#How to Increase Founding Members on Substack | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bethestaryouareradio · 1 year ago

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Celebrating Be the Star You Are, NonProfit of the Year, Spring Greens, Lucrative Majors

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myopinionbookofficial · 2 years ago

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How to Monetize Your Blog: A Guide to Profitable Blogging Platforms

Blogging has become a viable and lucrative career path for many in recent years. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the question arises: how can you monetize your blog successfully? In this guide, we will explore the various strategies to make money from your blog and highlight some of the best blogging platforms to achieve your financial goals.

Monetization Strategies for Your Blog

Monetizing your blog is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor; it depends on your niche, audience, and content. Here are some proven strategies to help you turn your blog into a profitable venture:

1. Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing involves promoting products or services and earning a commission for each sale or action. Some of the best affiliate programs can be found on platforms like Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and ClickBank.

2. Ad Revenue: Displaying ads on your blog can be a steady source of income. Google AdSense is a popular choice, but there are other ad networks, such as Media.net, that offer competitive payouts.

3. Sell Digital Products: If you have expertise in a particular area, create and sell e-books, courses, or digital products directly from your blog. This strategy is particularly effective for platforms that support e-commerce functionality.

4. Sponsored Content: Partnering with brands and businesses to create sponsored blog posts or reviews can be a profitable venture. As your blog's reputation grows, companies may reach out to collaborate.

5. Subscription Models: Implement a subscription model where readers pay for premium content. Substack, Patreon, and Memberful are platforms that make this approach straightforward.

6. Freelancing and Consultation: If your blog establishes you as an expert in your niche, you can offer freelance services or consultation. Many bloggers find this to be a lucrative addition to their income streams.

Choosing the Best Blogging Platform to Make Money

Selecting the right blogging platform is crucial to your monetization success. Here are some of the best options to consider:

1. WordPress.org: WordPress.org is the gold standard for bloggers looking to maximize their income. You have complete control over your blog and can implement a wide range of monetization strategies, making it the best blogging platform to make money.

2. Blogger: Blogger, owned by Google, is an excellent option for beginners. It's easy to set up, and you can start monetizing your blog with Google AdSense from day one.

3. Wix: Wix is a user-friendly website builder that allows you to create a beautiful blog. While it's not as flexible as WordPress, it still supports various monetization methods.

4. Medium: Medium is a content platform where you can reach a broad audience. While it may not offer as many monetization options as other platforms, it's a great place to start building your reputation.

5. Squarespace: Squarespace is known for its stunning templates and supports e-commerce features, making it an excellent choice for bloggers who want to sell products.

Remember that the best blogging platform for you depends on your goals, technical skills, and budget.

Maximizing Your Earnings

Regardless of your chosen blogging platform, here are some additional tips to maximize your earnings:

Produce high-quality, engaging, and valuable content.

Promote your blog on social media and through email marketing.

Optimize your content for search engines to attract organic traffic.

Diversify your income streams to reduce risk and increase your overall earnings.

In conclusion, monetizing your blog is a journey that requires dedication, patience, and smart strategies. By selecting the best blogging platform to make money and implementing a variety of monetization methods, you can turn your passion for blogging into a profitable career. Remember, success doesn't happen overnight, but with persistence and the right strategies, it is entirely achievable.

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Americans opposed to President Trump are constantly asking some version of this question: “Why won’t Republicans break with Trump?”

The personalities on Fox News are largely standing with the president amid the controversy over the Trump administration pushing Ukrainian officials to investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son. So are Republicans in Congress. Vice President Mike Pence and others inside the Trump administration are also defending the president’s actions involving Ukraine (a shift from when one-time Trump advisers like Dan Coats would sometimes signal disagreement with the president’s stances).

But looking at Trump’s standing only among people currently inside of powerful Republican-controlled spaces — the party itself, Fox News, the White House, etc. — presents an incomplete picture and understates opposition to Trump among Republican politicians and activists. Almost by definition, that opposition can’t happen within the obvious GOP spaces — the president and his acolytes have accumulated enough power that it’s increasingly hard to be both be anti-Trump and a Republican in good standing at a major conservative institution.

So Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan left the GOP and became an independent. Former Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina lost in a primary last year to an opponent endorsed by Trump after speaking out against the president. And just last Friday, Fox News anchor and occasional Trump critic Sheppard Smith resigned,1 as did Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who had occasionally clashed with the president.

Indeed, widen your lens and you can find all kinds of anti-Trump sentiment in conservative and right-leaning circles. This anti-Trump bloc, in addition to Republicans still supporting the president, might have lots of sway as impeachment unfolds — if they can reach GOP voters.

The media

You could create your very own conservative, anti-Trump TV network if you hired all the Trump-skeptical Republicans who regularly appear as talking heads on CNN and MSNBC. CNN, for example, has Amanda Carpenter, Charlie Dent, John Kasich, and Mia Love. MSNBC boasts Carlos Curbelo, Susan Del Percio, Elise Jordan, Mike Murphy, Jennifer Rubin, Joe Scarborough, Michael Steele, Charlie Sykes, Nicole Wallace, George Will and Rick Tyler.2

Yes, most conservative pundits on Fox News are heartily pro-Trump, but not all conservative pundits are on Fox News.

Elected officials

There were 241 Republicans in the U.S. House in early 2017, at the start of Trump’s tenure. Since then, more than a quarter have either been defeated at the ballot box, in last November’s elections (29), or retired (36).3 Some of them, such as former Rep. Mia Love of Utah, blame Trump’s unpopularity for their defeats. Others, such as Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, hint that they are leaving Congress in part because they are uncomfortable with the direction Trump is taking the GOP, as the Washington Post recently reported in a story detailing the exodus of House Republicans.

There is also a group of Trump-skeptical governors and senators — most notably former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio — who left their posts after 2018. And then you have figures like former Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois , ex-Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts and Sanford, all of whom are running long-shot primary challenges to Trump. Former Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who has publicly come out against Trump, is suing his state’s Republican Party in an effort to overturn its decision to cancel next year’s Republican primary, a move designed in part to boost the president.

So, in addition to that conservative, anti-Trump cable channel, you could also piece together a Senate majority (51 people) from Republicans who have previously served in either the House or the Senate but who have been publicly wary of Trump.

Senior Republican staffers

OK, if you’re going to have a shadow, anti-Trump GOP Senate, you need some experienced Republican operatives to staff it. You won’t have to look too hard.

In a clear and public rebuke to Trump, chiefs of staff for Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush recently told the New York Times that the presidents they served would never have asked for help winning an election from a foreign government. A group of conservative lawyers, many of whom served in top positions in the Department of Justice under Reagan or one of the Bushes, are supporting the impeachment inquiry.

Moreover, plenty of people who served in senior roles in the Trump administration itself, including H.R. McMaster (national security adviser), Anthony Scaramucci (communications director) and Rex Tillerson (secretary of state) have distanced themselves from the president.

Again, the Republican staffers currently in the White House are defending the president, but that might mask some broader disagreement among senior-level Republican staffers.

Conservative institutions

Many organizations on the right, such as the Heritage Foundation, are in lockstep with the president. But others — the Cato Institute, the Niskanen Center — are fairly critical of him

Or, take the white evangelical conservative movement as a whole. It is often portrayed as totally behind the president, and news stories often cite people like Jerry Falwell Jr. who are closely allied with the president to show that. But white evangelicals aren’t completely aligned with Trump — a generational gap has begun to open up. And really, people like Falwell, who runs a small Christian college (Liberty University), are more accurately described as evangelical leaders who support Trump, rather than evangelical leaders. overall. J.D. Greear, head of the Southern Baptist Convention, is more clearly a “leader” of America’s evangelicals — and he is kind of lukewarm about Trump.

So it’s important to understand that many conservative organizations and power centers on the right are strongly behind Trump, but also that increasingly “conservative” has come to mean “pro-Trump,” a narrative that writes out of the story organizations and people who had what were considered fairly rightly-leaning views pre-Trump.

OK, I admit this is an imprecise exercise. What overall percentage of elite Republicans — conservative media figures, current and former members of Congress, current and former administration officials, etc. — oppose Trump? That’s basically impossible to quantify.

