Creator economy predictions: The forecast for 2023 --
The creator economy had a plethora of viral events in 2022. ChatGPT was introduced as did the Corn Kid and Chrissy Wake Up were rerun (IYKYK) as well as Creators were constantly on our newsfeeds with something to learn or share a laugh with. However the market for creators as well as the businesses that fuel it, experienced a variety of shifts. The industry saw dozens of technological layoffs at companies like Patreon, Thinkific, and Meta and a 50 percent drop in funding for companies that are based around creators. This has left many people wondering, what's next for the industry?
Going into 2023, companies in the creator economy should focus on creating first solutions that address the main issue surrounding monetization.Before we get into our predictions for the year and the most important creator starter packs for this year's calendar, we'll first take a look at our findings on trends in the creator economy in 2022.
The top trends for creators starting in 2022
For a better understanding of the life of creators last year we conducted a survey of creators about the sources of income, methods to monetize, and social media use. Three main trends were observed:
- A majority of creators can't afford income to sustain their businesses full-time.
- Videos and the media platforms that support it reign supreme.
- The majority of creators rely on the monetization of third parties to earn money from their content.
Trends in income
In the digital age, where you can go in a flash and receive multiple brand sponsorship offers every day, people want to know what creators make, especially amateurs who are curious if it's a feasible career path.
We asked creators what they made from their online accounts during the past twelve months. It was not surprising that 42% of creators made at least $10,000while 9 percent of the creators earned over $250,000. Around 20% of the creators made less than $1,000from their content.
Creators that earned money from their content, YouTube at 23 percent was the most popular platform where they made the bulk of their earnings. TikTok was second and tied for third were Instagram and events that took place in person.
The past was when YouTube was among the few social media platforms that share ad revenue with creators by way of AdSense which easily explains its popularity among creators. However, the rewards are minimal as 97.5% of YouTubers don't make enough to make it over their goal of crossing the U.S. poverty line. In TikTok as well as Instagram, sponsored in-feed content and videos that promote brand deals are typically much more profitable than creator fund payouts which are too tiny for the number of creators who use the platforms.
Additionally, there are a variety of ways creators can monetize their content including direct commercialization (charging customers via their own website/tools or websites or an online platform such as ) and third-party commercialization (brand advertisements or sponsorships for another company). We asked creators whether and how they monetized these types of content: online classes, live webinars, coaching, newsletters, podcasts, online events, ebooks blog posts and social media posts. blog posts. Creators also had the option of choosing if they offered these types of content for free or didn't offer them.
With 40% of the participants, online courses proved to be the top product to directly profit from. Third-party monetization was the most popular. Coaching at 35% was the most popular. Then, blog and newsletter articles ranked at 39% to be the most popular type of content that creators could offer at no cost.
In the aggregate, third-party monetization was the most-loved strategy of creators. For instance, taking sponsorships on a podcast or posting an #ad to social media. This relates back to the fact that 60% of creators say they depend on third-party monetization like brand deals to make money.
Social media trends
Social media because it's an important tools for communication and audience building. When it came to social media platforms, YouTube had the largest percentage of creators on the platform with 77 percent. Facebook came in second with 72% followed by Instagram with 70% and TikTok at 62 percent. The least-popular social media site was LinkedIn with 27 percent. YouTube's rise in popularity confirms our earlier results that YouTube is the best platform where creators make most of their creator-related income.
We'll talk about people who use social media. There's an argument in the creator economy that for a creator to succeed one must have hundreds of thousands and even millions of followers. However, in our survey findings, the majority creators are less than 10,000 followers on social media across every platform. About 35% of respondents reported following numbers between 1,000 and 999, while 26% reported under 1,000. The majority of creators fall at the micro-influencer level (less than 50k followers) which is advantageous and appealing to companies as micro-influencers have an extremely loyal and niche fan base with higher levels of engagement.
