Doubling Down on the Creator Economy
Is it too soon to say the traditional 9-5 job is dead?
While the indie hacker community has had a head start embracing multiple options for income generation, the "non-tech world" is taking note and beginning to dream about its potential.
What is the Creator Economy? Nowadays, no matter how narrow your interest niche may be, there are passionate content creators who are committed to supporting the topic. The Creator Economy encompasses a broad spectrum of media, including newsletters, podcasts, video, music, art, and much more.
Context: Some of the industry's most closely watched companies have made acquisitions in the space (Spotify) or announced new features & capabilities (Twitter). Content creators have many varied ways for monetizing their passion, including the use of tools such as Patreon, Substack and OnlyFans. One more notable event confirming mainstream interest took place in February, when the SAG/ACTRA (the “Hollywood union”) announced an “influencer agreement,” allowing video and audio creators to join the union for representation.
Twitter, in particular, appears to have finally woken up to the opportunities. Twitter has had a self-described "slow start," according to CEO Jack Dorsey. But now, Mike Park, VP of Publisher Products says:
“You can expect audience-based monetization to be an area that we’ll continue to develop new ways to support, whether it’s helping broaden revenue streams or serving as a cornerstone of someone’s business.”
I find the signal in the noise from the latest startup podcasts, so you don't have to. Follow along here:
Indie impact: Beyond the high-profile announcements, there are plenty of compelling success stories from indie hacker "celebrities" whose "Build in Public" model compounds their influence. They're not only blazing their own newsletter or podcast trails but also developing and promoting courses, tutorials, and "how I did it" presentations. A glance at the Indie Hacker Podcasts page reinforces the community's interest in the field, with nearly 20% of the past month's topic list focused on newsletter-related subjects.
Some of the most interesting recent episodes include:
- IH Episode # 161 and Newsletter Crew Ep #39, with Sam Parr of The Hustle. Sam talks about growth strategies and shares some of his "secrets" for writing persuasively.
- IH # 173 with Dru Riley of Trends.vc. It took a while for Dru to find his passion, and he talks about the amount of research that goes into a curation model.
- IH # 191 with Yaroslaw Bagriy of Newsletter Crew (see below for more on Yaro’s insight).
- IH # 193 with Jay Clouse of Unreal, on finding your top 100 true fans.
Going solo: The Creator Economy offers individuals an opportunity to craft their "dream job" by giving them a chance to leverage their passion into a revenue-producing side-gig, with possibly huge upside potential.
Yes, but: What about people who aren't good writers? During IH Episode # 191, Yaroslaw Bagriy (@yarobagriy) suggested that content curation is under-rated. Curation fills a need by combatting the information paralysis that can result from too much content. Yaro says:
"Pick a really specific niche that you enjoy, build an RSS feed so that you're continuously fed with trusted sources of information, and then curate content based on that niche and your expert definition of knowledge value."
Buying indie newsletters? Other approaches include the acquisition of a pre-established or even an abandoned newsletter or podcast series. That way, you're able to begin with an initial user list and build from there. Circularly, Jakob Greenfeld runs the subscription-based Substack newsletter AbandonedAssets, offering a pay-walled dataset of newsletters that appear to be dormant.
Bottom line: The typical playbook begins with a free offering while you focus on promotion and marketing, build to approximately 1000 users, and then convert to paid going forward. However, if your content is of sufficient value (rare or unique, relevant or in-depth) to be used to generate revenue for others, the user-count and timeline-to-monetization can be dramatically reduced. Li Jin of Andreessen Horowitz confirms:
I believe that creators need to amass only 100 True Fans — not 1,000 — paying them $1,000 a year, not $100. Today, creators can effectively make more money off fewer fans.
What's your passion?
Indie hackers selling to indie hackers?
Hey @NMilner thanks for the shoutouts! Can’t believe I’m being mentioned in so many creator economy articles. Let me know if you have any questions about anything I’ve said, I’m always glad to clarify or answer more!
Thanks @yaroslawbagriy!
Great podcast episode, by the way. I really enjoyed it!
Thank you Nicky! And also an amazing write up here :)
I think the only positive way for this to happen is through decentralisation. When people resort to a middleman for getting jobs, then they are contributing to the machine of ever-lowering hourly rates. It’s appalling to see how much a developer charges per hour on Fiverr or UpWork, and even more appalling to see how much companies are willing to pay.
Writers tend to flock to Medium, building Medium business instead of their own. I just don’t get why they don’t purchase a domain, some hosting (even free hosting) and start their own blog, adding a “Services” or “Hire Me” link. Most visual artists have profiles on major artist-oriented pages, such as ArtStation, but then they have their own portfolio on their own domains. Over time, they build a strong presence that helps them get more work.
To think that work in the future will come directly from outlets that take a share of the revenue is disgusting and not very conducing to a creator’s economy, even more considering the race to the bottom in rates. The only way for people to consider switching a secure nice paying job for an uncertain gig is if they can charge quite high for their time and expertise and not get ripped by middlemen.
So yes, it’s too soon to say the traditional 9-5 job is dead. It’s not, and it’s not going to happen because most people don’t like the idea of not having a salary every month. There will always be a ratio of self-employed and employed. Perhaps the self-employed is increasing, particularly after the pandemic. Artists were always more free to take on gigs, and probably are more suited to going solo. The same with developers, and of course there are lots of professions where the practitioners thrive working on their own.
Excellent points!
IMHO, the appalling state of rates on the freelance platforms is an artifact of a global platform. It's pretty difficult for First Worlders to compete (on first encounters) on rates when their cost of living is 3x-10x (or more), compared to developing nations.
I've found that it's possible (although difficult) to find reasonable market rate job offers, but they are few and far between. However, if players stick with it long enough to build their own audience where the value is appreciated, the rates can be mutually satisfactory.
Just like the rest of the "Creator Economy," value is in the eye of the subscriber. If you've got the right audience, it gets a bit more manageable.
One thought, is that like so many other arenas that are built around talent, a multi-tier system gets set up. The top 5% of participants may be doing very well indeed, and then there's a whole pile of everyone else, who's scrounging along having to have multiple streams of income. Artists of all kinds have already had to learn how to deal with that issue.