But I think it’s higher than often portrayed — because some opposition lives in non-GOP spaces where people aren’t looking, and because much of it is also hidden from view, as elected Republicans face strong incentives to stand by Trump publicly.

All of this helps explain why Republican voters are among the most loyal-to-Trump constituencies in the Republican Party. Surveys have long suggested that between 85 and 90 percent of Republican voters approve of the president. Only about 13 percent of people who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 said that they disapproved of Trump in a poll conducted in late 2018 and early 2019 by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. According to FiveThirtyEight’s average of impeachment polls, about 14 percent of Republicans support impeachment.

I wrote recently about how rank-and-file voters often follow cues from elites, noting that impeachment support increased among Democrats after the party unified around the idea. So maybe if we had full data on the views of all Republican elites, we’d find that about 10 to 15 percent oppose Trump, perfectly in line with voters.

But I think that the safer assumption is this: Trump has in many ways successfully purged his critics from the power centers of the GOP. So a potential resistance to him among Republican elites doesn’t just face the obvious challenge that he’s the president and popular among GOP voters. Republican elites who are wary of Trump are also not well situated to make their case to rank-and-file Republican voters. They are working in lobbying shops or boardrooms instead of on Capitol Hill, speaking to audiences on CNN and MSNBC instead of Fox News, and outside of the administration instead of inside it.

The facts of the Ukraine case, or its politics, could open more doors for those anti-Trump voices in those pro-Trump spaces. That would likely have profound effects on the views of GOP voters.

For now, though, the Trump-skeptical bloc in Congress remains a small part of the overall Trump-skeptical conservative coalition.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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workfromhom · 6 years ago

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Patreon’s future and potential exits

Through the Extra Crunch EC-1 on Patreon, I dove into Patreon’s founding story, product roadmap, business model and metrics, underlying thesis, and competitive threats. The six-year-old company last valued around $450 million and likely to soon hit $1 billion is the leading platform for artists to run membership businesses for their superfans.

As a conclusion to my report, I have three core takeaways and some predictions on the possibility of an IPO or acquisition in the company’s future.

The future is bright for creators

First, the future is promising for independent content creators who are building engaged, passionate fanbases.

There is a surge of interest from the biggest social media platforms in creating more features to help them directly monetize their fans — with each trying to one-up the others. There are also a growing number of independent solutions for creators to use as well (Patreon and Memberful, Substack, Pico, etc.).

We live in an economy where a soaring number of people are self-employed, and the rise of more monetization tools for creators to earn a stable income will open the door to more people turning their creative talents into a part-time or full-time business pursuit.

Membership is a niche market and it’s unclear how big the opportunity is

Patreon’s play is to own a niche category of SMB who it recognizes has particular needs and provide them with the comprehensive suite of tools and services they need to manage their businesses. A large portion of creators’ incomes will need to go to Patreon for it to someday earn billions of dollars in annual revenue.

The market for content creators to build membership businesses appears to be growing, however, membership will be only one piece of the fan-to-creator monetization wave. The number of creators who are a fit for the membership business model and could generate $1,000-500,000 per month through Patreon (its target customer profile) is likely measured in the tens of thousands or low hundreds of thousands right now, rather than in the millions.

To get a sense of the revenue math here, Patreon will generate about $35 million this year from the 5,000-6,000 creators who fit its target customer profile; if you believe this market is expanding at a fast clip, capturing 10% of the revenue (Patreon’s current commission) from 20,000 such creators could bring in $140 million. And that’s without factoring in the potential success of Patreon implementing premium pricing options, which is a high priority. If Patreon can increase its commission from 10% to 15%, it would need around 47,500 creators in the $1,000-$500,000/month range (9.5x its current number) to reach $500 million in revenue from them.

There is a compelling opportunity for a company to provide the dominant business hub for creators, with tools to manage their fan (i.e. customer) relationships across platforms and to manage back-office logistics. At a certain point it taps out though.

That’s one of the reasons why Patreon’s vision includes extending into areas like business loans and healthcare. For companies targeting small and medium businesses like Shopify, Salesforce and Dropbox, there is so much more growth tied to their core products that there is no need for them to consider such unrelated offerings as business loans. Patreon has to both expand its market share and also expand the services it offers to those customers if it wants to reach massive scale.

