creators are doing this and more tips, read the longer story.




Shout Out to For The Interested Newsletter

The free For The Interested newsletter is a must-read for any creator or entrepreneur who wants to grow their audience and business. It features proven strategies from the world’s most successful creators to help you produce, promote, and profit from your creations.

Subscribe today


content entrepreneur spotlight

Creator Chrissy Chlapecka Empowers ‘Bimbo’ Tilt to Grow Successful Business

Entrepreneur: Chrissy Chlapecka

Biz: Chrissy Chlapecka

Tilt: Self-proclaimed “bimbo”

Time to First Dollar: 8 months

Primary Channel: TikTok (4M)

Other Channels: Instagram (431K), Twitter (226.1K)

Rev Streams: TikTok Creator Fund, sponsorships, merch

Our Favorite Actionable Advice:

  • Make your own power: Chrissy gives positive energy to “bimbo,” which usually has a negative connotation. That unique tilt piques curiosity (including Rolling Stone’s), so people check out her content.
  • Expect haters: When you are your content brand, expect people to be critical or even worse. They don’t see you as a person but as someone behind the glass on their device.
  • Take a prepared leap: Chrissy was able to quit her day jobs and jumped into a full-time creator career once her TikTok revenue was enough to pay the rent and groceries.

– Kelly Wynne

All the Story: To learn more about Chrissy’s business model, check out the longer story.

Know a content creator who’s going full tilt? DM us. Or email [email protected].


quick talk

Caught on … Twitter

“The #CreatorEconomy is thriving because of the hundreds of millions of content creators who have the skills and talent to tell their stories.”

– Vincent Wu


things to know

Money
  • Ticking down: Video creator Hank Green says the TikTok Creator Fund is limiting creator revenue as more people join the fund. That’s because the fund is finite – $200M a year for U.S.-based creators. That means creators can see their views rise but not see their revenue increase proportionally. (tubefilter)
    Tilt Take: Creator funds can be a helpful assist, but your business goal should be developing a long-term revenue plan independent of platforms.
  • More than $10K: The number of YouTube channels globally making more than $10K a year is up 40% year over year. As YouTube has grown so have the ways creators can monetize on the platform. (YouTube)
    Tilt Take: Just modify the previous Tilt take for YouTube (though it offers more to creators with so many revenue streams.)
Audiences
  • Get their eyes: Among the tips to grab a viewer on YouTube in the first few seconds: Warn your audience. Make a bold statement. Make a weird statement. Share a shocking stat. (Jake Thomas)
    Tilt Take: This advice works for more than videos.
  • Hypothesis disproven: Elle Griffin, creator of The Novelleist on Substack, says she created her newsletter surmising people value art. What she learned was people value knowledge more. (The Novelleist; h/t Tilt Discord’s Denise Wakeman)
    Tilt Take: Elle, who recently showed the Substack fellow program, is refreshingly transparent about her first year, from subscribers to revenue, and why she changed her goals for this year.
Tech and Tools
  • Learn like a marketer: TikTok’s published a new training course to help marketers make the best use of the platform for brand promotion and development. (Social Media Today; h/t Matt Navarra)
    Tilt Take: If you want to work with brands, it’s helpful to know how to think like a brand.
  • Disclosure checkmark: Uploading a video on YouTube now asks creators to check a box if their content includes a paid promotion. (Liron Segev)
    Tilt Take: The prompt is helpful, but even without it, creators must disclose paid relationships with brands or products they promote.
And Finally
  • Set a date: Anchor your goal with a timeframe. Without it, there’s no urgency. It also lets you monitor if you’re on track or lagging behind your target. (Noah Kagan)
    Tilt Take: It’s wise to listen to Noah as he helped Mint grow from zero to 1M users in six months.
  • Chilly Tok: NBC invited TikTok to collaborate on its 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics content. It will include daily content across NBC TikTok handles and a three-episode livestream show hosted by a yet-to-be-named TikTok creator. (Tech Crunch)
    Tilt Take: NBC knew where to go to reach younger generations when they saw TikTok’s Olympics-related content had received over 18B views.


we’re a stan for Shannon Boodram

Dr. Ruth-meets-Rihanna sexpert Shannon Boodram dedicated more than a decade of her life to producing relatable online sex education content for the masses.

She moved from Toronto to Los Angeles to live her dream and worked as a wedding photographer to finance her life while she made envelope-pushing, sex-positive content for her YouTube page, Shan BOODY(674K). After her debut book Laid: Young People’s Experiences With Sex in an Easy-Access Culture didn’t sell well, Shannon focused heavily on growing her social media audience.

“(A)bout eight months after starting YouTube that I had a very niche audience and community that was really valuable, so that was the first way I started to monetize,” she explains to The Helm.

Why we’re a Stan: Shannon learned from a lackluster response to her first book that creators need to grow an audience first. Her subsequent YouTube videos and other content helped her do just that.

– Shameyka McCalman


the business of content


the tilt team

Your team for this issue: Joe Pulizzi, Ann Gynn, Laura Kozak, Marc Maxhimer, and Dave Anthony, with an assist from Angelina Kaminski, Bonnie Azoulay Elmann, Kelly Wynne, Shameyka McCalman, and Don Borger.