💌: Onlyfans, Privacy, & Ryan Reynolds

Yo! I’m back with another roundup of all the great stuff I’ve seen this week. If you were surprised to see Onlyfans in the subject line, don’t worry. It’s not because I’m planning to monetize this newsletter there.

It's because there's an interesting story about Onlyfans in the list below so make sure to check that out.

Ok, let's get into it!

📸 Social & The Creator Economy

• Say hello to Lu — a virtual influencer who has 25M followers. WHUT! We live in a cyberpunk themed sci-fi movie now.
• Running Facebook ads? Here’s how to choose the right objective type for your ads.
• The creator economy keeps heating up, and this week Instagram Teased their new Affiliate Program, Merch Storefronts, and Live streaming Rewards. They made all of these announcements at their very first “creator week.” It’s clear all the tech titans are trying to help us all stay glued to their platforms, and creators make money daily.
• I’ve shared a couple of articles about influencer burnout, and this week brings us another great one. Young Creator Are Burning Out and Breaking Down. Young stars are not immune to burnout just because of their youth, or enthusiasm for a platform. Burnout is very real, and this is going to have consequences for us all for years to come.
• Here’s a quick one: 5 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Marketing Your Brand. LinkedIn is like a content graveyard, but there is still gold to be mined.

🖼 Advertising & Design

• Ryan Reynolds continues his streak of hilarious and effective ads with this new Aviation Gin spot. He hilariously makes his way through mixing a cocktail named The Vasectomy, in honor of Father’s Day. I laughed.
• Speaking of ads, it was revealed this week that TikTok charges up to $2Million a day for top ad spots. All roads lead to TikTok, even when the roads are expensive af.
• Do you use Google Docs? Google added over 60 new fonts to use recently, and here’s a breakdown of the five best. Google is about to make a strong push to upgrade it’s G-suite and work apps to a more modern experience. Competitors abound, and Google hasn’t updated many of these products for years.

🕵️‍♀️Email & Privacy

• This week was WWDC, Apple’s annual developer focused conference. This is the event where Apple rolls out new iOS and macOS updates and announce upcoming features. Continuing the trend towards privacy, they announced a few privacy-focused features for the default iPhone Mail app. iOS users will now be able to opt out of email tracking, and hide their email address entirely. There are a bunch of hot takes, but this is a great one: Will Apple Mail threaten the newsletter boom? My personal conspiracy theory is that Apple is creating a privacy garden for their users that they will eventually be able to charge marketers a premium for accessing those users in one way or another. They’ve already limited on-device advertising, now they are limiting email. It’s for our privacy now, but who does it benefit a few years from now?
• Speaking of privacy, is it time to ditch Chrome?
• If you’re in any kind of eCommerce, email is likely your most valuable channel. If it’s not, you might need a new strategy. Among the most important flows is what happens AFTER someone buys from you. Here’s a nice video on post purchase email nurture sequences.

📖 Deeper reads

• A deep dive into Onlyfans, how it started, and how it’s unstoppable now. This is a perfect storm of previous business expertise and a testament to the power of affiliate marketing. Still, not sure if they’ll ever be able to shake off the NSFW image that immediately comes to mind for most. But it is a money maker: to date Onlyfans has paid out over $3b to creators on the platform.
• This is my favorite Twitter thread of the week, by Jack Appleby. It deals with dream jobs, mental health, and a surprise ending that can only happen on the internet. Depression and work can be so intertwined, even when you have your dream job. I’m glad more people are talking about it. If you read one thing from the newsletter this week, make it this one.

Thank you so much for reading with me for another week! I'm having a lot of fun sending this each week, and really enjoy connecting with all of you that reply.

- Forge

🤝 How to support

If you’d like to support and keep this newsletter going, here are the top ways to do that:

• Share this newsletter either by forwarding to someone or sharing the website to your network.
• Buy me a coffee — it fuels the early morning writing — thank you to reader Keith L. for buying me a cup early in the week!
• Become a founding member of Forgematic — it really helps the continued creation of the newsletter, and you’ll be getting some cool extras in the future (not just my book).
• Follow me over on Twitter where I'm trying to share more of this during the week.

Thank you again and see you next Sunday 💌