The recession punched the creator economy in the genitalia. Twitter, Facebook, Gumroad, LinkedIn, Web3, and many others all faced issues.
The good ol’ days of slapping up useless SEO content online for a few bucks ended with the evolution of artificial intelligence and ChatGPT 3 (thank christ).
When times get tough it gets rid of all the tourists and leaves the long-term locals. The locals get rewarded when the next uptrend starts. That begins again in 2023. The recession will ease.
Twitter will lead with new features creators have been crying out loud for.
Now is the best time in history to join the creator economy and change your life. Here’s how in simple terms a baby could follow.
Build every damn day
This is the mantra of the creator economy.
There are consumers and builders. All you have to do to join the creator economy is to create. Write, draw, record audio, film videos … just don’t sit there for another year and watch everyone else do it. You can do it too.
The way to build every day is to make it a habit. Sorry to go all James Clear on your ass, but it works.
Set aside some time after hours and book it in your calendar — or Netflix will win. Tell your family, colleagues, and even your boss.
“During these hours I build X. Soz.”
Build in public
Document the journey on social media.
Show people what you’re building and why. Show up every day. Share your thoughts. Explain decisions you must make. Talk about people you met along the way.
Think of the creator economy like a new form of movie. People want to come along and watch. It’s educational.
Launch a digital product
A digital product is a digital asset similar to a real estate investment property.
You spend a weekend creating it and then it can sell for years afterward and generate passive income.
Not massive income (in most cases).
But some income helps to psychologically retrain your brain on what’s possible in the creator economy.
Start with an eBook. Package up the skills from your 9–5 job or favorite hobby and sell them on Kindle Unlimited, Gumroad, ConvertKit eCommerce, Podia, or any of the other 101 options.
Start writing on social media
Social media is at the heart of the creator economy.
Why? Without distribution your ideas or products are pointless. You need humans, not egotistical Einstein philosophies.
Choose a platform and write there every day. I like tweets because they’re so short and simple it’s impossible to stuff up. If you’re a video creator then maybe TikTok or Instagram reels will work better for you. What evs.
Writing helps join the dots of your future creations. The world starts to make more sense.
Let the habit find the niche (not the other way around)
All this niche talk makes me fart a lot. Sometimes they turn into sharts (farts that become poops).
The obsession with niches in the creator economy is ridiculous. I recommend to follow your curiosity instead.
Once your build-every-day-habit is in place for a year or more, the niche(s) will reveal themselves.
90% of time the niche is you.
People are attracted to whatever you’re doing, so you keep doing that and wham, bam, thank you mam, life is good.
Get around creators smarter than you
There’s so much to learn in the creator economy.
Do you really think those tweet threads with 50K likes happen by accident? Do you really believe a Youtube channel goes from 0 to 100K subscribers in a year by accident or with hard work? No.
There’s an underground creator economy. There’s a lot of trading and favors that happen. Once you have some distribution you can trade it with someone else for more distribution or money.
None of this is obvious. You can’t google it. Successful creators don’t want you to know. So how do you find out?
Simple. You join private communities.
I prefer the paid ones because the quality is higher and fewer creators are playing the algorithm lottery, trying to be fortune tellers and guess what the algo is doing this week.
Who cares. The algo isn’t open-source until Web3 lights a fire under the creator economy. That’s years away.
I’m not a smart creator, but I’m surrounded by creators smarter than me. The chats that happen in WhatsApp, Telegram and Slack are where all the silent magic happens. If you’re not part of it … that’s what you’re missing.
Group chats are the true onboarding to the creator economy.
Teach what you learn to people two steps behind you
It hit me recently that a lot of the creator economy is educational content.
Instead of going to colleges to learn new skills we’re turning to low-cost alternatives provided by creators on the internet. Makes sense.
So if you join the creator economy, in a way, you’re highly likely to become an educator in disguise. The beauty is this lends itself nicely to online courses. Take non-fiction content you create and package it up as a course.
Now you have another income stream alongside the typical options:
- Freelancing
- Ad revenue
- Affiliate deals
- Public speaking
- Paid newsletters
- Brand collaborations
- Running a media agency
Courses are an underrated way to succeed in the creator economy that’s slowly becoming the new education economy. And we all know how much those greedy college buggers charge for their content.
Final Thought
2023 is an exciting year for the creator economy.
If you’re still not sure then join part-time. Experiment. Take what you do for work and broaden it to LinkedIn.
Just don’t miss the creator economy. It will replace Hollywood, traditional media, radio, marketing agencies, etc. The creator economy will one day be bigger than the entire tech industry.
We’re right at the start. Embrace it.
