Thread by @rohit_gajaraj

Creator Economy 🔥 🚀

What’s next for the creator economy & its intersection with web3? 🧵

At a high level, we’re moving from a world in which creators made income on their own, to one in which they build wealth together with their communities.

The Creator Economy is a subset of the passion economy— the emerging category of businesses founded by self-employed content creators, supported by the digital platforms and financial tools that make the monetization of content viable.

The creator economy isn’t new, but it’s constantly evolving.

We’re now in what I consider to be the 3rd era of the creator economy and on the cusp of the 4th.

Creator economy 1.0: User Generated Content (UGC)

The rise of social media platforms & UGC content made every internet user into a creator.

Live Journal was founded in 1999, MySpace in 2003, FB in 2004, and Twitter in 2006.

Creator economy 2.0: The rise of the "influencer"

Some creators built large audiences, which they monetized largely through ads & brand deals. In 2007, Youtube launched the Partner program, allowing channels to run ads & earn money.

Creator economy 3.0 (today): Direct monetization from users

Creators seek to become independent businesses & are adding direct monetization to get more independence from social media platforms.

Multi-SKU earnings direct from fans across courses, subscriptions, tipping.

The future:

Creator economy 4.0: Ownership

Lines between fans & creators blur into community ownership, and the nature of being a creator is changed and reflects new incentives.

Let’s start with where the creator economy is today (era 3.0)

In the past 3 years, YouTube has paid out $30B to 2M+ creators
- Creators’ cultural impact is eclipsing that of traditional media. Top YT videos have 5-9B views each; by contrast, NBC primetime gets 4M viewers

Serious money is going towards retaining and attracting creators: TikTok is paying creators $2B in the next 3 years.

Facebook, YouTube, Snap, and Pinterest also rolled out their own creator funds.

- $3.7B has been invested into creator startups in 2021, many offering new monetization tools (Patreon, Cameo, Kajabi, Clubhouse, etc.)

Today’s web2 platforms have done well in enabling creators to create content & build an audience but often fall short on monetization, which is the 3rd pillar of creator-market fit (CMF).

CMF is the union between content creation, audience, and business model.

- Content: "Do I enjoy making this?"
- Audience: "Do people want this?"
- Business model: "Can I sustain myself?"

Creator economy companies: which part(s) of this are you indispensable for?

It's analogous to product-market fit for startups (the union between product, ecosystem, and business model).

For creators, various components of CMF can come from different companies/tools (e.g. audience from IG, business model from sponsorships/merch/etc).

At a higher level, web2 platforms also don’t enable creators to have independence and ownership of their content.

Right now, crypto’s killer feature for creators is monetization through digital scarcity.

Web3 is enabling transformative new ways for creators to monetize & engage their audiences.

@cdixon wrote that NFTs enable creators to capture more area under the demand curve via granular price tiering.

Through editions, 1/1s, and auction mechanisms, creators are able to monetize up to fans’ individual willingness to pay.

a16z.com/2021/02/27/nft…

@cdixon Along those lines, I’ve described NFTs and social tokens as extending the ‘pyramid of fandom’: enabling creators to capitalize on cult fans as well as new speculators/investors.

This is key to unlocking a larger creator middle class.

@cdixon In just the first 3 quarters of 2021, NFT sales volume topped $13Bn.

reuters.com/technology/nft… #NFT

@cdixon Let's take a moment to appreciate that these numbers are UNHEARD OF in the web2 world for a creator’s work.

Most partner channels on Youtube earn between $0.30 to $2.50 per 1,000 views.

A creator selling 1 NFT for 1 ETH = 4 million views on a Youtube video.
#NFT

@cdixon Excitingly, a lot of creators opt to keep their earnings in crypto vs. cashing out to fiat, dip their toes into DeFi, collect other artists’ NFTs, and purchase other assets, kickstarting a flywheel of growing wealth.
#DeFi

@cdixon This all is an extension of & turbo-charging of creator economy 3.0, which is creators as independent businesses.

It’s early days, but the new monetization capabilities for creators via crypto can be life-changing.

@cdixon Turning our attention to the future, what’s in store ahead for the creator economy?

Creator economy 4.0 is the ownership economy.

@cdixon Using building blocks offered by crypto, everyone participates in ownership of the networks they’re a part of and are rewarded more meritocratically for their efforts.

@cdixon The ownership economy is the idea that in the future, all platforms will be built, operated, and owned by their users. Imagine being rewarded with tokens for using a platform, proportional to usage or value-driven.

@cdixon This is a shift from independent creators as their own islands—to inter-dependence amongst a decentralized community.

@cdixon Creators will build together with their communities, blurring the line between creator and audience. We’re starting to see this today.

Examples:
@nounsdao , @PleasrDAO, @lootproject

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject From social media platforms to other industries like Influencer Marketing to the more than 50 million Creators themselves to the 500+ new startups joining the scene, the Creator Economy is attracting multi-billion-dollar attention.

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject Only 0.53% of the Creators surveyed make over $1M, but 43% of Creators who participated in our survey make a livable wage above $50k in annual income doing content creation work within the industry of influencer marketing.

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject Earning power increases with time in the industry. 46% of Creators who have been building an audience for 4+ years earn over $20k annually across their monetized channels.
#income

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject Content Creator Employees' Age Breakdown
The age breakdown of content creator employees is much older with an average age of 30-40 years old – definitely not Gen Z. Within the 30-40-year-old age bracket, this group accounts for 40% of the employee content creators.
#age #creator

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject 70% of Creators agree that, in a perfect world, Brand Deals would still be their highest source of revenue. However, there was an 8.5% increase in responses for Ad Share Revenue, indicating that some Creators would like to rely on a less active form of revenue.
#earnings

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject Shared upside and exposure to the efforts of the group, via tokens, create all sorts of incentive alignment and reward new ‘creators’ who previously had been unseen or under-valued.

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject Importantly, this portends a change in the nature of what a creator even is, from creating static media to cultivating communities.

What we think of as a "creator" today is a direct reflection of the games that web2 invented; with new games, success as a creator looks diff.

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject You can imagine that some new lucrative roles/jobs will emerge when there’s shared ownership.

Most of these were historically unseen/unrewarded: curators, evangelists, fan club leaders, meme page admins, etc.

This is the future of work.

#ownership

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject Being a creator shifts from being a cult leader (top-down) to being a core contributor to a community (flatter hierarchy with accountability).

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject Despite many creators facing challenges, there remains sufficient optimism for the creator economy to continue to expand. It gives new hope to people and opportunities for them to follow their passions.

#web3 #creator #creatoreconomy #ownership #thread

@cdixon @nounsdao @PleasrDAO @lootproject That's it!

Thank you for making it this far & hopefully this thread could help you get a brief overview of what creator economy is!!

❤️ 🔥 🚀