Patreon faces serious competition but is evolving in the right direction

Patreon is the leading contender in this market, and there’s a role for an independent player even if Facebook, YouTube, and other distribution platforms push directly competing functionality. Patreon will need to make three important changes to compete effectively: more aggressively segment its customers, make the consumer-facing side of its platform more customizable by creators, and build out more lightweight talent management services.

What’s next for Patreon?

Having raised over $100 million in funding over the last six years, what is the path to a liquidity event for investors and employees?

In a worst case scenario, it is unlikely the company would go out of business even if it fell into disarray because it would be strategic for several large companies to takeover at a discount. Patreon may be on the path to IPO (as CEO Jack Conte hopes), but I find it more likely that the company gets acquired sometime in the next couple years.

Path to IPO?

If a public offering is in Patreon’s future, it’s several years out. It now defines itself as a SaaS company and has a plan to earn a higher blended commission on the sales of its customers through premium pricing options. It is a frequently misunderstood company, however, and needs to prove that a big market exists for mid-tail creators building membership businesses.

According to a summary by Spark Capital’s Alex Clayton, SaaS companies who went public in 2018 typically:

had $100-200 million in revenue over the prior twelve months,

were 14 years old,

had an average year-over-year revenue growth rate of ~40%,

earned 90% of revenue from subscriptions,

had a median gross margin of 73%,

ranged from roughly 500 to 2500 employees,

had a raised a median of $300 million in VC funding,

and IPO’d with a median market cap of $2 billion

Public market companies to benchmark it against will be Shopify (as SaaS infrastructure for small businesses selling to, and managing payments from, consumers) and Zuora (Patreon can be viewed as a media-specific SMB alternative to Zuora’s “Subscription Relationship Management” system). Compared to Shopify, whose market of SMB e-commerce businesses globally is easily understood to be enormous, Patreon would face more skepticism from public investors about the market size of mid-tail content creators.

Patreon’s gross margins can’t be much more than 50% given that almost half of revenue is going toward payment processing. Patreon mirrors Shopify’s topline revenue growth in the run up to its 2015 IPO: Shopify reported $23.7 million for 2012, $50.3 million for 2013, $105 million for 2014 and I estimate Patreon brought in $15 million for 2017, $30 million for 2018, and will hit $55 million for 2019. Most of Shopify’s revenue came from subscriptions, however, with only 37% coming from the “merchant solutions” services where Shopify had to pay out payment processing fees. Patreon’s revenue net of payment processing fees is closer to $7.5 million for 2017, $15 million for 2018, and $27 million (predicted) for 2019.

There’s a lot of capital chasing late-stage startups right now. How long that remains the case is unknown, but Patreon can likely raise the funding to operate unprofitably a few more years — getting topline revenue closer to $150-200 million, proving creators will adopt premium pricing, and showcasing its ability to compete with Facebook and YouTube in a growing market. In that case, it could become a strong IPO candidate.

The acquisition route

The other scenario, of course, is that a larger company buys Patreon. In particular, one of the large social media platforms building directly competitive features may decide it is easier to buy their expansion into membership than build it from scratch. Patreon is the dominant platform without any noteworthy direct competitor among independent companies, so acquiring it would immediately put the parent company in a market-leading position. Competing social platforms wouldn’t have another large Patreon-like startup to acquire in response.

There are three companies that jump out as both the most likely acquirers. Each of these M&A scenarios would be mutually beneficial: advancing Patreon’s mission and providing strategic value to the parent. The first two companies are probably obvious, but the last one may be less known to TechCrunch readers.

Facebook

I highlighted Facebook as the top competitive threat to Patreon. This is also why it’s a natural acquirer. Patreon would bring fan relationship management to the Facebook ecosystem and particularly the company’s Creator App with CRM and analytics specifically fit for creators’ needs. It would also bring a stable of 130,000 creators of all types to make Facebook the primary infrastructure through which they engage their core fans.

Facebook is prioritizing human relationships more and clickbait content less. A natural replacement for the flood of news articles and viral videos is deeper engagement with the creators that Facebook users care the most about.

