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Welcome back to this week’s Influencer Dashboard newsletter!
This is Amanda Perelli, writing to you from home, and here’s an update on what’s new in the business of influencers and creators.
This week, my colleague Dan Whateley spoke to the founder of “Drip Crib,” a new TikTok influencer group and collab house, on his strategy to try and turn a profit.
As TikTok stars move to Los Angeles to pursue careers in entertainment, many are getting houses together and forming creator “collectives.”
The influencer group is renting a mansion listed at $18,900 per month, located in the heart of Los Angeles’ social-media scene, just a few minutes away from the Hype House and residences of top YouTubers like Logan Paul and James Charles.
The founder, influencer and musician Devion Young, broke down:
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How to start a TikTok house – like securing a lease and recruiting talent.
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Establishing house rules, which can include content quotas.
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His investment plans and how he plans to pay for the house through brand deals.
In the competitive TikTok “collab” house world, Drip Crib is effectively a startup. The house’s TikTok account has around 35,000 followers compared to the 15.2 million fans who follow the Hype House and 2.9 million followers of Sway LA’s TikTok account. (Read the full post here.)
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Christina Vidal
The influencer industry has seen a downturn in recent weeks, especially for those primarily working in the travel category.
I spoke with several travel influencers and industry experts about how the coronavirus had affected their businesses and which strategies they were focusing on to continue to earn revenue and build up readership.
Audiences online aren’t searching for the same content as before, but they are still there and hungry for other types that are more relevant to life at home.
Christina Vidal, a travel influencer, said she had experienced a major hit to her digital business in recent weeks.
To stay afloat financially, she decided to pivot and focus on what her audience would be more interested in right now, like easy recipes and a quarantine gift-giving guide – and she’s not alone in having to make drastic changes to her content.
Read the full post for more on how travel influencers have pivoted business here.
Amy Landino
Direct ad revenue from YouTube can prove unreliable — especially if a creator’s videos contain controversial content — so many influencers are getting smart about finding ways to diversify.
Dan and I broke down the 8 main ways influencers across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are making money without relying on income from YouTube ads or brand sponsorships.
Some of the new ways creators have been turning their followers into paying customers (especially while social distancing) are by sending personalized video messages to fans through the app Cameo or creating a subscription-based membership program through Patreon.
These types of revenue streams are more important than ever for influencers with the ad meltdown currently happening because of the pandemic.
Read the full post for a breakdown of the 8 main ways influencers are making money without ads, here.
Fanjoy
Unlike LinkedIn or Twitter, on Instagram users can direct message anyone – no matter how famous they are.
I spoke to Chris Vaccarino, the founder and CEO of the influencer-focused e-commerce company Fanjoy, on his tips for reaching influencers via Instagram DM.
Messaging on Instagram is a main way the company has signed some of its clients — like TikTok stars Addison Rae Easterling (nearly 40 million followers) and Alex Warren (10 million followers), along with Netflix’s “The Circle” star Joey Sasso (728,000 Instagram followers).
Vaccarino said to get someone’s attention on Instagram, long paragraphs won’t do, and explained why the company relies on DMs more than emails or cold-calling.
“Super simple, to be consumed within 5 to 10 seconds,” Vaccarino said of a good DM. “It can’t be paragraphs.”
Read the full post on how he contacts top influencers and why he swears by this technique here.
What else happened on BI Prime:
ReKTGlobal
This week on Insider’s digital culture desk:
Here’s what else we’re reading:
Thanks for reading! Send me your tips, comments, or questions: aperelli@businessinsider.com.
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