Charli D’Amelio, Dixie D’Amelio, Heidi D’Amelio, and Marc D’Amelio attend the 9th Annual NFL Honors at Adrienne Arsht Center on February 01, 2020 in Miami, Florida.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Hi, this is Amanda Perelli and welcome back to Insider Influencers, our weekly rundown on the business of influencers, creators, and social-media platforms. Sign up for the newsletter here.
One more thing: Insider’s creator economy team is hiring! We are looking for a journalist to join our team to cover the business of social media and the rise of the creator economy. Read more and apply to the fellowship, here.
Send tips to aperelli@insider.com or DM me on Twitter at @arperelli.
In just two years, the D’Amelio family has gone from run-of-the-mill suburban household to one of the most famous families in the world. And they’ve capitalized on that fame, turning it into a multimillion-dollar business empire.
Their enterprise includes media deals, brand partnerships, and investments, and they’ve got a team of employees making sure it all runs smoothly.
To understand their sprawling operation, we mapped out their various revenue streams, from a line of ring lights to Dixie’s music, and the people making it all possible.
Here’s a preview of our breakdown of D’Amelio Family Enterprises:
As influencers, the family’s biggest revenue source is brand deals: They have several endorsement deals, investments, partnerships, and a licensing deal.
The D’Amelios can be found in all corners of the media world: The family started on TikTok, but have extended to television, podcasting, animation, and more.
The family now runs a multi-person, multimillion-dollar company: They have amassed a lineup to rival that of any top Hollywood talent, including an agent, attorney, assistant, and public relations team.
Music marketers often hire creators to make dances or memes that help a song trend on TikTok – but not all TikTok music campaigns feature influencers.
Dan Whateley dug into why record labels are teaming up with general-interest accounts to put songs in their background of videos – you know, those oddly addicting clips of a rug being cleaned, slime being stretched, or coffee being poured over iced.
Last month, for example, the TikTok account “Hydraulic Press Channel” uploaded a video showing a stack of money being crushed into oblivion. In the background of the video, you can hear the song “Loretta” by Ginger Root. That was all the marketing magic of agency Songfluencer.
YouTube star MrBeast, also known as Jimmy Donaldson, is one of the platform’s top creators with over 70 million subscribers and more than a dozen videos with over 100 million views.
One key part of his strategy? Thumbnails, which he believes can make or break a video.
He recently explained his strategy for the images at the creator conference, VidSummit.
Three things determine whether someone will click on a YouTube video, Donaldson said: Topic, title, and thumbnail. And he says thumbnails should be brightly colored, clear, and tested for mobile.
“I don’t care if we spend up to $10,000 making a thumbnail, I just want the best thumbnail possible,” Donaldson said.
Earlier this year, Instagram started paying creators “bonuses,” or cash rewards for posting content to Instagram (or Facebook).
These don’t last forever, though, and two bonus programs have quietly already been paused.
Sydney Bradley wrote that as of October, bonuses for Badges and IGTV ads have reached their expiration date, and are currently “on pause,” Instagram confirmed to Insider.
“Bonus programs will be seasonal, evolving and expanding over time,” Facebook wrote in a blog announcing the company’s billion-dollar investment.
The latest viral hashtag is centered around creators talking about their coming out stories and showing support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in honor of National Coming Out Day, which was observed on Monday.
And before you go, check out the top trending songs on TikTok this week to add to your playlist. The data was collected by UTA IQ, the research, analytics, and digital strategy division of United Talent Agency.
Hi, this is Amanda Perelli and welcome back to Insider Influencers, our weekly rundown on the business of influencers, creators, and social-media platforms. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Also, we are hiring! We are looking for a journalist to join our team to cover the business of social media and the rise of the creator economy. Read more and apply to the fellowship, here.
Send tips to aperelli@insider.com or DM me on Twitter at @arperelli.
Since Instagram announced it would begin testing an affiliate marketing tool this summer, the platform has signed on about 100 creators and 30 brands, including Benefit Cosmetics, Kopari Beauty, MAC Cosmetics, Pat McGrath, and Sephora.
Sydney Bradley spoke with four creators about how the feature works and how much they’re earning.