Since the annual churn rate of Patreon creators who earn $500 per month or more is under 1%, the ~9,200 creators who fit that category would likely stick around as Patreon’s infrastructure integrates with Facebook’s; the vast majority probably already have Facebook pages and possibly use the Creator App.

Facebook’s data on who fans are, what they like, and who their friends are is unrivalled. The insights Facebook could provide Patreon’s creators on their fans could help them substantially grow their number of patrons and build stronger relationships with them.

Like all major social media platforms, Facebook has partnership teams vying to get major celebrities to use its products. Patreon could lock the mid-tail of smaller (but still established) creators into its ecosystem, which means more consumer engagement, more time well spent, and more revenue through both ads and fan-to-creator transactions. Owning and integrating Patreon could have a much bigger financial benefit than solely revenue from the core Patreon product.

As a Facebook subsidiary, Patreon would stick more closely to being a software solution; it wouldn’t develop as robust of a creator support staff and the vision that it may expand to offer business loans and health insurance to creators would almost surely be cut. Facebook would also probably discontinue supporting the roughly 23% of Patreon creators who make not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content.

Given Patreon’s mission to help creators get paid, it may make a bigger impact as part of Facebook nonetheless. Facebook’s ecosystem of apps is where creators and their fans already are. Tens of thousands of creators could start using Patreon’s CRM infrastructure overnight and activating fan memberships to earn stable income.

A Facebook-Patreon deal could happen at any point. I think a deal could just as likely happen in a few months as in a few years. The key will be Facebook’s business strategy: does it want to build serious infrastructure for creators? And does it believe paywalled access to some content and groups fits the future of Facebook? The company is experimenting with both of those right now, but doesn’t appear to be committed as of yet.

YouTube

The other most likely acquirer is Google-owned YouTube. Patreon was birthed by a YouTuber to support himself and fellow creators after their AdSense income dropped substantially. YouTube is becoming a direct competitor through YouTube Memberships and merchandise integrations.

If Patreon shows initial success in getting creators to adopt premium pricing tiers and YouTube sees a strong response to the membership functionality it has rolled out, it’s hard to imagine YouTube not making a play to acquire Patreon and make membership a priority in product development. This would create a whole new market for it to dominate, making money by selling business features to creators and encouraging fan-to-creator payments to happen through its platform.

In the meantime, it seems that YouTube is still searching for an answer to whether membership fits within its scope. It previously removed the ability for creators to paywall some videos and it could view fan-to-creator monetization efforts as a distraction from its dominance as an advertising platform and its growing strength in streaming TV online (through the popular $40/month YouTube TV subscription).

YouTube is also a less compelling acquirer than Facebook because the majority of Patreon’s creators don’t have a place on YouTube since they don’t produce video content (as least as their primary content type). Unless YouTube expands its platform to support podcasts and still images as well, it would be paying a premium to acquire the subset of Patreon creators that it wants. Moreover, as much as a quarter of those may be creators of NSFW content that YouTube prohibits.

YouTube is the potential Patreon acquirer people immediately point to, but it’s not as tight of a fit as Facebook would be…or as Endeavor would be.

Endeavor

The third scenario is that a major company in the entertainment and talent representation sphere sees acquiring Patreon as a strategic play to expand into a whole new category of talent representation with a technology-first approach. There is only one contender here: Endeavor, the $6.3 billion holding company led by Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell that is backed by Silver Lake, Softbank, Fidelity, and Singapore’s GIC and has been on an acquisition spree.

This pairing shows promise. Facebook and YouTube are the most likely companies to acquire Patreon, but Endeavor may be the company best fit to acquire it.

Endeavor is an ecosystem of companies — with the world’s top talent agency WME-IMG at the center — that can each integrate with each other in different ways to collectively become a driving force in global entertainment, sports and fashion. Among the 25+ companies it has bought are sports leagues like the UFC (for $4 billion) and the video streaming infrastructure startup NeuLion (for $250 million). In September, it launched a division, Endeavor Audio, to develop, finance and market podcasts.

Endeavor wants to leverage its talent and evolve its revenue model toward scalable businesses. In 2015, Emanuel said revenue was 60% from representation and 40% from “the ownership of assets” but quickly shifting; last year Variety noted the revenue split as 50/50.

