Economic predictions for the creator economy The outlook for 2023 --
The world of creators featured a myriad of viral videos in 2022: ChatGPT made its entrance and it was the year that Corn Kid and Chrissy Wake Up were rerun (IYKYK) And, of course, creators graced our feeds daily with something new to discover or laugh about. In the meantime the market for creators as well as the businesses that fuel it, saw a number of changes. The industry saw dozens of technological layoffs at companies like Patreon, Thinkific, and Meta and a 50 percent drop in funding for creator-related startups. This has left many people thinking, what's the next step for the industry?
As 2023 approaches, organizations in the creator economy will need to prioritize creator-first solutions to address the main issue surrounding monetization.Before we dig into our key predictions and the essential creator starter pack for this year's calendar, we'll first review the top the trends that we observed in 2022.
Top creator trends starting in 2022
For a better understanding of the life of creators last year we surveyed creators on earnings, monetization strategies and use of social media. Three major trends were identified:
- Most creators can't afford to pursue their creator businesses full-time.
- Video content and the platforms supporting it rule supreme.
- Most creators depend on the monetization of third parties to make money on their content.
Tendencies in the income
In an age of digital media in which you could go on the internet one moment and get numerous brand sponsorship opportunities the next, everyone wants to know what the creators make, especially amateurs that are interested in determining if this is an option for a career.
We asked creators what they made from their online accounts during the past twelve months. Unsurprisingly, 42 percent of creators had a salary of $10,000 or lesswhile just 9% of them earned more than $250,000. The average is 22percent of creators earned less than $1000from their work.
Creators that earned money from their content, YouTube with 23% of the market was the most popular platform where they made the bulk of their earnings. TikTok placed second and tied for third were Instagram as well as in-person events.
In the past, YouTube was among the few social media platforms that share ad revenue with creators via AdSense that is the reason for its popularity with creators. However, the rewards are minimal because 97.5 percent of YouTubers don't make enough to meet their goal of crossing the U.S. poverty line. On TikTok and Instagram the feeds of sponsored videos and posts for brand deals are typically higher-paying than the creator fund payments, which are little for the sheer number of creators who use the platforms.
There are many ways creators can monetize their content including direct monetization (charging customers through their own website/tools or websites or an online platform such as ) and third-party revenue generation (brand sponsorships or ads to another business). We asked creators whether and how they monetized the following types of their content. These included online classes including live webinars, coaching podcasts, newsletters online events, ebooks social media posts, and blog posts. Creators also had the option of choosing whether they provided their content in exchange for a fee or not.
at 40% an online course was found to be the most popular option to directly earn money from. For third-party monetization, coaching with 35% of the market was most popular. Then, blog and newsletter posts ranked 39% to be the most popular type of content that creators could offer at no cost.
Overall, third-party monetization was the most popular method for creators, such as getting sponsorships from podcasts or posting an #ad on social media. This is in direct correlation to the fact that 69% of creators say they depend on third-party monetization like brand deals to make money.
Social media trends
Creators live and breathe social media as it's an essential social media tool for building audiences and communicating with them. When it came to social media platforms, YouTube had the highest percentage of creators who use the platform at 77%. Facebook came in second with 72% followed by Instagram with 70% and TikTok with 62%. The least popular social media platform was LinkedIn with 27%. YouTube's popularity supports our previous results that YouTube is the best platform on which creators earn the majority of their creator-related income.
We'll talk about social media followers. There's an argument within the world of creators that to be a successful creator one must have hundreds of thousands and even million of fans. But, according to our findings, the majority of creators have just a few thousand followers across all platforms. About 35% of respondents reported following counts between 1,000 and 9,999 while 26% said they had under 1,000. A majority of the creators are on the level of micro-influencer (less than 50k followers) which is advantageous and appealing for brands as micro-influencers have an extremely loyal and local fan base with higher involvement level.
