What’s Next for Creator Platforms? Learning to Sell

In my past experience as the VP of Product at Substack, and now as the cofounder of Every, I’ve noticed an obvious pattern to the moment when paid newsletters generate the most subscribers: It’s when the writer sends an email to free users that is primarily a pitch to become a subscriber. This could take the form of an announcement, a regular remin... See more

There’s a common misconception among creators and creator platforms that getting a fan to pay for content is basically just a stronger version of hitting the “follow” button. But following a person on Twitter or YouTube and paying for the privilege are two very different things that require very different marketing and acquisition mechanisms. More ... See more

But there’s one critical step I see missing over and over again, from tiny startups to the world’s biggest incumbents: forgetting to sell. In the scramble to build frictionless payment mechanisms, the actual pitch — the “here’s why you should subscribe/pay/join, and here’s what you’re paying for” — is an afterthought, and the responsibility is ofte... See more

It’s one thing to create engaging free content, but it’s a totally different thing to conceptualize a value proposition, create effective marketing messages that communicate that value proposition, and get those messages in front of fans at the right time, repeatedly. This, in my experience, is the main thing creator platforms are most likely to ge... See more

So, if Super Follows and YouTube Payments are examples of under-selling, how can platforms get it right?

Very few creator platforms seem to have learned this lesson. They’re all about a subtle upsell, with a small, tasteful button tucked neatly into some unobtrusive corner of the user interface. This is a missed opportunity: Platforms need to find elegant ways to cause fans to actually encounter pitches from creators.

It’s easy to forget, but even the most popular creators need to sell in order to get fans to buy.

Twitter is one of the most dominant free networks, but it has only recently begun to offer payment capability. This provides one salient example of a creator platform that undersells the pitch. The company recently introduced the “Super Follows” feature, in which users can pay to receive bonus content from accounts they love. The service launched i... See more

What’s currently missing in the creator economy is often a close consideration of genre, and the implicit value propositions that users derive from it. In the traditional media world, you can look at a movie trailer for a comedy and easily understand the value proposition is that you’re going to have fun and laugh. You can walk into the business se... See more