Tanya Zielke (80,000 followers) said she earned about $58 from one in-feed post tagging a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans.
Quigley Goode (335,000 followers) only made $16 from one in-feed post tagging a beauty product.
Melissa Frusco (38,000 followers) said she made just a couple of dollars from her first in-feed post.
“This is a small test that we are actively scaling,” a spokesperson for Instagram said. “Our long-term goal is to make this tool available to creators everywhere.”
Speaking of Instagram’s new affiliate-marketing tool, during her reporting, Sydney got the scoop on the commission rates for 32 of the program’s brands.
This includes retail giants like Sephora and Revolve, as well as a few smaller brands. The rates range from 8% to 20%, falling in line with the industry standard.
Here’s a look at what some of those brands are paying creators:
Elaluz: 20% commission on sales
Kopari Beauty: 20%
THE YES: 17%
Instagram declined to comment on any commission rates for the test. The platform did say, however, that these brands set their own commission rates “in line with their own marketing strategies.”
A 100-year-old broadcasting company and five-year-old esports organization walk into a bar – or at least into a boardroom.
Legacy media conglomerate Scripps is moving into the esports space by leading the latest round of funding into the Florida-based esports org Misfits Gaming Group.
Michael Espinosa wrote that the media giant hopes to tap into Misfits’ relatively young audience.
Misfits, meanwhile, wants to build out its media presence and test new forms of content, including programming for broadcast television.
“Helping our parents and our parents’ generation understand and appreciate gaming and gaming content, and what it means to their children, is an area that we can be super impactful in,” Misfits CEO Ben Spoont told Insider.
The Influencer Marketing Factory released a creator economy report, and surveyed influencers across platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. In the chart above, influencers share which platform is their favorite as a creator.
And before you go, check out the top trending songs on TikTok this week to add to your playlist. The data was collected by UTA IQ, the research, analytics, and digital strategy division of United Talent Agency.
Hi, this is Amanda Perelli and welcome back to Insider Influencers, our weekly rundown on the business of influencers, creators, and social-media platforms. Sign up for the newsletter here.
The gaming category is one of the biggest in digital media and Insider Intelligence estimates that there will be over 26 million monthly esports viewers in the US this year.
But it’s also very male. Only 16% of the executive teams at the top 14 global gaming companies were women, according to a report from esports organization Fnatic.
Still, women like 100 Thieves’ Valkyrae, 3BLACKDOT’s Sloane Wolf, and Fnatic’s Soraya Sobh have built careers in an industry historically known for sexism.
Michael Espinosa and I are highlighting some of the most successful women in the space, from execs to creators.
Here’s a look at who is on the list:
Lindsay Caudill from Team Envy runs Dallas Fuel’s Twitter and social media accounts, as well as the Envy social media accounts. She’s also the driving force in Envy’s philanthropic and inclusivity initiatives.
Nicole LaPointe Jameson, the CEO of Evil Geniuses, helped turn around the esports organization, while also launching its diversity and inclusion team.
Sue Lee, previously an exec at Twitch, spent over six years on the strategic partnerships team working with the largest streamers on the platform.
You no longer have to have millions (or even thousands) of followers to score a music deal on TikTok.
Marketers are looking outside the app’s top stars and to user-generated videos when it comes to promoting songs, thanks to startups like Pearpop and Preffy, my colleague Dan Whateley wrote.
These platforms create music “challenges” that invite users with any size following to get paid on a sliding scale for participating in a song or artist campaign. The tactic helps drive up the number of videos on TikTok that feature a particular song.
Here are a few key takeaways:
Pearpop and Preffy users who participate in challenges are paid based on video views or likes, rather than follower count.
One recent Pearpop challenge promoting Tyga’s song “Splash” helped boost the track from 8,500 user videos featuring the sound to over 100,000.
Creators who joined the campaign earned between $10 and $80 out of the total $10,000 budget.
On TikTok, ASMR creators are rising in popularity and earning money by whispering and tapping at the screen.
My colleague Sydney Bradley spoke with Lucy Davis, a full-time ASMR (short for autonomous sensory meridian response) content creator on the app.
