It wasn’t something Higgins had planned to do, he said. But after gaining a following on the live social audio app, he took the leap. Currently, Higgins is one of the most popular people on the app, with more than 430,000 followers. Higgins said brand partnerships on the channel have become a main source of revenue for him. He declined to say exactly how much he earns but that brands like Ted Baker, Adobe and Amazon Prime Video have approached him for work hosting themed Clubhouse rooms.

While Higgins was able to attract a following without relying on small audience donations — essentially tips — on the platforms, he sees them as a way to support new creators. He considered them a way for platforms to engage creators, attract their audiences, and ultimately, increase user retention rates.

“I think tipping is the best way to start [monetization],” he said. “The best thing you can do is put something in there that’s quite small and voluntary, and let’s see how people behave. You can understand how good that is for a musician or comedy act.”

In April, Clubhouse introduced a donation-based tipping feature known as Payments, where listeners can digitally send money or tip their favorite creators via payment processing software Stripe without leaving the app. Since then, the app has launched a 3-month long creator fund program, offering a $5,000 per month, per show stipend, equipment and training to help creators monetize their work.

Twitter also rolled out a donation-based tipping feature, with its Tip Jar in early May, in which users can tip others through third-party payment services such as Cash App, Patreon, PayPal, Bandcamp or Venmo. And not to be outdone, Snapchat last month announced its Gifting feature where users can purchase Snap Tokens to send a gift and creators earn a share of the revenue. Instagram just launched a three-day summit to help creators monetize on their channels, per previous Digiday reporting.

Per marketers, all the signs point to competition heating up between the platforms to keep users engaged and advertisers paying to access their audiences. As social platforms like TikTok and Clubhouse continue to take up audience market share, titans like Twitter and Snapchat are rolling out competitive features to keep creators happy, they say. Because where there are creators, brands and ad dollars aren’t far behind. And it won’t be long before other platforms offer similar features.

“Ultimately, what the platforms are able to monetize is usage. And the more they can point to usage growth, retention of users and things like daily and monthly active users, those are really the bread and butter that allows them to go to advertisers …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron