Being a creator now is completely different than it was five or six years ago, when full-time internet creators were limited to a handful of YouTubers. Nowadays, even the meaning of 'creator’ is transforming rapidly.
As each player breaks into the creator industry, tens of windows of opportunity also get created. That means that there is an urgent need for new tools to help artists see and better use their data, and enhance their work.
Using the success stories from some of the pioneers of the internet industry, here are four keys to understanding the quirks of the expanded Creator Economy, which will allow you to optimize your time and content.
Key #1: Community Development
If you’re not working on building your own community, then you are missing out on a fundamental aspect of growth. The first key is to respect the creator community and do as many things as possible to foster growth among its members.
Partnerships, webinars, how you speak about them in marketing and social channels, building platforms and more. There’s a new class of service provider companies that entrepreneurs are building or have built that benefit creators. Opportunity is expanding rapidly.
To give an idea of the rapid growth on creator platforms, let’s look at who’s trending and their user base:
- Canva has 55 million active users monthly, across 190 countries, who have collectively made over 3 billion designs to date.
- Picsart has 50 million users.
- Tiktok has 900 million users (600 million users in China; 100 million in the US; 100 million in Europe).
- Snapchat has 74 million users in India (150% growth in daily active users), France 24 million, UK, 21 million, Saudi Arabia 19 million, Mexico 17 million, Germany 15 million and Philippines 12 million trends.
The Success Story:
The early product team at Youtube focused on fostering the community, like beacon campaigns, which sent a message to the creator community that Youtube wanted to support them and to succeed. Established in 2010, events like VidCon, which get 50-60k attendees per year grew as a parallel to the online video industry. There is so much diversity behind the scenes, it's important to get anecdotes and not just data. "To me, VidCon is not that much about video," said co-creator of Vidcon, Hank Green. "It’s about people on the internet building communities," he told Forbes.
Key #2: Social Tokens
When creators interact with their fans the creator economy and ecosystem grows. Creators have been choosing to create their own form of currency, which connects directly to their fans and circulates within their own micro-economy.
Social Tokens are shifting and expanding communities across platforms over the past 15 years. Creators went from simply ‘posting videos to youtube’, to today, when becoming a YouTuber is becoming a brand and next-generation media business.
According to the latest crypto-currency updates, these tokens bring new independence in the creator economy: “Blockchain takes the decision-making process out of the hands of large platforms and into the hands of creators and their fans and community members. It’s up to the creators and their communities to decide how the creator’s social token will be used and valued.”
The Success Story:
From traditional celebrities, YouTubers, social media influencers, to the likes of the Esports and gaming stars, real-time Bitcoin valuations reveal that various creators from a range of industries are successfully utilizing their own forms of tokens.
NBA’s Spencer Dinwiddie raised 1.3 million in token sales and Japanese superstar soccer player, Keisuke Honda’s personal cypto-currency, trading under the ticker KSK, is valued at $0.910. Lower barrier-to-entry market platforms, such as Stirr Pietra, make this profit vision increasingly realistic to the average creator.
Key #3: Cross Platforming
Every creator, in addition to their media content, is expanding in different areas, such as licensing, products or as a marketing window for seeing what their fan base is interested in.
Now, we're looking at the next generation of media businesses emerging from the creator economy. Originally, Youtube was designed for any creator to post what they desired, with the endgame to get on the most viewed page. Consequently, the idea of channels evolved from homemade videos posted on personal accounts, such as the video "Charlie bit my finger”, to massive ‘channels’ that deliver fresh content daily.
Now, the time has come for creators when the platform that gave you your start can no longer accommodate your growth. There have been cases of artists becoming “bigger than Youtube” and would be offered opportunities to license their videos to another channel, such as HBO Max.
No one platform is going to have every users' needs.
This shift from hierarchy to heterarchy has been synonymous with the changing values of the market. Businesses need other businesses to help provide their strengths where ours may not be as strong. It's hard to carry your audience and value prop across platforms.
The creator economy has ventured into licensing. For example, you can make a product, and distribute it. Places like HBO or Netflix are offering creators that originally started on youtube, the opportunity to own their content.Growing everyone's individual brand is about more than videos. Angel investing, for example, has re-defined what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Success Story:
Just this week, the LA Times reported Netflix’s plan to produce a un-scripted reality television show starring TikTok’s famed creators, formerly part of the ‘Hype House’ collective, their combined follower count racking up to more than 125 million.
This is not the first time Netflix pushes their blended strategy, bridging the gap between internet and social media content creators and more traditional production, an opportunity that today’s content creators can count on as a viable cross-platforming option, not just as a distant possibility.
Key #4: Transactional Affinity
There are two ways platforms are monetizing. One is making it so that the whole platform is supported through advertisement, the other is when the platform takes a cut, a substack, who takes 10%.
Switching from advertising to transaction-based revenue (i.e., merchandise being sold on the content channel) is a win-win for creators who are willing to sign up for a membership or buy a sweatshirt with someone's logo.
Transactions show affinity. It is not always just physical merchandise, but can be digitizing a creator's attention, or time.
How can a content creator earn a significant amount of revenue, just by allowing their audience to buy a 15-minute facetime call or accept digital tips to pay more attention to fans? Being a creator is not just about the photos or videos, it’s also about monetizing transactions that could change the content you are incentivized to create.
Success Story:
Cameo grew significantly during COVID. The new creator economy has given rise to platforms like Cameo to flourish and profit under different platforms. The low-barrier-to-entry format of Cameo has opened up the possibility of monetization for anyone with a following, starting up their content economy on the basis of selling a short interval of their time: “For famous people of any caliber — the washed-up, the obscure micro-celebrity, the actual rock star — becoming part of the supply side of the Cameo marketplace is as low a barrier as it gets.”
What do all the success stories have in common?
Staying up-to-date with the developments in the creator industry, with a handle on the wants and needs of their audience at the specific time of their content creation.
Having sharp reflexes and a knowledge of the creator economy will help content makers to succeed in building their audience, and more importantly, drawing that audience back again and again.
By Christina Hawatmeh, CEO of Scopio
