{"id":592942,"date":"2023-01-01T05:49:58","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T11:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/01\/how-we-covered-the-creator-economy-in-2022\/"},"modified":"2023-01-01T05:49:58","modified_gmt":"2023-01-01T11:49:58","slug":"how-we-covered-the-creator-economy-in-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/01\/how-we-covered-the-creator-economy-in-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"How we covered the creator economy in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This summer, I went straight from VidCon<\/a> \u2014 the largest creator conference \u2014 to a labor journalism seminar with the Sidney Hillman Foundation. One day, I was chatting with famous TikTokers about their financial anxieties (what if they accidentally get banned from TikTok tomorrow?), and the next, I was learning about the history of American labor organizing.<\/p>\n

These topics are not at all unrelated: at its core, writing about creator economy is labor journalism. The creator beat is a labor beat.<\/p>\n

Creators are rebelling against the traditional route to making a living in artistic industries, taking control over their income to make money for themselves, rather than big media conglomerates. Consider creators like Brian David Gilbert<\/span><\/a>, who built a devoted fanbase as a chaotically hilarious video producer for Polygon, the video game publication at Vox Media. Gilbert quit to work on other creative projects full time, likely because he realized that with his audience, he could make way more money independently than his media salary paid him. Then there\u2019s YouTube channels like Defunctland<\/a> and Swell Entertainment<\/a>, which are basically investigative journalism outlets run by individual video producers. We see chefs building their brands by going viral on TikTok, or teachers who supplement their income by sharing educational content on Instagram. In artistic industries that notoriously underpay for the expertise that its laborers provide, YouTubers, Instagrammers and newsletter writers alike are proving that creativity is a monetizable skill \u2014 one that they deserve to make more than a living wage with.<\/p>\n

This belief \u2014 that the creator economy is a labor beat \u2014 has guided my coverage of the industry this year. Below, I\u2019ve rounded up some of our best stories about the state of the creator economy.<\/p>\n

There are no laws protecting kids from being exploited on YouTube \u2014 one teen wants to change that<\/a><\/h2>\n

Like most teens, Chris McCarty spent a lot of time on YouTube, but they had a serious question. How can the children of influencers protect themselves when they\u2019re too young to understand what it means to be a constant fixture in online videos? As part of their Girl Scouts Gold Award project, McCarty worked with Washington State Representative Emily Wicks to introduce a bill that seeks to protect and compensate children for their appearance in family vlogs.<\/p>\n

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As early as 2010, amateur YouTubers realized that \u201ccute kid does stuff\u201d is a genre prone to virality. David DeVore, then 7, became an internet sensation when his father posted a YouTube video of his reaction to anesthesia called \u201cDavid After Dentist<\/a>.\u201d David\u2019s father turned the public\u2019s interest in his son into a small business, earning around\u00a0$150,000 within five months<\/a>\u00a0through ad revenue, merch sales and a licensing deal with Vizio. He told The Wall Street Journal at the time that he would save the money for his children\u2019s college costs, as well as charitable donations. Meanwhile, the family behind the \u201cCharlie bit my finger<\/a>\u201d video made enough money to buy a new house.<\/p>\n

Over a decade later, some of YouTube\u2019s biggest stars are children who are too young to understand the life-changing responsibility of being an internet celebrity with millions of subscribers. Seven-year-old\u00a0Nastya<\/a>, whose parents run her YouTube channel, was the sixth-highest-earning YouTube creator in 2022, earning\u00a0$28 million<\/a>.\u00a0Ryan Kaji<\/a>, a 10-year-old who has been playing with toys on YouTube since he was 4, earned\u00a0$27 million<\/a>\u00a0from a variety of licensing and brand deals.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Is MrBeast actually worth $1.5 billion?<\/a><\/h2>\n

I\u2019m fascinated by MrBeast, but kind of in a \u201cwatching a car crash\u201d way. MrBeast is still cruising comfortably along the highway, but I worry about the guy (\u2026 not too much. I mean. He\u2019s doing fine). His business model just doesn\u2019t seem sustainable<\/a> to me, despite his immense riches and irreplaceable success. As he attempts to raise a unicorn-sized VC round, we\u2019ll see if he can keep escalating his stunts without becoming yet another David Dobrik<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Is going bigger always better? MrBeast\u2019s business model is like a snake eating its own tail \u2014 no one is making money like he is, but no one is spending it like him either. He described his margins as \u201crazor-thin<\/a>\u201d in a conversation with Logan Paul, since he reinvests most of his profits back into his content. His viewers expect that each video will be more impressive than the last, and from the outside looking in, it seems like it\u2019s only a matter of time before MrBeast can no longer up the ante (and for other creators, this has led to\u00a0disaster<\/a>). So, if MrBeast\u2019s business really is a unicorn \u2014 I\u2019d wager it is \u2014 then he has two choices. Will he use the cushion of $150 million to make his business more sustainable, so he doesn\u2019t have to keep\u00a0burying himself alive<\/a>? Or will he keep pushing for more until nothing is left?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Casey Neistat\u2019s David Dobrik documentary explores what happens when creators cross the line<\/a><\/h2>\n

