How would you turn 10 million TikTok creator emails into a business?

[vangouse]

For the last few years, I have been gathering data on TikTok creators and have accumulated a database containing about 10 million creator email addresses, along with their public profile information, such as the number of followers, most recent posts, average number of views, and other metrics. The emails were obtained from publicly listed bios.

I am currently considering whether there is actually a business opportunity involved, and I would like to know how others would deal with it. The options I've looked at include creating a creator discovery tool, selling database access on a subscription basis, or providing an API for influencer marketing agencies. The issue is that there are already many well-established platforms offering similar services, so I'm having trouble finding a compelling reason for customers to choose mine.

The biggest advantage I can see is that I update all ten million profiles every day. This could be valuable for agencies and brands that need up-to-date creator data, but I'm not certain that updating them daily is enough to make a real difference in getting people to pay.

Should you concentrate on selling access to the raw data, developing a product based on it, or targeting a more specific customer segment?

I should also like to know about any business models that I might be missing. If you had this dataset to hand, what kind of thing would you construct with it?

 

[tordela]

Honestly, I wouldn't go in with another general-purpose influencer discovery platform. That's a saturated market, and you'd be up against companies that already have years of customer relationships and products that are well established.

I'd look for one very specific problem where your data is actually going to be of real use. Perhaps it's agencies working with smaller creators, brands looking for creators in very specific niches, or teams trying to find creators whose engagement is actually going up.

Ten million records is quite a number, but the customer isn't necessarily paying for the number of records. They're paying for better decisions, less manual research, and more qualified leads.

 

[drdaron]

The daily updates are likely your biggest selling point (assuming the data is accurate, of course).

A lot of databases go out of date as the people who run them change their contact details, stop updating the database, or simply grow beyond the size of audience that the brand was originally targeting. If you can reliably detect those changes, then that could be a worthwhile thing to pay for.

I'd prototype an API before spending six months building a full SaaS product. Give a handful of agencies access to a small dataset and see what fields and what updates they actually end up using.

One thing I'd be wary of is email compliance. Just because an email address is publicly listed doesn't mean that every use of it is permissible. I'd look at the relevant privacy and marketing laws before making the email data available for commercial purposes.