Clash, the short-form video app that acquired Vine successor Byte last year, says that since its fall 2021 launch, more than 3,500 users have earned revenue with its creator monetization tools.
Quick rundown for those not familiar: Clash was founded in 2020 by former Vine creator Brendon McNerney and digital marketing expert/content strategist P.J. Leimgruber. In January 2021, it acquired Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann’s fledgling app Byte, which was intended to be a kind of Vine 2.0.
The combined venture merged the apps’ communities, kept the name Clash, and secured $10 million in funding from investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, M13 Ventures, and Plug and Play.
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The Clash app officially launched into app stores Oct. 12, 2021.
Since then, its user base of 5+ million people has given more than 4 million “Drops”–Clash’s onsite gifting/tipping currency—to 3,500+ users.
We say “users” here and not “creators” because Clash is big on emphasizing that it thinks all users should be able to monetize videos they make, whether or not they formally label themselves creators. Instead of framing Drops as a creator tip, it frames them as users investing in one another.
Clash says that to date, over 6% of all Clash users, “not only those that self-identify as Creators,” have earned money since joining the platform.
On the user side, Drops can be purchased from Clash’s “Drop Shop” at six different price points, from 125 Drops for $1.99 up to 5,000 Drops for $49.99. Users can send each other any amount of Drops they want, and those who’ve received Drops can cash them out once per month, so long as they’ve hit the 25,000 Drop/$25 minimum. For now, Clash is not taking a cut of creators’ Drop earnings.
A Clash representative tells Tubefilter that on the recipient side, Drops are equal to one cent U.S., so that means Clash users have gotten more than $40,000 in cash-out value from one another in the past four months.
Drops aren’t the only monetization mechanism on Clash. The app also has FanMail, which lets users spend Drops to send personalized messages to one another, and monthly subscriptions, which function like channel subscriptions on YouTube and Twitch. (Clash doesn’t take a cut from these, either.)
In addition to releasing its overall Drops stat, Clash is publicizing more granular revenue stats. It says that as of now, the most a single user has earned in one month is $1,500.
The average monthly amount earned by creators who already have a “significant” following on TikTok and/or Instagram is $204, Clash says.
These figures are obviously much smaller than what some creators are earning on major, established platforms, but Clash says it’s not really out to compete with that revenue. It’s happy if some users can cash out their Drops to pay for their daily coffee, or chip away at their rent.
“The sheer number of Drops that have been circulated alone is proof positive that fans are willing to support creators who are doing what they love, without the need for the creators to have millions of followers and over-produced content,” McNerney said in a statement. “Everyone is a Creator on Clash, and everyone can earn. It is so rewarding to see this idea and concept take flight and watch as people make money doing what they love. As a former Creator, all I aim to do is make other Creators’ lives easier, and this is a remarkable benchmark on our journey.”
