The creator economy matured in 2022.
If 2021 was the year of excess and wild profits, 2022 was the year that sent anyone who wasn’t serious back to their desk jobs or forced them to quit writing forever and become a hater in the comments.
It already looks like 2023 will be the best year yet for writers. Here’s why.
Twitter money, honey
Elon Musk bought Twitter. I ain’t mad at it.
Since he took over the platform it has gotten a new lease of life. Writers are flocking back. Elon said one thing many people missed.
- Ad revenue will be shared with creators.
- The new $8 a month Twitter membership revenue will be shared with creators.
He specifically said monetization will be open to writers AND video creators, and long-form content will finally have a key place on the platform. If that doesn’t make you jizz in your pants I don’t know what does.
Simple tactic to execute in 2023: re-publish your best long-form content again on Twitter.
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LinkedIn will keep surprising creators
In a masterclass the other day, I had chills down my spine.
It hit me: LinkedIn now gives you 5 places to add a link to your website/newsletter.
- Link in bio
- Link in image
- Link in carousel post
- Link in featured section
- Link in comments (that can be pinned)
People often think of LinkedIn as the most sleepy writing platform. But in the last year they have created a whole division designed to recruit creators and get their content. And it’s working.
There are many more exciting features I’ve seen previews of that’ll help anyone looking to make money online. Don’t sleep on LinkedIn in 2023.
AI writing will take over the world
This scares a lot of writers. But I ain’t sh*tting bricks.
AI writing tools are incredible. The way you will likely use them in 2023 is the AI will write some text for you based on a question. The response will sound a lot like a Wikipedia entry (boring as hell).
You will then rewrite what the AI wrote, or let it inspire an entirely different thought. Where this is powerful is AI will become your research assistant. We all know better research equals better writing.
Now you won’t need to be as famous or successful as Ryan Holiday to have a research assistant.
The other great thing is AI will defund crap content. The worst is SEO-written articles stuffed full of keywords, designed to manipulate Google search results.
AI can write this crap, so this content’s value will fall to zero in 2023.
How to beat AI
The AI slave master can be beaten at its writing game. You know how?
By focusing exclusively in 2023 on your writer’s voice.
- Add in slang
- Write like you talk
- Add more personal stories
- Add some emotion (that AI can’t do)
- Be vulnerable (that AI can’t do)
It’s harsh to say … but many of you don’t have a writer’s voice. You all sound the same, which isn’t an opportunity, not an insult.
Full-blown Substack discoverability will arrive
Substack is the best newsletter platform on the internet.
The reason isn’t obvious though. Substack lets you find new readers through its recommendation engine. Rather than have a toxic newsfeed run by tech overlords who can manipulate what gets priority, Substack lets writers and readers drive discoverability.
I never predicted this would happen but it did. It makes sense.
I call it democratized discoverability. Substack has more plans to iterate on this feature and remove the reliance writers have on newsfeeds to find new readers and keep their existing ones.
For those wondering, Substack currently gives me 20% of all new readers I get for free. This is a huge deal. And I own those readers once they become part of my newsletter. Oh, and I can take them to a new platform.
Many writers may have missed how many new features they are adding. I’m blown away by their ability to understand what writers want and then quickly add those features.
Right now the ability to listen to my articles in audio in my own voice is probably the feature I love the most. It creates reader-writer intimacy that’s better than hot sex.
Watch Substack as a newsletter platform closely and don’t be a sleeper.
The first Web3 social media platform will come alive
Centralized control is a nightmare for social media.
As the Twitter files showed, it allows tech bros to remove content, ban people for no reason, and shape the conversation to their biased ideals. Some call it tech-driven inequality/racism.
Web3 fixes this problem.
In 2022 it looked like Mirror.xyz or Bitclout may have been the first to lead the pack. But both failed to acquire significant amounts of users or go beyond the topics of crypto and Web3.
Many more decentralized copycats of current writing platforms are being built. 2023 will be the year one gains traction.
Crypto/NFTs won’t die
The recession has been brutal for crypto/NFTs. But just like the dot com bubble in the early 2000s, the whole space will bounce back.
Expect more creators in third-world countries to get paid with crypto. Also, now that Tim Ferriss and Mark Manson have experimented with NFTS, expect more writers to use them for their own books/content.
I also believe the huge success of NFTs on Reddit will spread to other platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram. Most people don’t understand the point of this space and get stuck on the monkey JPG use case.
NFTs are how writers codify copyright and royalties for life.
One big thing that won’t change in 2023
One big trend that won’t change is writers will continue to act smart and own their audience. We will do this with our email lists. (Mine is 120,000 strong).
Because email lists are how we retain the value we create and don’t give it away in return for useless followers and ‘like’ counts. As my friend Gavin always says: “Build the list, email the list.”
Anyone can be a writer in 2023. Give it a shot. Dare to express yourself.
