This doesn't sound as dire to me as the author makes it out to be.<p>I think it sounds totally reasonable that you need 20,000 or even 100,000 engaged followers to be able to make it full time off creating content. I don't see how, even with advertising or sponsors, a smaller number of followers could ever pay a livable salary (out of 20,000 people, how many of those mattresses are you really going to sell?).<p>It used to be that a TV show needed viewership numbers of millions of viewers to be profitable, this is still a massive democratization of content.
Subscription services like Patreon are the only way I give people money unless they sell a product I want. I'm not going to watch commercials, and I'll skip sponsored videos or segments every time. If the idea is that not enough people use Patreon for you to make money, then go ahead and run advertisements, I'll just move on down the road to someone else. If the idea is that Patreon in particular is bad—that it takes too big of a cut, or doesn't have enough features—then tell me what other service to use. But the model where many fans directly support creators they like via small contributions on a recurring basis, that's the one we <i>need</i> to work if there's going to be a creator or artist economy in the future, so we should probably figure out how to make it work rather than tossing it out. The alternative of just more and more advertisements being shoved into everything is not the world we want to live in, so let's make the better option work.
Patreon knows that Patreon doesn't work - they don't fund themselves by donations on Patreon; instead they take a cut of other people's donations.<p>And the model where some patrons receive a reward encourages transactionalism and disappointed patrons when they don't get the reward they expected.<p>Liberapay's model seems much more sustainable - donations only, no rewards; Liberapay fund themselves via Liberapay because they actually believe their system works.
I’m a full-time content creator. I feel like patreon/newsletters/paid communities are more hassle than anything.<p>When I look at the pros and cons of every single revenue strategy, sponsorships has the highest gain and least cons (for me).<p>Sponsors pay at least 10x what ad revenue pays, I don’t have to ask my community for money and the audience are likely to skip the ad anyway if they didn’t want to watch it.<p>Patreon is great in theory, but as soon as sponsors start inquiring, you realize Patreon is a lot more work for less revenue.
I saw a streamer on Twitch say "This is my favorite hobby. It pays for itself".<p>I don't think most of these people expect to live off of the income. Most people seem well aware the odds of that happening is low.<p>Remember that tons of content was created before YouTube was paying anyone anything. They just wanted to share it.
There is also a deeply worrying trend to "milk" creators, in "controversial" topics, by banning them and taking the income for the company.
It allows for unholy alliances of company revenue, controversial topics, and state driven brigading.
Tom Nicholas has a really good breakdown of Patreon's longevity<p><a href="https://nebula.tv/videos/tomnicholas-the-rise-and-fall-of-patreon" rel="nofollow">https://nebula.tv/videos/tomnicholas-the-rise-and-fall-of-pa...</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXyN3-gQwJw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXyN3-gQwJw</a>.
My primary guess would be that it's easier to earn your first dollars with fans vs. with B2B sponsorships (or even with retribution from platforms like YouTube). Also, I don't really understand the term illusion in the image if someone could help. 5% conversion from content consumer to "paid fan" does not seem that low
In a perfect market, the profits tend to zero. This is a basic idea in Economics, and can be seen in any area of work that gets 'democratized'. Whether that's good or bad can be debated, but the outcome isn't very surprising.<p>Apart from a few (0.01% or lower) content creators, most do NOT have very distinctive content. In economic terms it's a commodity market, and therefore it's not surprising that it pays similar profits.
A lot of creators have to realize that Patreon is a stepping stone to sponsors.<p>I run Casting Call Club, which is basically where amateur Patreon creators go to collaborate on projects and ideas. Many of the CCC members will only stay until they either A) fail, or B) get big enough to have sponsors.
What creators need is a better youtube algorithm. Is it just me, or has youtube recommendations become almost unusable by now? Some years ago when I spent "an hour watching YouTube" I'd watch a huge majority of videos recommended by the algorithm based on my current subs. Today it is 1%. Why? I'll give you an example.<p>I have varied interests, I sub and regularly watch a number if channels in each of my hobbies, but fixing cars is not one. However, one day I searched youtube how to change a bulb in a specific model of a car. This was a week ago. My youtube feed is still full of car repair howto videos. The people I'm subscribed to have produced new videos, but they don't show up.<p>Also I used to get recommended channels similar to ones I sub. No more. It looks 100% random now. I get recommended a random channel with 10 subs, but somehow I manage to miss one of the biggest channels in one of my hobbies for months.
I worked on a creator economy Salesforce-like product for the for businesses wanted to pay creators, run campaigns, interact with creators on a unified platform etc.<p>I have to say that Sponsorships make much more revenue than Patreon, however sponsors have gotten a bit smarter and not simply relied on view count anymore, they look at things like quality metrics, how the creators voice stands in the community and other aggregate factors (which we would factor for them in the product as a good estimate, we were an organic match making service in a way).<p>That is all to say that you can get much better sponsorships if you have a Patreon because it a very strong signal to companies about your viability in the community.<p>Its not required by any means, but it serves a purpose around this. I am 100% certain that most of the creators you might see with sponsorships and Patreons have realized that simply having a good active Patreon lets them up their sponsorship money and thats why many keep it around even when its revenue by comparison is a rounding error
I create very valuable content that saves my readers time and money. It's not entertainment; it's thoroughly detailed information about settling in a new country. It's a bible for local bureaucracy that a lot of people have come to rely on.<p>I get about one donation for every ten to twenty thousand visitors. Donations are about a hundredth of my income.<p>If I got a donation for every reader I personally help over email, I'd get twice as many. Even the people who ask for personal assistance don't donate.<p>Donations simply don't work. Most people pay nothing if they can. I have made my peace with that.
