Sponsored by RockWater

Have you built a house in Brookhaven, grown a garden, or adopted a pet yet?

If the answer is ‘yes’, you’re probably too young to be reading this newsletter.

For those without kids between the ages of 5 and 20, Roblox is a platform where you can customize your own blocky character (costs Robux, digital currency that costs real money, if you want to look cool) and play casual games that range from virtual dating to trivia to obby’s (obstacle courses) to role playing games.

Think of it like a big mobile game made up of a bunch of smaller mobile games that are designed by other players.

Oh…and it’s also available on mobile.

Roblox videos are huge on YouTube, many in a ‘let’s play’ format, meaning someone is playing the game and talking. And the biggest ones seem to fall into two categories: girls cosplaying as tweens with an anime aesthetic or bros-in-training cracking jokes.

My daughter is six and recently started talking like her favorite Roblox commentator Silly. It’s…not great.

I take three big lessons from Roblox and Minecraft’s massive reach on YouTube that I’ll share later on.

Also in this edition:

• What the Attention Economy Really Means

• Microsoft Videos on Copilot Daily

• Patreon and Kajabi Neck-and-Neck with $10b in Payouts

• EarnOS Cracks Users Monetizing Their Own Data

• Job ops from Sega of America, Influential, and Grüns.

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

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

Ro’ Money

“One trillion Roblox views” only tells part of the story.

Another part: almost all of these views were from creators not hired by Roblox who built highly profitable careers playing Roblox games.

Roblox has been around for nearly 20 years, but it took YouTube to make it massive.

Here’s what that taught me.

There’s power in letting the fans get crazy with the brand. There are only a few constants in Roblox: cheapo blocky graphics, the controls (arrows to move, space bar to jump, ‘E’ to perform an action), and Robux as the currency. Almost everything else was defined by the community, including slang, styles, and rampant copyright infringement including demonic versions of everyone from Hello Kitty to Joy from Inside Out. None of the most popular games in Roblox are made by Roblox. In fact, the record for most concurrent players in a video game is held by 16 year old Janzen Madsen’s ‘Grow a Garden’ with nearly 22 million, which he claimed was developed in just three days. Compare that to the decade and hundreds of millions of dollars spent for Grand Theft Auto VI, and it feels like Roblox is getting a great deal. And that would never happen without users’ freedom to create, monetize, and content creators’ freedom to monetize their Roblox videos. Disney won’t do this anytime soon.

Kids are still the best market for high viewership. YouTube is supposed to be a 13+ platform. We all know that isn’t true. My 6 year old and 4 year old kids only watch YouTube. And when they like a creator, they’re obsessed. This happened with my former client Cocomelon when they were younger. And Blippi. And Numberblocks. If creators can reach those kids, the views are insane. Even better, game commentators on a platform like Roblox can monetize with ads, do branded integrations, and Roblox itself is such a well-monetized game, they can get away with a lot of in-game promotion for pay. That’s far harder to do in a cartoon for toddlers.

Viewers are often fans of a platform first and a creator second. When Ninja was one of the top Twitch streamers in the world, he took a big deal to stream exclusively on Microsoft’s Mixer (RIP). Very few fans followed. Why? Because his fans lovedTwitch first, Fortnite second, and Ninja third. Likewise, many Roblox players would drop off significantly if they started doing IRL vlogs or shared recipes. This gives Roblox a ton of power. Multi-million dollar creators are wholly dependent on Roblox’s success, so they become constant marketers for the platform. That success becomes aspirational, and their fans then become professional marketers for Roblox. Imagine if eating at McDonald’s was a format that was making creators millions of dollars. That would be one heck of an easy marketing play for Mickey D’s!

I believe more games will start to thing of themselves as platforms first for these reasons, and, likewise, consider what their games will feel like as a stream as they’re developing.

Okay, now time to pick my sugar apples and feed my digital chihuahua.

SPONSORED BY ROCKWATER

How to prep your creator business for a sale.

RockWater advises owners in the creator economy on the sale of their business. We have the largest buyer network, and negotiate the best deals possible for our clients. We’re proud to be the industry’s top M&A advisor.

We recently advised Lionize, an influencer marketing platform, on their sale to gen.video. We’ve also advised Long Haul Mgmt (sold to Wasserman), Bottle Rocket Mgmt (sold to Night), Bounty (sold to gen.video), and have many more deals yet to be announced.

If you want a POV on your company’s valuation and readiness for a sale, reach out to to [email protected] to setup an intro call.

GROW 1%:

Phil Ranta’s weekly social media growth newsletter with one actionable tip to grow.

This week’s ‘Grow 1%’ is titled What the Attention Economy Really Means and discusses what the attention economy really means and how to command attention on social media.

Here’s an excerpt, and you can read the entire edition in the link above:

Economies are built around scarce resources.

Food, water, shiny rocks, shells, beads, and even paper with dead presidents on them have all been used as 'currency' to provide some sort of standardization around value.

But recently, a new economy emerged: the attention economy.

This sprang up from the sheer amount of choice every internet-connected human being has to fill their brain with dopamine at any given moment.

We're no longer living in towns with five TV channels, two newspapers, and a mall.

We have all of the world's knowledge and entertainment in our pockets.

So advertisers, publishers, filmmakers, website designers, and game developers are all vying for that little screen.

Because they've now realized that the scarcest resource of all is our attention.

So what does this have to do with social media growth?

Everything!

These mega-corporations are richer than you. I know this because I don't see Elon Musk or Bill Gates on the subscriber list, unless they're the mysterious 'PhilStan47'.

Continue reading here.

FAME & FORTUNE:

Microsoft’s video distribution through MSN is one of the best kept secrets in social media. And now, their daily AI audio program Copilot Daily will feature MSN videos. If you want to figure out how to get your content distributed and monetized on MSN, hit me up!

Patreon helps creators build monetized fan communities. Kajabi helps creators build and monetize digital courses. And last week, both announced hitting $10b in creator payouts. Feels like it’s time to start thinking hard about digital content sales!

EarnOS* is a pay-by-result digital marketing platform with over 2.5 million verified users, and they just released a video demo showing how users can share their data with brands to get huge offers for showing they can be a valuable customer. Brands: let me know if you want an intro!

The rumor has been verified: using Edits to edit your Instagram video will give you a boost in reach on the platform. The app is iterating fast, so if you haven’t tried it since it first came out, I’d recommend revisiting it. It’s not Capcut yet, but it’s catching up!

*Subject to affiliate revenue

INDUSTRY HIRING:

Sega of America needs a Influencer Coordinator who will get a free shout out in the newsletter if they convince them to reboot Phantasy Star.

Influential is looking for an Manager, Creator Management who knows Phil Ranta and wants to reach out to Phil Ranta first for any big money campaigns.

Grüns wants a Influencer Marketing Manager that can make a green shake that doesn’t taste like eating pine needles.

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.