In alignment with Patreon, Endeavor is a big company centered on guiding the business activities of all types of artists and helping them build out (and maximize) new revenue streams. When you hear Emanuel and Whitesell, they reiterate the same talking points that Patreon CEO Jack Conte does: artists are now multifaceted, and not stuck to one activity. They are building their own businesses and don’t want to be beholden to distribution platforms. Patreon could thrive under Endeavor given their alignment of values and mission. Endeavor would want Patreon to grow in line with Conte’s vision, without fearing that it would cannibalize ad revenue (a concern Facebook and YouTube would both have).

In a June interview, Whitesell noted that Endeavor’s M&A is targeted at companies that either expand their existing businesses or ones where they can uniquely leverage their existing businesses to grow much faster than they otherwise could. Patreon fits both conditions.

Patreon would be the scalable asset that plugs the mid-tail of creators into the Endeavor ecosystem. Whereas WME-IMG is high-touch relationship management with a little bit of tech, Patreon is a tech company with a layer of talent relationship management. Patreon can serve tens of thousands of money-making creators at scale. Endeavor can bring its talent expertise to help Patreon provide better service to creators; Patreon would bring technology expertise to help Endeavor’s traditional talent representation businesses better analyze clients’ fanbases and build direct fan-to-creator revenue streams for clients.

If there’s opportunity to eventually expand the membership business model among the top tiers of creators using Patreon.com or Memberful (which Conte hinted at in our interviews), Endeavor could facilitate the initial experiments with major VIPs. If memberships are shown to make more money for top artists, that means more money in the pockets of their agents at WME-IMG and for Endeavor overall, so incentives are aligned.

Endeavor would also rid Patreon of the “starving artist” brand that still accompanies it and could open a lot of doors in for Patreon creators whose careers are gaining momentum. Perhaps other Endeavor companies could access Patreon data to identify specific creators fit for other opportunities.

An Endeavor-Patreon deal would need to occur before Patreon’s valuation gets too high. Endeavor doesn’t have tens of billions in cash sitting on its balance sheet like Google and Facebook do. Endeavor can’t use much debt to buy Patreon either: its leverage ratio is already high, resulting in Moody’s putting its credit rating under review for downgrade in December. Endeavor has repeatedly raised more equity funding though and is likely to do so again; it canceled a $400M investment from the Saudi government at the last minute in October due to political concerns but is likely pitching other investors to take its place.

Patreon has strong revenue growth and the opportunity to retain dominant market share in providing business infrastructure for creators — a market that seems to be growing. Whether it stays independent and can thrive in the public markets sometime or whether it will find more success under the umbrella of a strategic acquirer remains to be seen. Right now the latter path is the more compelling one.

from Facebook – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2Vd8Rzj via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Facebook – TechCrunch

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un-enfant-immature · 6 years ago

Text

Patreon’s future and potential exits

As a conclusion to my report, I have three core takeaways and some predictions on the possibility of an IPO or acquisition in the company’s future.

The future is bright for creators

First, the future is promising for independent content creators who are building engaged, passionate fanbases.

Membership is a niche market and it’s unclear how big the opportunity is

Patreon faces serious competition but is evolving in the right direction

What’s next for Patreon?

Having raised over $100 million in funding over the last six years, what is the path to a liquidity event for investors and employees?

Path to IPO?

According to a summary by Spark Capital’s Alex Clayton, SaaS companies who went public in 2018 typically:

had $100-200 million in revenue over the prior twelve months,

were 14 years old,

had an average year-over-year revenue growth rate of ~40%,

earned 90% of revenue from subscriptions,

had a median gross margin of 73%,

ranged from roughly 500 to 2500 employees,

had a raised a median of $300 million in VC funding,

and IPO’d with a median market cap of $2 billion

The acquisition route

Facebook

YouTube

YouTube is the potential Patreon acquirer people immediately point to, but it’s not as tight of a fit as Facebook would be…or as Endeavor would be.

Endeavor

This pairing shows promise. Facebook and YouTube are the most likely companies to acquire Patreon, but Endeavor may be the company best fit to acquire it.

