How Subscriptions Will Go Mainstream on Social Media in 2023
Creator Paywalls are Coming in Social
Hey Guys,
While subscriptions changed digital media forever in the last few years, there are some real signs it will take over social media. TikTok adopting subscription only live-streaming like Twitch and Twitter finally make Super follow subscription features a thing, the signs are in motion.
Platforms will also:
Make sharing Ad-revenue with creators the new normal
Integrate NFTs into their products so as to avoid being disrupted by Web3 decentralized blockchains.
Try to learn how to to social selling better, that is, copy China in how they do live-streaming to boost E-commerce sales.
All of these innovations boost the importance of the personal brand and the future of user-generated-content. In this article I want to take a closer look at Twitter Super Follows.
Twitter Super-Follow
The best features that allow Creators to monetize will enable social platforms to remain relevant in a changing world of our mobile and fleeting attention.
Here you are competing with the likes of TikTok and YouTube, and few others. Twitch has send the bar for how live-streaming in the West can take shape.
Super-Follow Only Spaces
As of May 17th, 2022 Twitter’s rolling out a new subscriber-only element to help creators build their in-app communities, with Super Follower only Spaces now available to selected creators that offer subscriptions.
This is like having Substack podcast content behind a paywall, but on Twitter with audio. Twitter Space are already a great audio product. They add a more collaborative and easy-listening feature to the legacy feed of Web2 platforms that barely keeps our attention any longer.
The mobile internet as of 2022, is mostly a video-first micro content experience. Think TikTok, Snap, YouTube Shorts and in some cases Instagram.
Twitter Launches New ‘Twitter Create’ Mini-Site
Twitter has added some new enhancements for its Super Follows creator monetization tools, including a separate ‘Super Followers’ notification tab for creators, and a new way for subscribers to get specific alerts from only the accounts that they’re paying to follow in the app.
If YouTube is becoming a bit more like TikTok, Twitter is becoming a bit more like Twitch. And, it’s not really surprising to finally see. TikTok however, has all the leverage. In recent years, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have become ghost lands for ordinary netizens.
You are more likely to find us on Reddit, Discord or Snap where real interactions are taking place. These places all have one thing in common, they are more user-generated-interaction orientated. They are nearly Web2.5. Reddit with different user run Subreddits, is in a way the first step towards being more decentralized. Discord even more so.
Subscriptions and paywalls, once taboo in media have become the new normal. Now it’s the turn of social media to adopt this model.
“Now with Super Follows-only Spaces, creators can offer an extra layer of conversation to their biggest supporters beyond Tweets by engaging them through live audio.
Creators who are popular on TikTok or another app, can now diversify into other platforms and apps and monetize their personal brand better, but it requires you to be a hybrid creator, adept in writing, podcasting and/or video. All of these in their respective place on your marketing funnel. In the new world of the Creator Economy, hybrid creators will prosper the best.
A Newsletter will be typically, only one feature in the puzzle. For native creators, it’s their personality and ability to entertain or educate that is the puzzle. TikTok creators are closer to this reality than long-time Twitter creators.
Back in September, 2021 Twitter unveiled Super Follows, but it’s only in 2023 that we will witness their true potential. Only users with at least 10,000 followers will be eligible for the Super Follows feature.
Super Follows can help people on Twitter earn monthly income from the conversations they create. You may earn a share of revenue from paid subscriptions offering your most engaged followers an extra level of access and bonus content.
You can see Twitter’s documentation on Super Follows here.
Who sets the price of Super Follows subscriptions?
You’ll set the value of the content you’ll offer by choosing from one of three price points: $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99.*
How much revenue can I earn?
You’ll be eligible to earn up to 97%* of revenue on your Super Follows subscription, after in-app purchase fees, until you reach $50,000 in lifetime earnings across all Twitter monetization products.
So this is important, Twitter is giving Creators 97% of the revenue. Compare that to the 13% Substack and Stripe take on this platform, pressure from many platforms means this gradually goes down.
But there’s a major catch: After $50,000 in lifetime earnings, you can earn up to 80% of revenue after in-app purchase fees. Up to 80% won’t be a good deal any longer if you ever reach that threshold.
It’s actually even worse, because Apple takes its cut as well:
So this might not exactly be a winning model, pending better rights for apps in Apple’s gangster app store. Creators thus only get 67.8% of the revenue for the first $50,000. That turns out to be pretty terrible, unless you have scale.
TikTok Live-Streaming revenue will likely turn out to be better and more lucrative. They will go after Twitch, but it won’t be easy, Twitch has been around since 2011 and is owned by Amazon, who are notoriously customer-centric. Access will be restricted to select invited TikTok users as part of a beta launch, then rolled out to all eligible users in coming weeks. By 2023, we’ll see if TikTok gets it right.
The real boon for Twitter will be Twitter Micro-sites and Twitter Follow Only Spaces.
Twitter.create is a good micro-site to better understand how Creators can Thrive there. I’ll admit it’s a bit confusing, considering how boring Twitter typically can be.
You can also pay for Twitter features you want with Twitter Blue, but I’m not sure how adoption among Twitter power users is here. There aren’t really any deal-breaking features here.
Bottom line is unless you have a following of over 20,000 real followers on Twitter, monetizing it won’t be easy or very useful.
Twitter thinks however there’s still a place for Writers to add value on Twitter:
Super Follows
Twitter says: Your readers love your work and they’re willing to support you in your creative process. Super Follows is a way to connect with them on a deeper level by sharing exclusive content with them in exchange for a monthly subscription.
What you share with your Super Followers is up to you, but some great ideas (from other writers) include:
Behind the scenes content
Early or exclusive content
Subscriber-exclusive Spaces
Q&As or AMAs with your Super Followers
What you’re reading, watching, or enjoying personally
More info about sources, interviews, or story extras
Educational content to go deeper on topics within your expertise
So for a Substack writer, this is great if you write stories, literature or have an active relationship to your community. Surprisingly, few Substack writers actually do. Even some relatively large accounts of free subscribers, get relatively few to no comments.
Anyways that Paywalls will pop up on Twitter, TikTok and other platforms is vaguely interesting in how media and social media is evolving. Many creators will need more than just a home base, but have an entire funnel of daily activities relating to the cultivation of their personal brand. The marketing part becomes nearly as important as the “Creator” part. Of course many writers don’t understand this and have limited ability to implement this well.
Writers need to be able to pivot into audio formats and micro-video if they want to grow their audiences more aggressively. However many writers develop niche communities that don’t require any of that at all, so it really depends on your abilities, preferences and the kind of audience you are trying to reach and target.
Twitter’s product innovations of late are all over the place, with limited user base momentum. Still for Substack Creators, the integration with Twitter is pretty significant. I think as time goes on, TikTok at the intersection of Substack will become a bigger deal. On TikTok, it’s still possible to grow an audience from scratch, which is not the case with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn any longer imho.
Anyways guys, that’s my little exploration of the future of paid subs on social. They are creating to become more creator-economy inclined, but it’s a slow and painful process. The ROI is also not always worth it as they don’t share an adequate amount of the revenue with the creator like I have covered before.
Peace.