YouTube and influencer business trends newsletter March 5

Welcome to this week’s Influencer Dashboard newsletter!

This is Amanda Perelli, and I’ll be briefing you on what’s new in the business of influencers and creators.

Before we get started, I want to first introduce a colleague who will be appearing more frequently in this newsletter moving forward: Kevin Webb! Kevin has been covering gaming for Business Insider and he’ll be digging into the business of esports and gaming influencers.

This week, Kevin spoke to top Twitch streamers who broke down the six main ways to make money on the platform, from subscriptions to bounties, and how lucrative each is.

The top creators on Twitch earn millions each year and the platform has created an ecosystem for more than 27,000 partnered streamers to make money from their broadcasts.

Becoming an affiliate is the first step to making money on Twitch. Once you’re invited to the Twitch Affiliate Program, you’ll gain access to new account tools, including what you need to activate advertisements and channel subscriptions. But that’s just the start. (Check out Kevin’s full post here.) 

Kevin also reported on 23 investors pouring millions into Overwatch esports teams. Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch League is one of the most popular esports competitions in the world and the investors range from Patriots owner Robert Kraft to Chinese conglomerates. (Check out the full list here.) 

You can reach Kevin at kwebb@businessinsider.com and on Twitter @Forte2K. 

You can read most of the articles here by subscribing to BI Prime. And if this is your first time reading Influencer Dashboard, subscribe to the newsletter here.

I spoke to 20-year-old TikTok comedy star Josh Sadowski who has around 4 million followers. 

Sadowski told me that he divides his time between creating content for TikTok and his other popular social-media accounts, and assisting the nine other TikTok creators he manages in building their online businesses. 

He broke down the main ways he earns money through TikTok, like sponsorships, music promotions, and helping his clients secure brand partnerships. He also shared how much he charges brands and how he landed deals with the likes of Chipotle and Bumble.

“A lot of people are afraid of jumping into a contract or not knowing what to say to a brand,” he said. “One thing creators don’t realize is that they can get a lot more money than what they are getting right now.”

Read the full post on Sadowski’s TikTok business, here.

As social-media users look for authenticity on apps like Instagram, there’s growing demand in the influencer-marketing space for creators with fewer than 5,000 followers who seem more like “real people” than career influencers with millions of followers.

These “nano influencers,” who don’t work full-time as creators, are much cheaper to hire, and can drive high engagement rates to their smaller audiences. Companies like Dunkin, Bose, and Kettle Foods have all tapped nano influencers to post about their brands for campaigns on Instagram in the past couple years.

My colleague Dan Whateley spoke to the CEO of influencer marketing startup, Heartbeat, which has built a marketplace to connect brands with 275,000 Instagram users that have an average of about 2,000 followers.

The company shared what brands typically look for when hiring a nano influencer, and how much a creator can earn by participating in campaigns.

Read the full post on how Instagram nano influencers make money, here. 

Dan also wrote about Olivia Jade and how she is getting back into influencer marketing on Instagram as her parents Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannull face charges in the college-admissions scandal.

Jade’s parents were accused of paying $500,000 to guarantee her (and her sister’s) admission to USC. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them and will likely start their trial in October. 

The 20-year-old creator posted links to two Amazon pages in her Instagram Story this week using affiliate-marketing links that suggest she could earn a commission from resulting sales.

Jade also reshared a photo of herself promoting Kim Kardashian West’s shapewear brand, Skims. Jade previously had deals with Sephora, TRESemmé, and Amazon, but they cut ties with her after the college-admissions scandal broke.

Read the full post on Olivia Jade’s return to influencer marketing, here. 

What else happened this week on BI Prime: 

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Vanessa Lau is an online business coach with almost 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. She posts videos about social media and entrepreneurship every week.

In this video, Lau shares her tips for growing a YouTube channel in 2020. Gaining your first 1,000 subscribers is important because it will allow you to apply for YouTube’s Partner Program and gain access to video monetization features.

She says to grow a YouTube channel, you need to think about your audience and the specific type of person who would be watching. She also advises creators to make searchable content by thinking about what people are actively looking for on the internet.

Check out the full video and her tips here.

Here’s what else we’re reading: