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In 2021, the creator economy attracted more than $1.3 billion in funding, but the creators occupied only a fraction of the money generated by these platforms.The creator economy includes more than 50 million independent content creators and planners.It is also composed of community builders, such as bloggers, social media influencers, videographers, and financial and software tools designed to help these creators profit and grow.

Creators can make money in various ways: selling digital content, charging courses, obtaining fan funding support through the donation platform, receiving subscriptions, participating in affiliate marketing, charging from fan clubs, creating or sharing sponsored content, sharing advertising revenue, receiving tips, product promotion, etc.In recent years, the creator economy has gone through the following stages:

Stage 1: Basic media platform

Social media platforms lay the foundation for today's creator economy.The creators have attracted a large number of fans through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, TikTok, Weibo and other platforms.These basic platforms have invested heavily in planning and recommendation algorithms to give enough exposure to good content creators.

The platforms gathered creators and equipped them with various fan development tools.To help creators polish their content, these platforms create multimedia editing tools.However, these basic media platforms do not represent the best interests of the creators.Many creators choose to cross-promote on multiple platforms to ensure that they are not limited by a single platform.This approach ensures that creators are not greatly affected when a platform decides to change their priorities, lose their market share, or weaken some monetization features.

Stage 2: Profit through influence

Basic media platforms enable some creators to attract large numbers of fans.Some companies have realized that they can use the fan traffic of these creators to promote their brand.On the one hand, platforms like YouTube started sharing advertising revenue with creators; on the other hand, companies like Facebook and Twitter let creators decide how to profit from their content and help arrange sponsored content, and companies such as Niche created such deals.

YouTube has paid $30 billion to over 2 million creators over the past three years.The cultural influence of creators is surpassing that of traditional media.Hot YouTube videos have had 5-9 billion hits; NBC has only 4 million viewers in prime time.Amount of money used to retain and attract creators: TikTok will pay $2 billion to creators over the next three years.Facebook, YouTube, Snap, and Pinterest have also launched their own creator funds.

At present, there are a large number of creator agencies, talent representative companies and sponsorship companies in the market.The market value of the creator market reached $8 billion in 2021, and is expected to reach $15 billion by the end of 2022.Creators working with brands that fit their personal image can push company information without changing the content.Inevitably, fans will lose trust in their creators for some paid or sponsored content, so these creators will have to look for others, hence the next stage.

Stage 3: Enterprise transformation of creators

At this stage, creators are also seen as businesses.Creators create environments that allow fans to follow them outside the platform, with a variety of ways in addition to ads on traditional social platforms.

New companies have emerged to help creators generate more revenue by selling products such as goods, quality content, e-books, and newsletters.The company also offers tutoring, speaking events, consulting, and fan events.Content creators can focus more on serving their loyal fans than chasing the number of fans that may never be realized.The creator economy means giving financial control to content creators, allowing them to profit directly from fan resources.Creators can bypass the traditional way of making money through advertising, display space, and sponsorship.

Creator economic level

Junior: Lovers

Creators at this level create content for entertainment or as a sideline.Technological advances have made it easier to create content, so more enthusiasts are joining the competition.For example, tools like Anchor make it easy to launch podcasts for all.Because of the lack of creative resources, time and marketing channels, it is difficult for lovers to achieve high-quality content or production value level, and they usually do not make a living by creating content.

Intermediate: a full-time creator

Creators at this level can rely on the work to earn an income to support themselves.Full-time creators are higher than enthusiasts and have sustainable cash flow.One of the major challenges facing these creators is managing the ups and downs of businesses.Management takes up a lot of their time and makes it difficult to become productive.If the strategic level of full-time creators is not high enough, the marketing work will greatly affect their profits.

Advanced: Traffic star

Creators at this level can build partnerships with a variety of external brands, such as record labels, media companies, and publishers.Maintaining relevance and visibility is the biggest challenge for these brands.At the same time, there is also the possibility of a brand crisis, which may make traffic star creators lose partnerships.

