Good morning. Logan Paul and KSI's PRIME Hydration has sold 10 million bottles as of this week, which amounts to about 125,000 bottles sold per day since their launch in January. That’s a lot of Tropical Punch. 

–Hannah Doyle

Mythical, the media company led by comedy duo Rhett and Link, launched Sporked yesterday—a food publication made up of product reviews, rankings, essays, and opinion pieces. 

The site expands on Mythical’s food content, which began as a segment on their YouTube show Good Mythical Morning where the pair reviewed and ranked items like store-bought restaurant food and fast food pizza.

Food content has always been a high performer on Good Mythical Morning since its first season 10 years ago, with Best Candy Bar Ever and Best Chips Ever earning over 3 million views within the first 40 episodes. Now six of their ten top-performing videos are food-related, each with over 20 million views.  

In 2018 they launched a new channel, Mythical Kitchen, and two years later had a full cast and spin-off podcasts like A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich and more recently Trevor Talks Too Much. 

To lead Sporked, they’ve tapped food journalism vets Justine Sterling, whose prior experience ranges from Food & Wine to Delish, and Gwynedd Stuart from LA Magazine. Sporked’s editorial staff will appear on Mythical Kitchen’s shows, and the cast at Mythical Kitchen will appear in Sporked’s content. “We’re all people who have strong and informed opinions about food, so there’s a natural camaraderie between the teams,” Justine Sterling, editor-in-chief of Sporked, told us.

By the Numbers:

10 million → total views Mythical Kitchen received over the last month.

4 / 5 → of Good Mythical Morning’s highest performing videos are food content, totaling 110 million views.

3.3 million → the number of followers across Mythical Kitchen’s channels, including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

Sterling and Stuart shared more details behind Sporked, and how the Mythical YouTube channels inform its content. Check out our exclusive Q&A at the end of this newsletter.👇

Mythical is growing itself into one of the largest media companies started by creators, and their first foray into a written product expands their revenue opportunities and helps the company scale beyond their hosts.

Rhett and Link digging deeper into food media provides an example for all creators who are working toward funneling their audiences to platforms and products that don't require their likeness, but deliver the same value proposition.

Last week, the brothers and multi-hyphenates launched Awesome Coffee Club, a monthly membership club where subscribers get ethically-sourced coffee beans. All the profits support Partners in Health, a charity dedicated to reducing maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone, Africa.

According to a tweet by Hank, they sold out more than half of their inventory within 24 hours.  

This is their second subscription service that supports the same public health initiative. In 2020, they started Awesome Socks Club, where members receive a pair of socks printed with community-sourced designs. Its 2022 season is currently sold out, with plans to reopen this November for next year’s edit.

Creator Hank Green and journalist John Green started Vlogbrothers in 2007, where they attempted to communicate solely through vlogs. That channel led the brothers to create educational channels like Crash Course, SciShow, and most recently Study Hall. 

They are also New York Times bestselling authors, and John’s The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns both have been adapted into feature films.

Coffee is a go-to business venture for so many creators because it’s a repeatedly purchased product, and subscriptions mimic coffee's habitual nature as many people already "subscribe" to their favorite coffee on a daily basis. Though the brothers are donating all their profits to charity, their coffee venture shows how creators can set up recurring revenue through subscriptions, and how developing a product with a built-in habit, like coffee, lends itself well to the model.

Sponsored by Jellysmack

Creators today are operating like traditional media companies. And like all companies building for the long term, creators need capital to invest in the future of their business.

That’s where Jellysmack’s new initiative, Catalog Licensing, comes in.

Here’s how it works: Go here and connect your YouTube channel. Jellysmack’s algorithm predicts how much your YouTube library will be worth over the next five years.

Creators who qualify will get a lump-sum payment up front instead of waiting for their library of content to earn a little at a time over the long haul. Then they can use that payment to invest back into their company—whether it’s to scale their team or build out a studio.

Click here to get started with Catalog Licensing from Jellysmack.

Last week, Joystream raised funds to continue scaling their web3 video platform. Its vision is to be like a decentralized YouTube, where both creators and users can control, own, and direct the platform’s operations.

