If you have been anywhere near social media in the past couple of weeks, you will likely have seen throes of people BEGGING for and invite to ‘Clubhouse’.
So what is this ‘Clubhouse thing’ that people are selling their children to get onto?
Basically, its a social media platform that revolves entirely around live audio.
Think podcasts, but live.
Imagine a Zoom call filled with top celebrities, big business moguls, multi-billionaires, YOU and your mate Dave – on audio-only; and you pretty much have yourself a Clubhouse ‘Room’.
I got on it a few days ago after no longer being able to resist my curiosity (follow me on @SarahCordiner) and thought I’d share my thoughts about it so far….
Here is a Video Showing you What Clubhouse Looks Like Inside…
Why Is Everyone So Desperate To Get Clubhouse?
The two owners of Clubhouse (who had the new social app valued at over $100million whilst still in Beta mode and only a few MONTHS old last year) have been insanely smart about their marketing.
They have used a form of ‘reverse marketing’ to make their social app become so sought after, that people are literally paying THOUSANDS of dollars to get onto it….
At the moment, to get into the cool kids club, you have to have an invitation from somebody who already has a Clubhouse account… and to add to the scarcity, each person on the app only gets ONE invite to begin with!!
This exclusivity and scarcity – plus the ability for everyday people to connect directly with their biggest idols and ask them questions like “what colour underpants are you wearing right now”, “if you had to have a dolphins blowhole on your head or be a sausage, which one would you be?”, or “tell me you top 3 strategies to becoming a billionaire” and have them answer you in real-time personally; has made Clubhouse simply irresistible to the masses.
What Can You Do on Clubhouse?
Anyone can start a ‘room’ about anything.
You simply open the app, press ‘start a room’ and you become the host or ‘moderator’ of that room.
If you have any followers, they get notified that you have a live room, they get a notification on their phone and with one click they are in there with you.
Once people are in your room, they can ‘ping’ their followers and invite them to join your room too.
If you make somebody in your room a ‘moderator’, their whole follower’s list gets pinged to join the room too.
Opportunity for exposure on this platform…. Massive.
How To Start a ‘Club’ on Clubhouse
You can also start a ‘Club on Clubhouse’, but you can currently only do this by filling in an application form (which you can find in the FAQs section on the app).
A Club is basically like a Facebook group.
People can join that Club and all get notified when you go ‘live’ in the Club.
How To Make Money From Clubhouse
Business owners and influencers are flocking to the Clubhouse platform like crazy because the opportunities to commercialize your activity on it are enormous.
I was in one room the other night where I watched one guy literally make over $100k in sales in about 5 minutes.
The fact that you can invite JT Foxx to your room and then his entire followers get pinged if you make him the moderator, and then promote yourself, your offers etc in there makes this platform quite the money-spinner right now.
As such, many users are using their time right now to get as many followers as possible and thus you’ll see social media flooded with ‘follow for follow’ [F4F] trains to get the numbers high enough to make you worthy of being followed by the big wigs…
Don’t Get Into Clubhouse ‘Jail’
You’ll here people in these follow trains saying “I’m in Clubhouse Jail”.
This is when they have been temporarily banned from following anyone on the app.
I have been asking people who are in ‘Clubhouse jail’ how many people they followed in one hit to get locked up; and at present ‘around 300’ appears to be the number that got them all thrown in follow jail.
If it’s your first time in Jail, you only get locked for about 3 hours or so…. The more you get banged up, the longer your sentence gets each time! 9Shame the actual judicial system doesn’t work like this, right?!
Where is Clubhouse Going?
I still haven’t personally decided if I LOVE it yet.
It has its flaws.
You can’t repurpose the content you share and it’s against Clubhouse Terms of Use to record ANYTHING on the platform.
I have also found that its very poorly regulated and as such, I have seen some pretty horrific rooms running that are of some highly colourful and grotesque topics – which I won’t even mention, but would certainly be banned or blocked on more mature platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc.
It’s also a little bit ‘pretentious’ in some rooms. The Moderators in some cases are very self-promotional, even ranty in their attempts to show themselves a big and powerful.
Saying that, I have also been in some INCREDIBLE rooms and got to speak with people that I KNOW would normally charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to appear on a stage in front of me, let alone ask a question to personally.
Better, there are rooms hosted by people you probably have never heard of – other everyday business owners like you and me, who are literally giving the most valuable guidance, information and personalized advice available on the internet right now.
I liken it a bit to those warehouse factory shopping outlets in January sales time…. you have to dig through a whole lot of rubbish stuff, but if you do, you find an absolute steal of gold that’s a total bargain to boot.
Let’s watch this space!!
Written by Sarah Cordiner. Don’t forget to follow her on @SarahCordiner and share this article with your friends.