Ahhhhh Halloween,

The pumpkins have been carved and are currently rotting on my porch, I’m now constantly having weird dreams from the spooky content I’ve been watching, and for the last two weeks, I’ve been eating candy that’s supposed to be for the children tomorrow.

Needless to say, I’m ready for November (and to give out as much candy as humanly possible. You’re welcome, neighborhood kids. And I’m sorry, my crippling addiction to sugar).

While October is pretty much my favorite month, I am looking forward to the cold weather and winter vibes to come. Now that I have an actual house and I won’t be traveling over the holidays, I can get a tree, hang up lights, and……

holy shit, guys… I’m just realizing that I’m old now. And all it took was one week of being 28. Go figure.

Jokes aside, I’m ready for the winter and to see how things evolve in my professional, creative, and personal life alike. But until then, we have more to explore in the creator space. Let’s dive in.

-Luke

PS - if you want to support me and this newsletter, click the link for Cornbread Hemp below. They’re supporting this week’s newsletter and every click goes an insanely long way. Thank you to all those who support and click these links when I have them, it means more than you know!! ❤️ 

Most Creators are Broke

I said it, and I mean it. Creating content is hard, and making money off of that content is even harder. Over 90% of us are in the same boat, scraping by on creative endeavors while working other jobs to make ends meet. While this can most definitely drain your creative battery, there’s some solace in knowing you’re not in this alone. Shared trauma brings people closer together or something like that… right?! 🥲

In a recent report released by Kajabi, the study dives into the reality of revenue for the vast majority of creators, exploring how much creators are making, and where they’re making it (hint: it’s not from platforms).

I’ll drop some big findings/stats below, and then share my thoughts on each in a sub bullet.

• Social platforms made 9X more than they paid out to creators in 2023.

  • That’s a huge gap between creators and the platforms they fuel. Now, I’d love to see what these actual metrics are, especially if this could be further broken down into what each platform made and paid out. For example, the study mentions that “for every $100 TikTok earns, creators make just $6.25,” this stat reveals how platforms value ‘creators’ (AKA, the literal lifeblood of their companies).

• Nearly 50% of creators earn less than $10K in a single year.

  • The craziest part about this stat? Most creators would be ecstatic to make anywhere near $10k from their content. As a personal anecdote, even as a small account creating daily content, I’ve driven millions of views and consistently bring in over 100k viewers every single month for just one page. The result? Not a single cent from Instagram. This is where I believe the problem to be. This isn’t just my story; it’s a shared experience among countless small creators who put in daily effort yet receive zero return from the platforms they build on. While my small IG drives nothing monetarily, people are doing 10x the numbers that I am, and they still don’t see any green.

• Nearly a quarter of creators grind for 2 years before seeing a single dollar. That's 730+ days without a paycheck.

  • We’re creators, not full-blown start-up founders (though I’m both), so we shouldn’t be working 730+ days without pay. Even if you’re a seasoned creator who has already built out an audience and understands how to make on-platform monetization work, you’ll still likely have a difficult time seeing that first paycheck. I’ve worked with and for a handful of creators who start new pages and begin monetizing in a few months, but I’ve also worked for many more who start a page only to find they cannot monetize it either. Again, the platform is at play here. Even though these new pages drove tens of thousands of views, the creators killed the pages because the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

• A single TikTok view is only worth $0.00004 on average.

  • I just wanted you to know your value on TikTok, because everyone needs a good wake-up stat every once in a while.

Reports such as this play such an important role in shedding light on the dark reality of the creator economy. For outsiders, the creator economy can look like an easy road to success, with big names raking in brand deals and managers, sometimes not even being creators at all (I’m lookin’ at you ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl). But for creators, the reality can be disheartening (hey, by the way, what’s the name of the creator who interviewed the ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl? …That’s what I thought).

Although the reality can be a bit depressing, showcasing these numbers and asking questions is exactly what we need to do to push platforms to pay those who are providing most of the value.

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Enjoy the moment and take your edge off, this is the good life.

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Hope you enjoyed this week’s post. See you next week ✌️