Nearly 50% of full-time creators make less than $1K annually.
Linktree's recent Creator Report had some surprising stats.
Nearly 50% of full-time creators make less than $1K annually. 😲
Only 12% make over $50K.
Podcast The Sh*t You Don't Learn in School released a great episode on the pros and cons of being an online creator last week. I took notes, here's a summary.
First, what is the creator economy?
In her 2020 Creator Market Map, Yuanling Yuan defined it as...
"the class of businesses built by over 50 million independent content creators, curators, and community builders including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers, plus the software and finance tools designed to help them with growth and monetization."
But, like "Web3", is it just a fluffy industry term? After all, it's not new.
Nevertheless, things are changing
Better and cheaper software/hardware 👉 higher quality content.
New monetisation tools 👉 tips, memberships, merch, courses, books, affiliate partnerships.
Tighter feedback loops 👉 find out what's working faster.
The big platforms are pouring $ into creator relationships:
Spotify: $60M Call Her Daddy / $100M Joe Rogan
Facebook: $1B
TikTok: $200M
YouTube Shorts: $100M
Why?
Trend is towards trust with personalities and characters, not faceless corporates.
Creators build deeper connections with their audiences.
Big tech is leveraging this dynamic as a sales channel.
Market dynamics
Despite better tools available to more creators, the best creators still get the lion's share of attention and revenue.
The creator economy lacks a middle-class.
Can it be built or is it a winner-take-all game?
Creator starter tips
Think critically about your goals and which platforms are best suited to get you there.
Fear, uncertainty and doubt can come up a lot if you don't have other ways to support yourself.
Enjoy the creation process as it's a long game.
Future trends
What effect will AI (GPT-3, DALL·E) and automation have on content generation?
Artifically produced influencers like Lil Miquela.
NFT-gated membership communities.
Classic essays & threads
State of the Creator Economy by Dru Riley/Trends
Newsletter Pick
The Information’s Creator Economy Newsletter
Quda AMA with Steph Smith and Calvin Rosser
Excited to announce an async, audio AMA with Steph and Calvin on all things creator economy!
Both prolific creators and hosts of the Sh*t You Don't Learn in School Podcast, Steph has recently announced her move to Andreessen Horowitz to anchor the a16z Future Podcast.
Ask any question now over on Quda's Startups channel.
Thanks for reading!
I'm building the MCU of SaaS 💎
🔥 Roast My Landing Page
Maybe the real MRR is the friends we made along the way
that's a great point. This is measuring just financial success. Difficult to quantify other things you gain when you're a professional creator e.g. network, relationships, software/hardware learnings. Lots of things that might bear fruit down the line.
I think 50% is less. It should be more I gues somewhere around 85-90%
I think 50% is still pretty high! They say that 12% are making over $50K, so roughly 38% are making between $1K-$50K, but that's still a huge range of outcomes.
There has to be a power law distribution, of course. The majority of music/paintings/acting/etc are not good. Only a handful are truly masters of their craft. The same applies to the creator economy, although in this case perhaps the monetization models are making this effect more pronounced? Or maybe the lack of marketing & sales skills of most creators?
Interesting point Bhavesh, thanks.
I'm not sure whether the big gap between winners V losers is to do with talent Versus platform algorithms that favour those who have risen to the top.
For example, top recording artists' success is re-inforced by inclusion in top discovery playlists.
Similarly, Twitter algo appears to favour those with larger audiences.
True, though, that many of the best performing creators are making the most engaging/interesting content.
Great analysis.
It's obviously a winner takes all game, however, I think that the stats also include "teens on TikTok" kind of customers.
BTW, Thank you for adding the links to the essays.
thanks Marqo! those essays are awesome. :)
"Nearly 50% of full-time creators make less than $1K annually."
So, how do those full-time creators support themselves financially if they're earning less than $!k? Earning that little, I'd expect many of them to soon be ex-full-time-creators...
Yes Hans, I was surprised by that statistic from Linktree, too.
Not sure what their definition is of "full-time".
Perhaps the statistics reflect creators in their first year of business.
Would be interesting to know what the churn rate from creator to non-creator actually is!
It's really weird for me to hear that most full-time creators are making less then 1K annually. I think this tells me that there are a lot of people supplementing their creator income with full-time jobs, and hoping their creators side-hustle takes off.
The world is like a talent show I suppose. There's lots of people auditioning, hoping they can make a living off their preferred activity. But in reality, only a few are making enough off their passion to be able to live off it.
Agree. Personally I think that's the best route, (if lucky enough!) to experiment on the side whilst having support of paid job. Difficult to time-manage and risk of burnout, but it can also be fulfilling to be able to express yourself apart from work :)
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thanks Esper. There's a similar dynamic at work in the music industry, where most of the streaming revenue is going to a small proportion of very successful artists (well, actually, their labels!).
Self-promoting here, but this sad reality is what led to one of our products* (i.e., a fair matchmaking algorithm, that ensures both "content relevance" for users and "exposure" for producers). We do think there are ways mitigate this "dark side" of content creation - partly through more predictable exposure.
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That's an interesting question. It does, but indirectly. If you assure exposure to even niche creators, someone will have to be exposed to their content. You sacrifice "totally accurate" personalized recommendations (i.e., filter bubble), in exchange for exposing every user to a bit of content they would not otherwise have been exposed to (i.e., serendipity).