In just six months, Davis gained half a million followers on TikTok thanks to her popular livestreams, which she started as a way to drive traffic to her YouTube page. Now, she earns up to $300 every time she goes live through in-app tips, known as “gifts,” that she receives from viewers.
When it comes to what works best, she has one rule: the weirder the content, the better.
Rag Report is a new fashion publication built on and around TikTok, with features like deep dives into historical trends and closet tours of top influencers.
The Gen-Z-focused digital magazine amassed over 1 million followers in less than a year, Sydney Bradley wrote. And it’s got an impressive list of sponsors too, including Nike and Kate Spade.
The company shared an exclusive look at its media kit, which breaks down its weekly video strategy, a case study of a partnership with denim brand Diesel that reached 3 million viewers, and the various options for branded content, from account takeovers to custom videos.
The latest viral creator is a cat who “recreates” popular recipes on TikTok under the username ThatLittlePuff. The impressive kitty has racked up nearly 14 million followers.
And before you go, check out the top trending songs on TikTok this week to add to your playlist. The data was collected by UTA IQ, the research, analytics, and digital strategy division of United Talent Agency.
When directed to the Mediakix Instagram account, a “user not found” error pops up.
Screenshot/Instagram
Hi, this is Amanda Perelli and welcome back to Insider Influencers, our weekly rundown on the business of influencers, creators, and social-media platforms. Sign up for the newsletter here.
But before we get started, I want to first introduce a new reporter on the business of influencers team, Michael Espinosa!
Michael is based in New York City and you can reach him at mespinosa@insider.com and on Twitter @Michael__Esp. He will be covering the business of gaming influencers, esports, and livestreaming.
Send tips to aperelli@insider.com or DM me on Twitter at @arperelli.
Mediakix, a prominent influencer-marketing agency, was acquired by Stadiumred Group in 2020.
But about a year later, Mediakix began to miss some payments to staffers and influencers, sources said.
Sydney Bradley reported that most Mediakix staffers have now left the company and its phone line is seemingly disconnected.
Insider spoke with 10 former staffers of Mediakix or Stadiumred; most spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Here are three takeaways from the investigation:
Starting as early as December 2020, influencers began posting to social media platforms like Twitter claiming they had not been paid by Mediakix.
Tweets posted by several influencers continued into 2021 through May, and agents and managers were talking about Mediakix, too.
Mediakix had about a dozen staffers in early 2021. But two sources said that all but one staffer had left Mediakix by the end of May.
“I had no power,” a former Mediakix employee told Insider. “And on top of being paid late, ethically, I wanted to leave.”
Evan Asano, who founded MediaKix in 2011, left the company in early 2021. He provided a comment to Insider about Mediakix, but did not substantially address specific details.
“I am frustrated and saddened by the recent media coverage reporting allegations that Mediakix is not fulfilling its contracts with influencers,” Asano wrote.
Stadiumred and its founder and CEO, Claude Zdanow, did not wish to provide any comment on the record.
Influencers Bryce Hall and Austin McBroom fight at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium during LiveXLive’s “Social Gloves: Battle Of The Platforms” on June 12, 2021.
Influencer boxing can be lucrative for creators, but can be a mess to run for event organizers.
Companies like Triller, Showtime, and LiveXLive are all vying to take control of the emerging category.
Dan Whateley wrote about how all three companies have run into hurdles as they’ve embarked on their first influencer fights.
Here are three key points:
Last week, Showtime had to issue refunds to some viewers of its pay-per-view fight between YouTuber Logan Paul and boxing legend Floyd Mayweather after they encountered technical issues with its stream.
Last month, Triller Fight Club, the boxing division of the short-form video app Triller, filed a lawsuit seeking millions in damages and claiming internet users illegally streamed and broadcasted its fight between YouTuber Jake Paul and Ben Askren.
Whether the category will end up being profitable for these companies is a big unknown.
While influencers aren’t professional boxers, they are masters at marketing – an asset for exhibitors looking to sell PPV fights.
LiveXLive said it’s already considering other ways to pit social-media stars against each other in live PPV competitions.
