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- Ice cream so good = $7000 per day 🍦
Ice cream so good = $7000 per day 🍦
Welcome to a fresh edition of eBiz Insider, my free newsletter packed with tips, insights and opportunities to build your online business.
Today...
Their Database Generated $100,000+ Within a year
This Software Powers Million Dollar Newsletters
Ice Cream So Good = $7000 Per Day
People Pay Billions of Dollars For This
$10K/Month Email App While Sailing The World
Music Superstar Failed 100s of Times
Her Island Website + Newsletter Earns Up To $2500/Month
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Their Database Generated $100,000+ Within a Year
Ryan Sager is the co-founder of Who Sponsors Stuff, a database that tracks sponsorship data for newsletters 👀
Ryan used to work at a company called Ladders, where he helped build a newsletter that generated millions in ad revenue 💰
That's also where he met his co-founder Jesse.
In a recent interview, Ryan shared how it came to be…
After Ladders, Jesse and I set up a company doing third-party sales for newsletters that needed help filling ad inventory.
We had big clients in numerous content verticals, so we needed a way to track what companies were sponsoring which newsletters. We'd done this casually at Ladders, but this time around we systematized it more and more.
Before long, it was clear that what we were building wasn't just of use to us—it was something we should package and sell to publishers.
Who Sponsors Stuff now tracks 350+ newsletters and records details like ad screenshots, sponsor landing pages, and the best contacts to reach out to 👋
We record who is sponsoring each newsletter and package that data up for use by publishers' sales teams or for solopreneurs.
They built the whole thing with Airtable and Softr (turns Airtable data into a working app), and hired virtual assistants to collect the data.
After starting in late 2021, Who Sponsors Stuff was already generating six-figure revenue within a year 🚀
Most of our interest has come inbound and through referrals from other customers.
Ryan says the product now has over 50+ paying publishers using it to power their newsletter and podcast ad sales. So I’m guessing they charge $2k-$3k per year for this data.
The success of Who Sponsors Stuff in the newsletter industry has me wondering if it could work for other industries 🤔
Maybe…
Podcast Sponsor Tracker
Niche YouTube Sponsor Tracker (tech, gaming, productivity, etc.)
Might be an opportunity to package who's sponsoring what in those industries, and sell the data to creators.
Ryan's advice for new founders….
Make sure you're solving a problem. If you're solving a pain point that can unlock revenue for others, you're off to a better start than 99% of projects.
With that in mind, a good starting point here would be to speak to a bunch of people you think would pay for such a service 💬
If you're addressing a real pain point – and they believe you can actually deliver a solution – they'd likely be willing to pay in advance.
This Software Powers Million Dollar Newsletters
Today's email is brought to you by Beehiiv 🐝
That's the software I use to publish and grow this newsletter. I switched to it a month ago and it's been great so far.
Beehiiv's CEO was head of growth at Morning Brew, a newsletter which was valued at $75 million a few years ago 🤯
Beehiiv is also the software used to power The Milk Road, a newsletter that sold for $10+ million after only 10 months.
I really like the pricing of Beehiiv. There's a 14-day free trial and you can continue to use it for free up to 2,500 subscribers. After that it's flat-rate pricing.
For example, I'm paying $84/month for my list of 19k subscribers. And the price doesn't increase until I hit 100k subscribers.
I just checked another popular newsletter software and I'd be paying $210/month on there currently, and $700/month by the time I reached 100k subscribers 😱
So yeah, Beehiiv is a really nice, inexpensive way to start a newsletter. And they've got a ton of growth tools built in.
👉 Check it out if you're thinking to start a newsletter.
Ice Cream So Good = $7000 Per Day
Fedha Sinon, known on social media as PinkyDoll, has recently gone viral due to her imitations of background characters in video games (aka non-playable characters or NPCs).
Here’s a video of her that got 50M+ views on Twitter 📈
I was just being cute. I remember someone saying, 'Oh my God, you look like an NPC.' And then they start sending me, like, crazy money.
In a typical livestream, she stares into the camera while delivering canned phrases like 👇
mmm ice cream so good
yum yum
gang gang
yes yes yes
I know, it's pretty weird.
As she streams, viewers send PinkyDoll digital gifts which translate to cash payments. Her reaction to the ice cream cone gifts has become a meme 🍦
From the NYT profile…
For certain viewers, there’s something sexual about being able to control her every word and gesture by sending her this or that gift. For other viewers, she is just plain fascinating to watch.
Regardless, this schtick is earning PinkyDoll a ton of money 🤑
Ms. Sinon said she made between $2,000 and $3,000 per stream. Across all her social media accounts, which include Instagram and OnlyFans, she puts that number at $7,000 per day.
And she doesn't seem to mind the criticism…
I don’t really care what people say about me. If they want to think I am this or that, it’s fine with me. At the end of the day, I’m winning.
People Pay Billions of Dollars For This
🗂 From the archive, published February 2021…
John da Maia writes about the time he bumped into Breaking Bad actor Bryan Cranston before a meeting at Amazon’s headquarters.
Cranston told him…
If you analyze the world, you will find that you have been told stories since you were born. You need stories to make sense of the world.
And the most important thing: people pay billions of dollars to hear a story.
John goes on to recount an experiment performed by a journalist back in 2009…
[The journalist] wanted to find out if storytelling was powerful enough to make people spend more money on ordinary / low-value objects.
His strategy was brilliant: have creative writers invent stories about the objects and then post them on eBay and understand if the invented stories increase the value of the object measured by the eBay auction.
He bought 200 objects with an average of $1 each. The objects couldn’t be clothing or anything that could be considered artwork. The results were mind-blowing.
One example was a plastic banana 🍌 bought for $0.25 and sold for $76. Another was a mug bought for $0.39 and sold for $31.
All because of the compelling stories the writers attached to those objects.
If you want to get better at storytelling yourself, two great books on the topic:
Building a StoryBrand (8m video summary)
Storyworthy (18m author TED Talk)