We also asked creators which actions on social media they were involved in. Like, for instance, did they work with a brand on an initiative or organize an event live via a feed on social media? With 48% of the votes of the time, the most frequent task creators have reported was to respond to comments or questions on posts and stories. Second in the list was 36% of creators reported that they designed digital products in order to complement with their marketing via influencers. Connecting with your audience online is an essential requirement for creators. Responding to comments and questions on their posts is a good start to building an authentic brand , and increasing customer interaction.
The overall results of 2022 confirm that content creators have been busy creating tons of content, especially on social networks, however only the top few are reaping the most rewards.
Prognose for the economy of the creator in 2023
There have already been a lot of forecasts about the future of the economy of creators in 2023. There are hot emerging AI applications popping up, YouTube and TikTok going against each other to gain the hearts of audiences, increased burning out of the creator, and eventually, TikTok replacing Google as the latest search engine.
However, the most significant issue is that creators are increasingly finding that using social media platforms to get paid doesn't work. Some of the top creators have started to call this fact out. Influencer Hank Green revealed his earnings amounted to only $0.02 to $0.03 for every 1000 viewers on TikTok as well as the world-renowned influencer MrBeast stated that he earned less than $15,000 a year on TikTok even though his videos have garnered billions of viewers.
In 2023, artists will look towards solutions that are creator-first and that allow them to make money from what their work is worth. Being a major player in the direct-to-creator marketplace there are three main expectations for the year ahead:
1. The more creators are likely taking control of their online communities.
2. Creators will rely on social media for an avenue for traffic, not as of a revenue stream.
3. Connecting with audiences live will be a huge comeback.
Three years have passed since the start of the disease, and 2023 will see live events returning with full force. Although events had a brief revival in 2022, attendees were still down because people decided to remain at home and use alternatives that were hybrid. In 2023, we'll see more creators to host in-person events whether that means meetings, workshops, events that are live, such as retreats or classes. The events that were held in person were among the top three methods creators generated the largest portion of their income with--it's inevitable they'll keep expanding the use of this method.
4. Creators will more often use AI tools to manage their businesses.
Unless you've been living under a rock, know that ChatGPT has taken over the internet. The model is trained by OpenAI that can help with content creation--long story short, you choose a topic or question and ChatGPT creates the content for you. It's also worth noting that (spoiler alert) it's usually quite good. Creators may begin to utilize software such as ChatGPT to aid them in increasing and improve the quality of their work. This helps to prevent burning out of creators.
The Starter pack of the creator for 2023.
Whatever happens in the coming year Creators must ensure the security of their businesses with the right equipment. If you're a creative looking to get started this year's year of innovation, this is your most comprehensive starter kit
- Direct-monetization toolin order to enable creators to be able to focus on the things they enjoy full-time plus earn what their content is worth Direct monetization is essential. It is referred to as the direct-to-creator economics. Instead of relying on third party sponsorships such as ads or brand deals, creators should be in the forefront of business in determining the cost of their own content. Tools that are geared towards creators allow them to accomplish this by allowing the direct monetization of digital goods such as courses, coaching podcasts, memberships, websites as well as communities. It also helps to streamline your company so that everything is in one central location. Creators have generated more than $4.3 billion in revenue--and they manage all of it.
When we enter 2023, one thing's obvious: creators should remain in control when it comes to the decision of what their work is worth. While social media will remain essential to establishing brand recognition and connecting with a target audience those who depend solely on social media to run their business are playing a dangerous game.
aims to be a key element of the creation economy discussion--through data-supported findings and anecdotes, we hope to make the path to the monetization of knowledge easier for all creators. We've found the majority of creators that have a full-time online businesses earn over 6 figures.
Methodology:
The data in this study are first-party data. We sent a survey to more than 1,900 creators we don't use . We got 1,046 responses, that have a 95% confidence interval. It is important to note that we are not able to get information about customers' emails using an alternative service for marketing emails as well as we are not able to record the revenue figures for transactions or revenue that is not processed through the platform. The data we collect is intended for general analytical use only. Each response is confidential and we do not share your identity in public or with any third-party. To access data or to discuss a collaboration contact us at [email protected].