We also asked creators what events on social media that they participated in. In other words, did they work with a brand on an initiative or organize the live stream of a video through a social feed? at 48% of the time, the most frequent action creators were able to report was to respond to comments or queries on stories and posts. In second place, 36percent of the creators stated that they created digital products in order to supplement with their marketing via influencers. Engaging with your followers online is essential for all creators; responding to questions and comments on their posts is a good way to build a genuine brand and improving customer engagement.
In the end, these results from 2022 reinforce that creators have been busy creating tons of content, especially on social media. However, only the most successful get the highest returns.
Economic predictions of the Creator for 2023
There's been numerous predictions on what's coming to the creator economy in 2023--hot innovative AI software appearing, YouTube and TikTok going against each other to gain over viewers, heightened creator burnout, and even, TikTok replacing Google as the new search engine.
The most important issue is that creators are increasingly finding that using social media platforms for payment isn't working. Even the most successful creators are beginning to point this fact out. The influencer Hank Green revealed the amount of his earnings was $0.02 to $0.03 per 1,000 views on TikTok, and world-famous social media influencer MrBeast said he made less than $15,000 a year on TikTok despite the fact that his videos have racked up millions of views.
As we move into 2023, creatives will be leaning towards solutions that are creator-first and that allow them to get paid for what their content worth. In its position as a leader in the direct-to-creator marketplace, we have three key predictions for the new year:
1. More creators will start to control their own online communities.
2. Creators can count on social media as a traffic source, instead of income streams.
3. Connecting with audiences live will be a huge comeback.
Three years have passed since the start of the disease, and 2023 will see in-person events return fully. Even though events saw a slight revival at the end of 2022 the attendance of events was still down since people chose to avoid the crowds with hybrid options. In 2023, we're expecting that more creators will host live events in person, be it gatherings, workshops or live classes, or retreats. In-person events have been an element of the top three ways that creators earned the bulk of their income with--it's inevitable they'll keep expanding in this area.
4. Creators will increasingly use AI tools to help run their operations.
If you've lived under a rock, you already know that ChatGPT has taken over the internet. It's a model that has been trained by OpenAI to assist in the creation of content--long tales in a nutshell, provide a topic or a query and ChatGPT can generate the text for you. It's also worth noting that (spoiler alert) the text is usually decent. Creators will start to use software such as ChatGPT to help them increase and accelerate their content output. This will help prevent the burnout of creators.
The Creator starter pack designed for 2023.
Whatever happens this year creatives should fireproof their business with the appropriate equipment. If you're a creative looking to dive into this year's business, here's the ultimate starter pack:
- Direct monetization toolin order to enable creators to be able to focus on their passions full time, plus earn what their content is worth direct monetization is crucial. We call this the direct-to-creator economics. Instead of relying on third party sponsorships such as ads or brand agreements, the creators must be at the forefront of their business making the decision on how much they charge for their content. Creator-first tools allow creators to do just that through directly monetizing digital content such as courses, coaching podcasts, memberships, websites, and communities--plus, helps to streamline your company so that everything can be located in one place. Creators have generated more than $4.3 billion in revenues and retain all that money.
When we enter 2023, one thing is obvious: creators should remain in control when it comes to the decision of what their work is worth. Social media, while it will be vital to building brand awareness and engaging with audiences, creators who rely entirely on social media for their own business play risky games.
aims to be a key part of the creator economy conversation. By presenting data-based research and anecdotes, we hope to make the path to making money easier for all creators. The research we've conducted has shown that one in three creators on who are full-time working on their online business make over six figures.
Methodology:
The findings in this survey are first-party information. The survey was sent to more than 1,900 creators that are not using . We received 1,046 replies with a 95% confidence interval. Please note we cannot access email data from customers using another email marketing platform as well as we are not able to record revenues for revenues or transactions that are generated outside of the platform. All data is used for general analysis only. Each response is confidential and we do not share information about the individual's identity with third-party companies. To access data or to discuss a collaboration you can contact [email protected].