Even the Top 4% of Creators Want a Union
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #207 | January 30, 2024 Tomorrow morning, creator commerce platform Kajabi is releasing a new study examining 2,000+ high-earning creators across the world who make over $100,000 per year. The study covers some of the various “strategies, behaviors, mindsets, and demographics” that set six-figure-earning creators apart from the rest of the crowd.…
By
Grace Stanley
Do We Need a Reverse Adpocalypse?
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #206 | January 25, 2024 Deja-tube: no, it’s not the weird feeling one gets while watching Doja Cat’s “Demons” video. It’s the uncanny sensation after seeing a YouTube ad in clear, flagrant defiance of the platform’s policies show up on one channel and suddenly seeing it everywhere. Whether it’s fleshlights, celebrity AI-generated…
By
Drew Grant
Facing the Reality of a Dream Job
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #205 | January 23, 2024 Being a full-time content creator is often referred to as a “dream job.” More kids today aspire to be YouTubers than astronauts, with almost 30% of children ages 8 through 10 listing being a YouTuber as their top career choice in a 2019 survey. According to a…
By
Grace Stanley
How To Win at the Content Creator Casino
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #204 | January 18, 2024 Let the record show, I love a good conference. And this month, creators and brands have been flocking to Las Vegas, first for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, then for Creator Economy Live this past week, followed by the AVN Awards at the end of…
By
James Del
The Tech Ivory Tower Isn’t All It’s Made Out To Be
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #203 | January 16, 2024 Tech layoffs have been constantly crossing our headlines this week. Just yesterday, Google suddenly laid off over 1,000 employees. On Jan. 10, Amazon laid off a whopping 500 people at Twitch, nearly 35% of its staff. On Jan. 11, it was also discovered that Amazon laid off…
By
Grace Stanley
The TikTok Feminism Leaving Fox News’ Body in the Elephant Graveyard of Cable Television
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #202 | January 11, 2024 Show of hands: How many of us still have, like, television? I don’t mean the physical object, because this isn’t a poll about whether you own a tv (though that was a fun thing to be mad about in 2014!). Owning a 67″ Samsung OLED 4K flatscreen…
By
Drew Grant
YouTube’s Union Battle With Contractors
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #201 | January 9, 2024 Last week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced a decision that Google, YouTube’s owner, is pretty unhappy about, according to an appeal filed this week. The NLRB is the federal agency that protects the rights of employees to collectively bargain for things like better working conditions…
By
Grace Stanley
Career-Killer Robots
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #200 | January 4, 2024 I’ve been watching this dystopian anime murder mystery Netflix miniseries called “Pluto,” which is basically about a world where artificial intelligence has become so advanced that robots have accumulated similar rights to humans. It’s based on a 2003 manga by Takashi Nagasaki and Naoki Urasawa, whom “Parasite”…
By
Grace Stanley
2024 Is the Year for Creators to Keep Their Cash
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #199 | Jan. 2, 2024 Happy New Year, one and all! Hope you all had a good holiday, or, as is more likely for self-employed creators, a solid 45 minutes of family time watching the clock countdown before high-tailing it back to whatever spare room you were using as a makeshift studio/editing…
By
Drew Grant
YOU.0: Some Assembly Required
CREATOR NEWSLETTER Issue #198 | December 28, 2023 Yay, it’s almost time for the season’s best non-denominational holiday: New Year’s Eve. And with it, prerequisite New Year’s Resolutions. In the future, our mutant great-grandchildren (powered by Grok) will convey via Neuralink to Gen X AE A-XV (the autonomous driverless tanks with human souls generation) about…
By
Drew Grant