#TechCrunch

0 notes

topicprinter · 5 years ago

Link

Hey r/Entrepreneur, this ones for all of you who are looking into creating a business from written content, but don't know what platform you're going to use - I've been there and continually wrestle with the idea when I'm looking to launch a new thing.Each one of these content/blogging platforms has their merits, and I've broken them down here. This isn't intended to tell you which one is the best, each is good in it's own way. Hopefully the breakdown will shed some light and give you a better foundation to make the decision yourself.The Top 4 Content Platforms for 2020MediumWordPressSubstackGhostMediumMedium is YouTube but for writing. You publish content and the Medium Gods put it in front of users to see. You make your money from the Medium Partner Program. But instead of YouTube's advertising revenue model, Medium is subscription based, like YouTube Red. People subscribe to Medium and depending on the member read time on your blogs, you get paid accordingly.I've found that my RPM (Revenue per thousand views) is about $10, lower in comparison to a stand-alone revenue optimized site. Here's an example of how much I earn on a popular article on the original version of this (scroll to the bottom of the Medium section).That being said, I can't get ad revenue or add affiliate links to Medium - so easier traffic comes at a cost.ProsEasier traffic as Medium has visibility for your content through its algorithmFree to use and enroll into their partner program, even if you aren't a premium memberVery easy to setup your profile and start writing in their in built editor, no domain buying, no hostingConsIt's a platform and it's not your own real estateNo opportunities for expanding revenue streams besides directing people to your newsletter and using that audienceYou can't control the look and feel of your profile besides a basic description and a featured postYou cant get deep insights or integrate analytics, you need to use Mediums own version, which is OK.WordPressWordPress is the superman, the big boy. It powers 35% of the independent blogs on the internet, yes the whole internet, and is used by some extremely profitable companies. WordPress is usually everyone's go-to when starting a content based website but it's morphed into more than that. You can make it a shop, a portfolio, a SaaS product - it's much more than just content now.But it's got it's drawbacks as well, with all those extensions, bells and whistles, it's gotten slow. It's harder to keep it simple.ProsIt's easy to learn with countless resourcesIt's usually a one click install on most platforms as it's so widely usedIt's open source, so free to use in a commercial capacityIt's scalable and has diverse options for revenue streamsNo doubt one of the best out-of-box SEO setups out thereConsSlow - It's got too much fat as a platform with the average user loading up on bulky extensions that do a simple thing at the expense of 200ms load timeBecause it's your own real-estate, there's costs like domain name and hosting (yes standard, but 2 of the other platforms don't have that)You're not part of an established platform where users will visit every day (YouTube, Facebook, Medium), you need to work harder on driving trafficSubstackSubstack is a direct competitor to Medium. Substack makes their money from subscriptions, just like Medium, but unlike Medium, it’s on a per-blog basis. People don’t subscribe to Substack, they subscribe to your particular blog. And your blog is an email newsletter - they're one and the same on this platform.Your content is delivered as an email new letter, so every new thing you publish, you send. It’s free to use, but they bank on the fact that you will eventually make premium emails that are only for subscribers (taking a portion of these earnings) - It also publishes them to the site.So this platform is more about finding your true fans, than going for volume.ProsIt’s got its own editor, is free and easy to use (like Medium)It’s your own list of portable followers (unlike Medium)You can link out to anywhere and promote practically anything without consequencesYou can add analytics software for deeper stats per blog post/emailYour blog is your email list, so you don’t need to worry about promoting it constantlyYou have infrastructure to monetize via subscriptions like Medium, but you get a bigger piece of the (smaller) pie when someone subscribesConsThe visibility of your content isn’t increased for being on the platform, except if you’re in the Top 50 for a particular post — so less reachYou still can’t monetize through affiliate programs or ads, but you can link out as mentioned priorIn the fashion of strength in numbers, it’s harder to convert someone for only your content than it is for converting someone for many author’s content and taking a smaller piece of a larger pieGhostGhost is a direct competitor to both Medium and WordPress. It's basically Medium, if you could grab Medium as a software package and install it on your own real-estate. It's open source but has a paid managed install version like WordPress, called Ghost(Pro). It can get expensive if you set it up that way, but it might be the way you go considering that unlike WordPress, this platform isn't at a stage where it's highly customizable for a user who isn't a developer.But for every bit of bulk that WordPress carries, Ghost is that much lighter. Here's an example of a ghost site. In fact it's the only standalone site I run, and it's on Ghost.ProsIt’s built with Node.js — massive pool of developers to help with scaleSuper lightweight and doesn’t have the bulk of WordPressHas all the built-in features of Medium that matter and more — Unsplash integration, subscription functionality, Zapier, AMP, Disqus comments, analytics etc.It your own real-estate so you can add multiple revenue channelsFully customizable, if you have the right knowledge and toolsConsThere are very few 1-click installs. Even DigitalOcean’s one isn’t hassle-free, and they’re the ones that manage Ghost(Pros) infrastructure.You need to have a trivial knowledge (at least) of contemporary JS, SSH and how server architecture works for your own install.There aren’t unlimited themes or extensions, as there seemingly are for WordPress.Fixing trivial problems like making your external links open new tabs requires knowledge that you otherwise wouldn’t need on WordPress.To avoid these problems, you’d need to pay a developer, learn to develop or use the pro version — each has problems when you look to scale the site.Hopefully this shed some light on some of the options that are available out there, and if you're looking to start a content based business, no doubt that knowing this information will enable you to make a more educated decision. This article was adapted from this original one, so head over if you want more.Hope you got some value! I'll answer questions below, but I'm about to go to sleep so I might be several hours late!Thanks,Sah

