Creator Report
Your career.
Your industry.
Your future.
It doesn't matter which platforms you're on or how many followers you have: If you produce and seek to monetize content, you’re a creator.
Being part of a new growing economy like ours can leave you with a lot of questions. That's why – backed by our industry, our own data, and the input of more than 9,500 creators – we kicked off an investigation to start surfacing the answers. Dive into what it means to be a creator today, and what it takes to make it on the web.
Chapter 1
Meet Your Fellow Web-Cohabiting Creators
From gamers and streamers to NFT-makers and artists, creators are part of both the passion economy and the creator economy. But, what's the real size of the opportunity you share with your fellow creators?
The Creator Economy's
Total Addressable Market
If every single person who could potentially find value in social media, the passion economy or the creator economy acted on it today, how big would these markets be? That's how we calculate Total Addressable Market (TAM). It's the maximum potential size of the opportunity we're looking at.
Social Media Users
Total market size for the global social media network involved in the creator economy
Passion Economy Users
People who engage in any activity to monetize individuality and non-commoditized skills supported by digital platforms
Creators
Individuals who use their influence, creativity, or skills to aggregate and monetize their audience
Creator Breakdown
Globally, by Audience Size
Audience size
# of creators
Recreational
0-1K followers
23,000,000
Semi-Pro
1K-10K followers
139,000,000
Pro
10K-100K followers
41,000,000
Expert
100K-1M followers
2,000,000
Expert+
1M+ followers
2,000,000
From the source
“It’s a fun job that brings a lot of cool opportunities. Creators are more relatable and genuine than brands, so people gravitate towards them.”
linktr.ee/luiscapecchi
BoyNamedLuis
1.7M followers on TikTok
“We live in an amazing time where the ordinary person gets to become a creator and find success with social media. It’s the wave of the future.”
linktr.ee/psychicstina
Psychic Stina
213.1K followers on TikTok
Chapter 2
The Common Ground We Share
Creators defy a one-size-fits-all definition, but they still have a few things in common. For starters, it turns out content creation isn't the main hustle for many in the creator economy.
Overview of time spent
on content creation
66%
of creators consider themselves part-time creators
43%
of creators spend less than or equal to 5 hours per week creating content
36%
of creators have been making content for less than or equal to 1 year
Annual Income and Time Spent
on content creation
The relationship between how much creators work and how much revenue they make isn’t an exact science.
53%
of creators who make
less than $100 a year spent less than 5 hours a week on content creation
32%
of creators who make
$100-10K a year spent greater than 10 hours a week on content creation
52%
of creators who make
$50K-100K a year spent less than 10 hours a week on content creation
48%
of creators who make
$100K-500K a year spent greater than 10 hours a week on content creation
Beginner* creators and monetization
When people first dip their toes into the creator economy, they struggle to monetize.
Annual Income
$0-100
$100-1K
$1K-5K
$5K-10K
$10K-50K
$50K-100K
$100K-500K
$500K+
59%
of beginner* creators haven’t monetized yet
35%
of beginner* creators have monetized but earned below what can be considered as a “livable income”
6%
of beginner* creators have earned greater than $10K
Annual revenue for
Full-Time Creators
12%
of full-time creators make greater than $50k
46%
of full-time creators make less than $1K
Annual revenue for
Part-Time Creators
3%
of part-time creators make greater than $50K
68%
of part-time creators make