What happens if the creator just say no?<p>You don't have to operate like a VC-funded company and look for infinite growth, if you want to stay small with cheap production then just stay small?<p>There's likely a silent majority that supported the creator <i>because</i> they are authentic and relatable.<p>Just make it clear to your supporters that's your objective and don't expect more.
The TL;DR of this is basically there are too many people creating content.<p>Best thing that creators could do is tell other creators to quit. The author doesn't say this part but really that is what it comes down to.<p>Instead she offers a generic advice about diversifying the medium of delivery.
Sorry, but the "creator economy" is a mostly-malicious delusion. Sure, it can sound great. And for a very lucky few it probably is great. But the 99% reality is that it's just hype from techo-utopians, wanna-be's, get-rich-quick salesmen, and a bunch of mega-corporate platforms - whose profits are built on the backs of virtual-slave "creator" labor.<p>(Yes, maybe this is a bit too cynical. Maybe. A bit.)
I consider the words "creator" and "creator economy" dangerous because it suggests it's a serious and viable job. As the article and many comments explain, it isn't viable for 99.99% of those trying. Which isn't true for pretty much any other job. You can aspire to be a dog psychotherapist and actually have a decent chance of making a living from it, the odds are better than being a "creator".<p>The digital world is really simple: we all work for Big Tech but without the pay. All revenue flows in that direction.
Not a content creator, but I tried patreon and gave up after 2 years. It's as if asking for money in FOSS is a bad thing... I could try going commercial but I'm not really getting my hopes up. What are my options really? Try other platforms? Something tells me Kofi isn't going to be much better.
"More commonly, independent creators utilise audience monetisation to supplement other incomes." as the article says and it is the reality for content creators and platforms as Patreon. It is hard for them to monetize the audience by the platform and make it their main source of income.
“1000 true fans” are 1000 people who would pay you $1000 in a lump sum and feel happy about it.<p>Not selling 1000 cups of coffee like this article is acting it is, cup of coffee price isn’t a “true fan”.<p>And yeah for that you need 1000 people who your content is truly scratching an itch they can’t get anywhere else.
And yet it is. And if it weren’t some other rents seeking platform Would take its place.<p>What the author is ultimately complaining about is something they touched upon, which is that the creative market is saturated and in order to survive you need to have another job.<p>You can call it “diversification of revenue sources,” but what it actually is is getting a job as a waiter or a waitress while you audition for your Hollywood dreams.<p>And it happens when there are too many people wanting to sing and dance and be in movies and not enough people ready to pay them to do that.<p>So there’s an oversupply of creative talent, which is about to get even more squeezed as artificial intelligence pushes in on human capital.<p>There are, at the end of the day, only so many eyeballs, and not everyone can be the radio star.<p>Whenever there is a financialization of creative markets, there are artists screaming about the legitimacy of the art, and the connection with the receiver of that art, is being tainted by the commercialization.<p>But it doesn’t matter. The commercialization is inevitable because artist need to eat, and unless they have patrons, they have customers, and that’s just how the thing has worked throughout history.<p>Really at core it’s just another industry being eaten by software.<p>This is a trend that has been going on for a very long time, as tokenization and monetization and incremental digital transformation comes in and gradually disassembles ways of human existence into component parts and creates a business model around them. Let’s remember that painters screamed about photography being sacrilege and not even qualifying as an art form as the process involved no expression but mere capture. I met a few in my younger years who regaled me with my camera about the wrong I was committing.<p>It’s been the thing that’s been going on here for 30 years (and I’ve been lucky to watch the juice being squeezed). But from a digital perspective this is the way that it works in the modern economy. There’s a gold rush, then a reckoning, and from ashes emerge winners and losers, eventually leading to another stabilized period. That stability then transforms by new technology (the next breakthrough) and another rapid change of social behavior and income opportunity happens. It just goes on and on as digital technology progresses.<p>> The content should be meaningful, insightful, written, recorded or filmed for your audience. The people who give a shit. The people who care.<p>That’s the price of digital. It exacts emotional taxes to make change and people find it difficult and objectionable to watch their <i>values</i> erode as it gets eaten by disruption. But can anyone really get off the bus? Maybe if there’s a large scale EMP attack, the internet is shut down from a massive cybersecurity event, or solar flare, but I see almost no other way to stop the disruption otherwise as the snake that eats it tail <i>pays the bills</i>.
There are always different strategies for advertising what it is that you do. There's a streamer named Caseoh on twitch whose profile you can find here: <a href="https://twitchtracker.com/caseoh_" rel="nofollow">https://twitchtracker.com/caseoh_</a> He doesn't do grueling hours, he isn't a top tier gamer who is constantly giving out tips, he's just a guy who discovered a goldmine when he decided to take the jokes his viewers were writing about him and posted his reactions from his streams to TikTok. Tiktok is particularly great about this sort of thing because once you've watched an entire clip, you're more likely to see more clips from or about the same subject.<p>In March of 2023, he averaged about 1200 viewers. Today, he's got over 2.9M followers and averages 60K viewers and over 50K subscribers. He's not vulgar, he's not rude, he just gets online and does about an hour of reaction videos from his Discord and a few hours of playing random games nobody's ever heard of.<p>This is a guy who lives in a trailer and hasn't changed his streaming setup in forever. He gets online, streams for 4-5 hours, and then gets off to go live his life. He's making between $60 and $100K a month. He'll be a millionaire by the end of this year after spending the last few years working for a company alongside his dad. He found a niche and owned it.