🦅 250M paid subs are rewriting the rules

In this issue, you’ll find:

• 250M paid subscribers are rewriting the creator economy rules

• News creators should know

• How to turn bad cold DMs into effective ones

250M paid subscribers are rewriting the creator economy rules

Spotify gave podcasters a new way to monetize. They're sharing subscription revenue!

YouTube still runs on ads. The better your content performs, the more ads it plays, creating a worse user experience.

Ads now eat up 11% of podcast episodes. That turns listeners off.

Daniel Ek, Spotify's CEO, sees the problem: ads force a trade-off between money and experience.

Spotify does the opposite. You get paid without jamming ads into your show. And Spotify now has over 250 million paid subscribers, which makes it an almost Netflix-sized platform.

This isn't just another monetization method, it's potentially MORE STABLE than advertising. And on top of this, Spotify isn't trying to be the ONLY platform for creators. On the contrary, they bet the future belongs to multi-platform creators.

The potential implications are massive.

If this subscription revenue model works, could Netflix or other platforms follow? Could we see a future where creators upload to Netflix under specific quality guidelines with revenue sharing?

You can find out more here.

LinkedIn’s big leap into creator monetization

LinkedIn is leveling up its creator game, rebranding "Wire" as "BrandLink" to capitalize on rising video content popularity. Marketers can now showcase ads alongside videos from big-name creators like Gary Vaynerchuk and Steven Bartlett.

As LinkedIn puts it:

“BrandLink delivers more relevant video content to members while also allowing advertisers to align with editorial content from trusted publishers and, now, some of the world’s top creator voices, including Steven Bartlett, Bernard Marr, Allie K. Miller, Rebecca Minkoff, Candace Nelson, Guy Raz, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Shelley Zalis.”

This update marks LinkedIn’s initial push into helping creators monetize directly from their influence.

Mint’s secret sauce for viral success on Reddit

Discounts and celeb promos get attention, but the real power lies in the customer experience, and Reddit amplifies that voice.

Mint Mobile cracked this code, drawing over 44% of their social referrals (over 101K visits last month!) straight from Reddit, according to SimilarWeb.

Google's AI search: big claims, bigger reality check

Google CEO Sundar Pichai keeps insisting AI Overviews have transformed search behavior, citing increased usage and complex queries. But a massive Similarweb analysis of 5 billion searches tells another story:

• Visits rose (+9%), but engagement per visit fell

• Query length? Barely budged

The truth: Google's narrative is oversimplified, and marketers need to rethink strategies in response to this new search landscape.

How to turn bad cold DMs into effective ones

I get cold DMs all the time. Most of them?

Utter shit.

The safest way to not fall in that category is simple: build an authentic connection before pitching anything.

But I get it—sometimes you must go straight for the sale. That's fine.

What's not fine is dropping lazy, low-effort messages that waste everyone's time—and hurt your reputation.

So, let's look at a couple of bad, hard-pitch cold DMs. And how they could've actually worked.

Find out more in the last issue of 🧲 The Lead Magnet:

Last poll: How are you using WhatsApp in your business?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📣 Starting to use it for marketing/sales (57.14%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🟢 Just for customer support

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💰 Actively using it as a sales channel

That’s it for now, everyone! We’ll meet again next week to discuss some more of this!

Don’t forget to try Hypefury (for free) if you haven’t yet.

Feel free to reply to this email. It goes directly to me.

Cheers,

Yannick Veys
Co-founder and CMO of Hypefury