Content creation tools

With the development of relevant platforms and tools, content creation has changed greatly.In the past, video creation was in the hands of the few people with expensive equipment.Publishcan only publish books and are expensive.This changed with the introduction of the Internet in the late 1990s and the rise of platforms such as YouTube.

Youtube allows amateur creators to upload videos and are no longer at the mercy of media companies.In the past, low Internet speeds have affected the use of platforms such as YouTube.But now things have changed, and more tools have been developed.Here are some of the most common tools that power the creator economy in the modern world:

Content creation: Feather, Ko-fi, Beacons, Scrollstack, Stereotheque, The Mango Jelly, OnlyFans

Course creation: Xperiencify, CreativeLive, Kajabi, Podia, Skillshare, Teachable, and Thinkific

Market: Gumroad

Live streaming: Onyx, Popshop Live, OnJam, Streamloots

Activity Organization: Eventbrite, Happily, Luma, Offsiter

Podcast: Anchor, Castbox, Glow, Supercast

The Game: Nexus.gg

Writing: Revue, Substack, Tales, Wattpad

Audio content: Avocado, Racket, Knowable, Spoon

Digital products: ConvertKit, Ghost

Financing: Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee

Cryptocurrency: Rally, Opensea, Mirror (Note: Rally: Provide a platform for creators and their communities to build an independent digital economy; OpenSea: the world's first and largest cryptocurrency collection and non-homogenized tokens (NFTs); Mirror: decentralized content publishing platform, open to an Ethereum address, anyone can write with their wallet at Mirror.）

NFT, the meaning of cryptocurrency to the creator economy

The current Web 2.0 platform does a good job of pushing creators to create content and attract audiences, but it often fails to cash in.At a higher level, the Web 2.0 platform does not allow creators to have independence and ownership of their content.Currently, for creators, the killer function of cryptocurrency is to realize it through digital scarcity.

The NFT is an encrypted asset with a unique ID and metadata stored on the blockchain.The main difference between NFT and homogenized cryptocurrencies is the substitutability.NFT has been around for years, but the outbreak of Covid-19 has accelerated people into the virtual world and boosted the cryptographic growth of the encryption industry.Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, NFT's first tweet, closed for $2.9 million.The NFT is described as the future of asset transactions on the blockchain platform because they represent assets and rights confirmation and cannot be forged.

Web 3.0 is offering creators transformative new ways to monetize and enhance the loyalty of their audience.According to a16z partner Chris Dixon, NFT enables creators to capture more areas under the demand curve through fine price stratification.With version, 1 / 1, and auction mechanisms, the creators are able to cash in based on their fans' personal willingness to pay, enabling the creators to make money from loyal fans as well as new speculators or investors.

Here are some of the ways the NFT may change the creator economy:

Creative freedom.Creator ideas no longer need to adhere to specific standards set by various platforms.This degree of freedom allowed for the creation of various types of art works.The reduced risk of imitation, abuse, or piracy also inspires artists to concentrate on their creation.

Develop the community.NFT is democratiating creator content and allowing creators to build solid communities.Communities can become brand ambassadors and can even help with marketing content.This way reverses the pattern of traditional big companies dominating the market.

Monetize your creation content.The NFT is loved for its convenience and accessibility.After creating the artwork, NFT casting takes in a few minutes and there are many markets to choose from.These creators can also encode royalties on smart contracts and earn recurring passive income when trading an NFT.

Finally, while billions are poured into the creator economy each year, it hasn't become oversaturated because many enthusiasts are looking for marketing channels.The future will appear more tailored solutions for creators, as well as tailored to different business requirements, such as marketing, operation, investment, copyright expertise, professional knowledge, product release, community construction, etc., identify these needs and provide solutions tools companies will become the final winner, NFT and cryptocurrency fusion will also provide a new channel for creator economy.

*The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of SparkDAO. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.