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I’m refreshing ‘The Creator Rep’ newsletter based on your awesome feedback! Keep it coming!

Five changes:

• Not everyone who reads this is a ‘creator rep’. In fact, it’s less than 30% of you. So I will no longer address creator reps directly. This is the news from the vantage point of someone on the front lines of creator representation (Hey! That’s me!) built for reps, influencer marketers, creators, and the creator economy-curious.

• Less memes, more info. My love of memes will return to Instagram from whence it came. I’ll keep my graphics more informational and leave the jokes to the text. I’ll stick to one meme at the end.

• Leave the optimization advice to ‘Grow 1%’. The optimization section was redundant for those who subscribe to my ‘Grow 1%’ newsletter. Removed!

• Bulletpoint Opportunities, now called ‘Fame & Fortune’. No need for me to explain why it’s good to make money.

• Less recap, more hot takes. Don’t belabor the news stories. Just cover briefly then share more of the editorial.

Also in this edition:

• Zuck F*&*ks Team for Bucks

• YouTube Bestows Badges

• Brick-and-Mortar Retail Goes Live

• Opportunities to hone skills and make money

• Job ops from OMD, Amazon, and Cruncyroll.

• …and a dank creator economy meme by yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

Meta Layoffs Amidst Record-Breaking Profits

What do you do when your company tops a one-trillion dollar valuation and you’re clocking quarterly profits in the billions?

If you’re Meta, you figure out what heads need to roll!

This follows Meta firing 11,000 people in 2022, then 10,000 more in 2023 during Zuck’s states “Year of Efficiency”.

If you’re hiring, be sure to search LinkedIn to find some great talent that were impacted.

But now the crass conversation: what does this mean for Meta’s recently announced new creator monetization efforts?

My hot take: Meta needs to hire, not fire.

Jellysmack (briefly) built a multi-billion dollar business selling Facebook’s creator monetization program on Meta’s behalf.

Because Meta wasn’t resourcing it properly.

And in the past two years, a lot of creator-facing teams were impacted.

Now even if you’re a huge celebrity creator, you’re often better off bribing someone to help you than going through creator support.

If Meta wants TikTok to stop eating its lunch, it needs to not only launch clear pathways to growth and monetization for creators, but they need a sufficient amount of human faces that can pick up the phone.

Because TikTok does.

YouTube Rewards Top Fans with Badges

This feature set rollout was packed: a sleep timer, updated playback speed, a new miniplayer, and collaborative playlists.

But one stood out from the rest: badges.

It teased that it was for ‘bragging rights’ for fans that, for example, is one of the first paid members of a creator’s community or completing quizzes (???)

So why do I consider this a ‘standout’ feature?

My hot take: if YouTube makes it easy to build communities based on badging, there are a ton of amazing things a YouTuber can do to grow faster.

Can you imagine creators being able to do a happy hour with anyone that was one of their first 1,000 subscribers?

Or everyone known for being a great commentator?

This level of audience segmentation, as long as you actually can segment badged audiences, can help you develop programs that specifically incentvize the exact behavior you want your audience to deliver.

And you don’t need to struggle your way through a Discord server to do it.

Want to Stream from a Store?

We are just a few weeks from the LA launch of Outlandish, a retail store on the world famous Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

And there’s a twist to their model: they’ll have 20 live streaming areas in the store where they can sell Outlandish’s products for cold hard cash.

No inventory risk, no ‘buy to sell’, just straight from the shelves to the customer via live shopping.

Is this the future of shopping or leaning too hard into a trend?

My hot take: This will be the cost of doing business for retail stores in the next decade.

Taking on inventory risk is the hardest part of getting creators to sell your product.

Just talk to a scaled shop on TikTok Shop. You can seed 100 items to creators who promise to make shop videos, only to get 10 videos actually posted.

And these brands are dying to get creators to sell their goods. It’s effectively free marketing, or at least the margins are clearly defined.

The fact that Costco, Target, Levi’s, and Old Navy aren’t already doing something like this is stunning.

And if you’re a retail store who wants to understand this model, my DMs are open.

Who really owns your audience?

Being a Creator has never been easy, but unpredictable algorithms make connecting with your audience on social media harder than ever.

Enter beehiiv, the newsletter platform used to send this very email.

beehiiv frees you from the algorithms, giving you the tools to connect and create a more direct relationship with your followers.

Plus, with a network of premium advertisers and paid subscription options, you can tap into new revenue streams from day one.

Expand your brand with the most powerful newsletter platform on the planet. Start your 30-day free trial today.

FAME & FORTUNE:

This is it! The new section combining the previous ‘Optimization’ and ‘Monetization’ section for a quick rundown on hot ways to grow audience and make money.

Beehiiv, the popular newsletter creation and distribution platform, announced ‘CPM Deals’ via CEO Tyler Denk’s LinkedIn account. Needless to say, this more consistent form of revenue creates stability that’s often missing in the previous affiliate-style deals.

Fundmates, a creator investment company, raised another $30m to deploy to creators looking for immediate scale. I’m shocked how few creators are looking at these often-amazing deals, as a big influx of upfront cash can be exactly what you need to hit the next tier of growth.

Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company, is going to start printing books. #BookTok is already a primary marketing channel for book releases and incredible companies like Penguin and Simon & Schuster have been in the creator game for a while, but with ByteDance’s incredible dataset I can see how this should yield plenty of huge book deals for creators.

Fixated (note, I’m the COO at Fixated!) is now an official Microsoft Start partner for content distribution. If you make longform YouTube videos and are looking to make more money, please get in touch!

INDUSTRY HIRING:

Crunchyroll needs a Director, Interactive Initiatives, and given their anime brand and Ironmouse’s success, you can only imagine what this means!

OMD is looking for a Senior Director, Digital Activation. Those who will spend all day making OMG puns need not apply.

Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios wants a Head of Social Media & Content, Prime Video Sports, which is made for anyone who wants the longest title in a business card ever.

MEME ZONE:

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this edition, give it a share and if you get someone to sign up, I’ll send you my ‘10 Rep-Friendly Ways to Monetize Today!’ deck!

Until next time, protect yo rep.