Preston Seo is a TikTok creator who films videos about personal finance and entrepreneurship.
Seo started posting videos earlier this year, and now he has about 1.6 million followers.
I spoke with Seo about how much he makes from affiliate links, sponsorships, and TikTok’s Creator Fund.
He earned more from affiliate links in 2021 than the other revenue streams he shared with Insider, which were verified with documentation Seo provided:
May: $13,644
April: $4,578
“What it comes down to, is your audience and numbers,” he said. “Understanding your metrics is super important when negotiating. Know your worth and stick to that.”
Kelly Stamps is a YouTuber who films videos about minimalist-lifestyle and personal-development.
Stamps has 600,000 subscribers and last year she’d saved just enough money from YouTube to leave her family home and quit college.
Molly Innes spoke with Stamps about how much she makes per month from ads on YouTube.
Stamps broke down her monthly YouTube ad earnings for 2021 so far:
January: $11,134
February: $13,959
March: $15,562
“It’s still a challenge finding my niche,” Stamps said about her channel, which ranges in content from showing her minimalist belongings to personal-finance tips.
My colleague Dan Whateley is hosting a webinar featuring execs from TikTok, Universal Music Group, and UnitedMasters for a conversation about TikTok’s role in the music industry, and how social media is slated to make an even bigger impact on popular culture in 2021.
The 30-minute chat is scheduled for July 8 at 1 pm ET/10 am PST. If you’d like to submit a question to be answered, please fill out this brief form.
Influence.co published its 2021 CreatorScape, a comprehensive breakdown of the creator economy including categories like link in bio, crypto, fintech, newsletters, and audience building.
TikTok creators Josh Richards and Griffin Johnson first rose to fame by posting fratty videos while living in Sway LA, a TikTok content house. But the pair, along with some of their TikTok friends, have spent the past year building up businesses outside of social media.
Recently, they launched a venture fund called Animal Capital. And this week, the duo announced they’re partnering with Hawke Media’s Erik Huberman to start a boutique marketing agency focused on Gen-Z consumers dubbed “HawkeZ.”
On Monday, Richards tweeted that the agency’s first client was Crocs.
Every week, Insider gives a rundown of news on hires, promotions, and other creator economy announcements. This week includes promotions at A3 Artists Agency, new gaming creator signings at WME, and former NBA star Magic Johnson joining Cameo’s board.
Adam Mosseri and JoJo Siwa speak during Instagram and Facebook’s Creator Week.
Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Instagram and Facebook’s Creator Week
Hi, this is Amanda Perelli and welcome back to Insider Influencers, our weekly rundown on the business of influencers, creators, and social-media platforms. Sign up for the newsletter here.
On Tuesday, Instagram launched its first-ever “Creator Week,” a three-day virtual event.
To kick it off, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled new tests and features aimed at helping creators earn money.
Sydney Bradley broke down some upcoming tools Zuckerberg announced.
Here are three key takeaways from Instagram’s livestream:
Instagram will start testing native affiliate-marketing tools for creators. Brands will be able to set their own commission rates, Zuckerberg said.
There will be more tools for creators selling their own products and merchandise. Creators with their own products will be able to link to their shops in their personal profiles.
Creators will be able to earn extra money through tips. Instagram and Facebook are adding tipping features that allow fans to pay creators.
“Our goal is to be the best platform for creators like you to make a living,” Zuckerberg said on the livestream. “And if you have an idea that you want to share with the world, you should be able to create it and get it out there easily and simply – across Facebook and Instagram – and then earn money for your work.”
Dispo, a photo-sharing app that went through a leadership and investor shake-up earlier this year following Insider’s investigation into the conduct of its cofounder David Dobrik, confirmed it had closed a Series A round. The round included investors Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Unshackled Ventures, Annie Leibovitz, and Raven B. Varona.
The company’s CEO said its team wants to be deliberate in how it builds its product to avoid some of the pitfalls other tech startups have faced.
“The early days of social media were all about ‘move fast and break things,'” Daniel Liss told Fast Company. “Our thought is, ‘move fast and build things.’ How can you create something that is additive and not just destructive for the sake of growth?”