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

0 notes

toomanysinks · 6 years ago

Text

Patreon’s future and potential exits

As a conclusion to my report, I have three core takeaways and some predictions on the possibility of an IPO or acquisition in the company’s future.

The future is bright for creators

First, the future is promising for independent content creators who are building engaged, passionate fanbases.

Membership is a niche market and it’s unclear how big the opportunity is

Patreon faces serious competition but is evolving in the right direction

What’s next for Patreon?

Having raised over $100 million in funding over the last six years, what is the path to a liquidity event for investors and employees?

Path to IPO?

According to a summary by Spark Capital’s Alex Clayton, SaaS companies who went public in 2018 typically:

had $100-200 million in revenue over the prior twelve months,

were 14 years old,

had an average year-over-year revenue growth rate of ~40%,

earned 90% of revenue from subscriptions,

had a median gross margin of 73%,

ranged from roughly 500 to 2500 employees,

had a raised a median of $300 million in VC funding,

and IPO’d with a median market cap of $2 billion

The acquisition route

Facebook

YouTube

YouTube is the potential Patreon acquirer people immediately point to, but it’s not as tight of a fit as Facebook would be…or as Endeavor would be.

Endeavor

This pairing shows promise. Facebook and YouTube are the most likely companies to acquire Patreon, but Endeavor may be the company best fit to acquire it.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/23/patreons-future-and-potential-exits/

0 notes

fmservers · 6 years ago

Text

Patreon’s future and potential exits

As a conclusion to my report, I have three core takeaways and some predictions on the possibility of an IPO or acquisition in the company’s future.

The future is bright for creators

First, the future is promising for independent content creators who are building engaged, passionate fanbases.

Membership is a niche market and it’s unclear how big the opportunity is

Patreon faces serious competition but is evolving in the right direction

What’s next for Patreon?

Having raised over $100 million in funding over the last six years, what is the path to a liquidity event for investors and employees?

Path to IPO?

According to a summary by Spark Capital’s Alex Clayton, SaaS companies who went public in 2018 typically:

had $100-200 million in revenue over the prior twelve months,

were 14 years old,

had an average year-over-year revenue growth rate of ~40%,

earned 90% of revenue from subscriptions,

had a median gross margin of 73%,

ranged from roughly 500 to 2500 employees,

had a raised a median of $300 million in VC funding,

and IPO’d with a median market cap of $2 billion

The acquisition route

Facebook

YouTube

YouTube is the potential Patreon acquirer people immediately point to, but it’s not as tight of a fit as Facebook would be…or as Endeavor would be.

Endeavor

This pairing shows promise. Facebook and YouTube are the most likely companies to acquire Patreon, but Endeavor may be the company best fit to acquire it.

Via Eric Peckham https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes