Work

About

Contact

Work

About

Contact

Sesame

Creator Monetization Tool (MVP)
Role

Co-founder & CEO

Product management

UX/UI design

Branding

Date

Jan 2024

Problem

While working on Sunroom, we found it difficult to expand to new creator niches with the photo/video forward subscription model. Our thesis was that we could reach new groups of creators, whose value to their audiences was not oriented in visual media. But rather in advice, often relayed via text, voice notes, video workshops, or retreats. Sesame was one of two experimental MVPs that we built to test this hypothesis, and attempt to expand the overall reach of our products. We also hypothesized that conversion to payment was more difficult with the subscription model. We suspected it would be easier to convert people to one-off payments for one-off experiences.



We did discovery calls with creators in new niches, and learnt that one of their biggest problems was with managing their Instagram DMs. Most creators get bombarded with questions and requests for advice in their Instagram DMs. Some creators take the time to respond to everyone, but they don’t earn anything from this labor. Others don’t respond at all, because they lack time or incentive to do so.

While working on Sunroom, we found it difficult to expand to new creator niches with the photo/video forward subscription model. Our thesis was that we could reach new groups of creators, whose value to their audiences was not oriented in visual media. But rather in advice, often relayed via text, voice notes, video workshops, or retreats. Sesame was one of two experimental MVPs that we built to test this hypothesis, and attempt to expand the overall reach of our products. We also hypothesized that conversion to payment was more difficult with the subscription model. We suspected it would be easier to convert people to one-off payments for one-off experiences.


We did discovery calls with creators in new niches, and learnt that one of their biggest problems was with managing their Instagram DMs. Most creators get bombarded with questions and requests for advice in their Instagram DMs. Some creators take the time to respond to everyone, but they don’t earn anything from this labor. Others don’t respond at all, because they lack time or incentive to do so.

While working on Sunroom, we found it difficult to expand to new creator niches with the photo/video forward subscription model. Our thesis was that we could reach new groups of creators, whose value to their audiences was not oriented in visual media. But rather in advice, often relayed via text, voice notes, video workshops, or retreats. Sesame was one of two experimental MVPs that we built to test this hypothesis, and attempt to expand the overall reach of our products. We also hypothesized that conversion to payment was more difficult with the subscription model. We suspected it would be easier to convert people to one-off payments for one-off experiences.


We did discovery calls with creators in new niches, and learnt that one of their biggest problems was with managing their Instagram DMs. Most creators get bombarded with questions and requests for advice in their Instagram DMs. Some creators take the time to respond to everyone, but they don’t earn anything from this labor. Others don’t respond at all, because they lack time or incentive to do so.

Solution

Sesame is a simple web app that allows creators to monetize their responses to Instagram DMs. Sesame utilizes Instagram’s Messenger API to pull direct messages from a creator’s Instagram inbox into their Sesame account. There they can choose to reply to the message, and charge a fee for its unlocking. A link to the locked message is then automatically sent back to the follower in Instagram, where they can choose to unlock the message for a fee after following the link. From there, the follower could choose to continue the conversation on Sesame or on Instagram.



Our thesis was that audience members would be more inclined to pay to unlock replies from creators than they were to pay to send creators a message, since there’s guaranteed value/attention they will receive in return.

Sesame is a simple web app that allows creators to monetize their responses to Instagram DMs. Sesame utilizes Instagram’s Messenger API to pull direct messages from a creator’s Instagram inbox into their Sesame account. There they can choose to reply to the message, and charge a fee for its unlocking. A link to the locked message is then automatically sent back to the follower in Instagram, where they can choose to unlock the message for a fee after following the link. From there, the follower could choose to continue the conversation on Sesame or on Instagram.


Our thesis was that audience members would be more inclined to pay to unlock replies from creators than they were to pay to send creators a message, since there’s guaranteed value/attention they will receive in return.

Sesame is a simple web app that allows creators to monetize their responses to Instagram DMs. Sesame utilizes Instagram’s Messenger API to pull direct messages from a creator’s Instagram inbox into their Sesame account. There they can choose to reply to the message, and charge a fee for its unlocking. A link to the locked message is then automatically sent back to the follower in Instagram, where they can choose to unlock the message for a fee after following the link. From there, the follower could choose to continue the conversation on Sesame or on Instagram.


Our thesis was that audience members would be more inclined to pay to unlock replies from creators than they were to pay to send creators a message, since there’s guaranteed value/attention they will receive in return.

Key Focus Areas & Results

We ran beta tests with several creators from different niches. We found it easy to get creators to launch a Sesame account to their audience, and all creators could generate inbound messages and questions from their audience via Sesame. But the unlock rate on creators’ replies was low, and overall their earnings from unlocks was low, compared to earnings benchmarks set on Sunroom. We iterated on a few areas, including:

  • The landing page. We sought to increase the % of page visitors that sent a message. We tried to make signalling to the creator that you wanted to chat as lightweight as possible. We built in ‘Common topics’ to allow people to simply select a topic they wanted to chat about, and the creator would reach out.

  • Conversion to unlock. We learnt that audience members often needed some zero-cost back and forth messaging, or they needed free messages that provided extra context on the value contained in the paid reply, before committing to unlock a reply.

Branding

I designed the Sesame brand in a weekend, since the product was only at an MVP stage. The goal was to create a brand that feels personal and shows a fresh way of connecting with people you admire. The personality traits we used to inform the brand are: captivating, genuine, loving, gushing, and mysterious. The wordmark has a quirky, but seductive mysticism. The almost hand-inked style is replicated across the icons, and combined with typography and colors that show the product to be fresh, lively, and somewhat stylish — which we knew was important for our creators when using products.

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Lucy Mort

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