Creators can mint their videos as NFTs on Joystream’s blockchain, and fans can invest in a creator’s success as well as take profits from their NFT sales on the platform.

The funding will go towards recruiting creators, in addition to giving 12 million Joystream tokens as incentive.

We’ve seen fractional ownership take place in music, and we’ve predicted how that could work for digital creators. Joystream’s efforts mark one step forward in this greater creator ownership movement—look no further than this week’s NFT LA events to see it in action. 

Editor-in-Chief Justine Sterling and Managing Editor Gwynedd Stuart share their plans for the food publication, and what it’s like being a part of a YouTube-born media company. (The following interview, conducted via email, has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

Having worked in legacy media both print and digitally, what drew you to the Mythical brand? How is it different from more traditional media companies?

Justine Sterling: I was first drawn to Mythical because of the brand’s sense of humor. Working in traditional media for about fifteen years, I’ve always tried to infuse some levity into my work, but Mythical overtly makes a point of putting humor front and center. The idea of balancing comedy with content that is also useful and informational for a wide audience was hard for me to resist.

Gwynedd Stuart: This obviously isn’t the case across the board, but I think traditional media outlets can struggle to foster fandom, particularly among younger generations. I love that Mythical always has its audience in mind and that Sporked will be yet another way to connect with its most fervent fans while also creating something fun and handy for people who might be new to the fold. The idea that an online resource can be voicey and interesting and still be highly useful and reliable really appeals to me. 

Also, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to make the food sphere my focus, and this feels like a welcome reunion with one of my first loves: the grocery store. 

How will Mythical’s other food content, like Mythical Kitchen’s YouTube channel and podcast, inform the content for Sporked?

JS: You’ll definitely see Sporked staffers on Mythical Kitchen and you’ll hear them on A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich, and you’ll certainly see Mythical Crew members (including Mythical Kitchen folks) in Sporked content. Just the other day, Josh Scherer (host of Mythical Kitchen) helped us out with our frozen lasagna taste test—he told us to leave a particular lasagna out for an hour for the flavors to meld. I, in turn, recommended he put ice in his cereal. He did it.

How is Sporked different from other brands in the food media space like Epicurous and Buzzfeed Tasty?

JS: We don’t do recipes (unless you count a ketchup sandwich or a bowlful of ranch dressing served as soup as recipes). We’re focused entirely on packaged foods—available either in a grocery store or online. And we’re also personality driven. While we certainly have a general Sporked tone and ethos, each writer is writing in their own voice. You can immediately tell who wrote a piece. And we feature those personalities in our social content, as well. We want to bring the audience into our process so they can see us taste through dozens of sardines or a pile of chocolate cereal, and we want them to get to know each one of us so they know they can trust our opinions.

Will Rhett & Link be involved? If so, in what capacity?

JS: We’re looking forward to Rhett & Link popping up in our content and contributing their taste testing expertise whenever possible.

Can you share Sporked’s roadmap? What are your goals?

JS: Right now, we want to grow an audience that continues to come back to us for both information and entertainment. We want to be the go-to site for people looking for the best products and we want them to check in with us regularly to find out what we’re talking about that day—the sex appeal of cereal mascots, for example, or Sporked writer Jordan Myrick’s use of mustard as a coffee replacement.

What content are you most looking forward to creating with Sporked?

JS: I’m excited to continue creating personality-driven food rankings based on real life taste tests. We have so much fun—even when we’re trying to detect the nuances in plain oatmeal. And I’m excited to innovate on social, extending the content off of the page and into new, boundary-pushing formats designed specifically for different platforms. And I’m excited to see how many things Sporked writer Danny Palumbo can catch in his mouth. (If you haven’t watched the video yet, you should—it’s just the beginning.)

GS: You know, I tend to have big opinions about the things I eat, and getting to share them with people practically feels like my calling in life. Besides that, I highly recommend folks follow us on social media, TikTok in particular, so they can see how the Sporked sausage (sorry) is made. We’re really tasting all the foods we write about and putting a lot of thought and consideration into everything we create, whether it's a ranking of bagged popcorns or a review of a new Pop-Tart flavor. Plus, like Justine mentioned, you can watch Danny catch a bunch of weird things in his mouth. 

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