A teenage Hamilton entrepreneur has launched a platform to connect YouTubers with their fanbase and potentially boost revenue at a time of dwindling advertising.
Not only that, YouTubers can also use the platform to easily source ideas from their subscribers – and test their own ideas before committing them to video.
VidFunder offers YouTubers, faced with an advertiser exodus from the platform, a simple way of raising money from subscribers, each of whom can give as little as a dollar to help fund a video.
It is the brainchild of Martin van Blerk, 18, and is partly a response to the sometimes drastic loss of income experienced by YouTubers affected by the so-called “adpocalypse”, as advertisers started pulling out to avoid potential association with offensive content.
Van Blerk cites David Dobrik, one of the platform’s biggest creators with 14.5 million subscribers, whose monthly revenue plunged from US$275,000 to $2000.
The VidFunder solution involves creators crowdsourcing funding for their videos, particularly those that are more expensive to make. Through a VidFunder campaign they can invite subscribers to donate $1 or more to see the video come to life.
Van Blerk, who has developed the platform with his father Hendrik, says something similar already happens with subscribers paying to view gamers play live.
“That’s where we got validation that these guys have a fan base that are willing to donate. So we converted it into the idea of a video that’s to be created instead of one that’s streaming.”
It’s a simple process, with the creator able to set a target amount and a timeframe in advance, in the style of Kickstarter. Van Blerk says what sets VidFunder apart is its speed, as a creator can create a campaign and raise funds in a matter of minutes. They can choose to run multiple campaigns simultaneously for different ideas, and decide which one to make based on subscriber support.
But, in the endless quest for fresh content, they can also ask their subscriber base for original ideas.
Subscribers click a button on the creator’s VidFunder profile to submit video ideas. “And then on that profile page, you can have hundreds and hundreds of fan ideas. Other fans can go and upvote ‘Oh, I want to see this one’ or downvote ‘I don’t want to see this one’. And at the end the YouTuber can have the top ideas that their fan base wants to see.”
In the words of Hendrik: “The fan also becomes part of the journey.”
The model has been well developed before going to market, with Martin and Hendrik tapping into a Soda Inc Lift programme. Soda connected them to a mentor, Niko Croskery, and stayed involved after the programme finished, also putting them in touch with two Auckland PR firms to help with marketing.
They are focusing to start with on the New Zealand market, and see opportunities for creators to use the platform to support charities, post-Covid, or to play a part in marketing the local “backyard” for tourism.
The ideas feature is free, while VidFunder charges a 5 percent fee for successful campaigns – though they are looking at waiving that for charity campaigns.
”It’s not just about profit, it’s about people as well,” Hendrik says.
Development involved customising a “white label” platform, drastically cutting both time and cost, Hendrik says – and enabling them to go live just 12 months after coming up with the idea.
The campaigns component is initially available only to YouTubers with 30,000 or more subscribers.
“We believe we’ve got a good product,” Hendrik says. “Obviously the market will tell but in terms of our research we’ve seen enough that there’s currently not [anything]exactly like what we’ve done.”
The young entrepreneur who doesn’t stand still
Not content with VidFunder, Martin van Blerk is simultaneously launching a card game called Psycho Chicken, via his own use of crowdsourced funding.
That comes after a succession of ventures triggered initially by an appearance as an 11-year-old on TV programme Let’s Get Inventing.
Martin van Blerk with his other new product, the Psycho Chicken cardgame.
He was doing a newspaper round at the time, and dreamed up a scheme by which newspapers could be fired onto the property. The show’s producers took the idea and turned it into a remotely controlled robot doing the paper run. Needless to say, the idea has never seen the light of day, but that episode of the series went on to make the finals of the children’s Emmy awards.
“It was definitely a fun experience,” remarks van Blerk. It also seems a match was lit. While still at secondary school, he went on to create a range of watches before devising Psycho Chicken in the summer break between school and university – where, in his first year of a business degree, he is studying two second-year and one third-year course, along with first-year papers.
After the TV experience, he bought and sold on TradeMe and then in year 11 he started his wristwatch venture, designing the watch faces, and getting samples sent back and forth before settling on a design that he commissioned a factory in China to manufacture. That is where crowdsourcing came in, as he raised about $16,000 in pre-orders on Kickstarter.
He is proud of the final product but discovered the competition was intense and it was hard to stand out from the crowd, plus the markup was minimal.
Distribution was another learning point. “I shipped all the watches to me, I bought packaging, I wrote all the names, packaged them, went down to the local post shop and sent them off.” It was laborious, to say the least.
So van Blerk learned a lot, and didn’t stand still. “I’m done with that. I’ve already moved on to the next thing.”
Come the end of year 13, with a three-month summer break looming, his parents got involved. Hendrik: “We said to Martin, ‘You need to find a job, you’re not going to sit around the house’. And he said ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find something to do’.”
Disconcertingly for them, that involved him disappearing downstairs to the rumpus room with his computer – as he cooked up his set of playing cards.
“We were surprised about the card game,” says Hendrik. “We didn’t see that coming, didn’t think it was such a huge market.”
Martin says he wanted to do something on Kickstarter and came across Exploding Kittens, which had raised millions a few years ago. That was an eye-opener. He did some research, discovered you can make cards relatively cheaply and sell them for a good markup, leaving money to spend on marketing. “So I thought okay, I’ll try this.”
He designed some prototypes, tested them with friends and came up with a game in which turning over the wrong card – the psycho chicken – means you lose.
Van Blerk raised $74,000 on Kickstarter, far exceeding his goal of $10,000. This time he had them distributed from China – with sales to all corners, including Guam. Covid has caused some delays, but about a third of the sales have been delivered with the remainder en route.
He has had extra stock shipped to New Zealand, where he has set up a website for further online sales. The game attracted the interest of Hamilton-based online retailer Game Kings, which comes with the added benefit that he can store his shipment with them.
As for the designs, he did the simpler ones himself and paid for others.
“That’s been a really fun and exciting experience to do all that.”