Speaking of David Dobrik, longtime YouTuber Casey Neistat debuted a documentary at SXSW this year about the 26-year-old YouTuber. When Neistat started working on the documentary, he wanted to capture the phenomenon that was Dobrik and his Vlog Squad, who used to be YouTube royalty. The documentary took a turn after Insider surfaced allegations of sexual assault<\/a> on Dobrik\u2019s film set \u2014 then, Dobrik nearly killed his friend Jeff Wittek in a stunt gone horribly wrong. Neistat does a brilliant job capturing the creator\u2019s fall from grace, plus the way in which the lack of regulations on YouTube film sets can set the stage for disaster, especially when creators are incentivized to do crazier and crazier stunts to stay relevant.<\/p>\n

Television series like \u201cHype House<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe D\u2019Amelio Show\u201d dedicate entire plotlines to creators\u2019 fear of being \u201ccancelled,\u201d but Dobrik is still doing okay, calling into question just how far a creator has to go to lose his fans. Dobrik just opened a pizza shop<\/a> in LA and has his own Discovery TV show<\/a>. Wittek has had at least nine surgeries to date as a result of his accident on Dobrik\u2019s set.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think that there\u2019s always a pursuit. It\u2019s relevant for a musician \u2013 how do you keep your music interesting?\u201d Neistat said. \u201cBut what makes individuals like David Dobrik different is that their pursuit is not coming out with the next song or making the next movie. Their pursuit is, how can I be more sensationalist? And that is a very, very, very dangerous pursuit, because the minute you achieve something that was crazier than the last, you then have to go past that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

YouTube Shorts could steal TikTok\u2019s thunder with a better deal for creators<\/a><\/h2>\n

The biggest open secret in short form video is that you can\u2019t get rich on TikTok alone, because even the most viral creators earn a negligible portion of their income from the platform itself. TikTok has long been dominant in the short form scene, but YouTube Shorts could give TikTok a run for its money next year as it becomes the first platform to share ad revenue with short form creators. Ad revenue doesn\u2019t seem that glamorous, but I couldn\u2019t be more excited to see how this program will change the short form game in 2023.<\/p>\n

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A big reason why TikTok and other short-form video apps haven\u2019t unveiled a similar revenue-sharing program yet is because it\u2019s trickier to figure out how to fairly split ad revenue on an algorithmically-generated feed of short videos. You can\u2019t embed an ad in the middle of a video \u2014 imagine watching a 30-second video with an eight-second ad in the middle \u2014 but if you place ads between two videos, who would get the revenue share? The creator whose video appeared directly before or after it? Or, would a creator whose video you watched earlier in the feed deserve a cut too, because their content encouraged you to keep scrolling?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

OnlyFans CEO says adult content will still have a home on the site in 5 years<\/a><\/h2>\n

At TechCrunch Disrupt, I interviewed OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan and Chief Strategy Officer Keily Blair about the platform\u2019s future, especially in regard to sex workers. In large part due to the success of adult creators, OnlyFans has paid out over $8 billion to creators since 2016. For comparison, the mostly safe-for-work competitor Patreon has paid out $3.5 billion since 2013. Online sex workers are some of the savviest, highest-earning creators in the business, yet they are the most vulnerable. Changing credit card company regulations and internet privacy laws can wipe out their business, and last year, that almost happened on OnlyFans. The company said it would ban adult content, then walked back that ban \u2014 but even still, adult creators have been skeptical about how long they can keep making a living on the platform. On our stage, I asked Gan if adult content will still be on OnlyFans in 5 years. She said yes.<\/p>\n

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OnlyFans has been putting a lot of effort into upcycling its image from an adult content subscription platform to a Patreon-like home for all kinds of creators, but it\u2019s far from moving away from them as users. Today CEO Ami Gan of the platform confirmed that adult content will still have a home on the site in five years, and those creators can continue to make a living on it.<\/p>\n

The confirmation, made today on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, is notable because of the rocky relationship OnlyFans has had with adult creators. Last year, the company announced it would\u00a0ban adult content<\/a>\u00a0on the site after pressure from card payment companies and efforts it\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0was making to raise outside funding.\u00a0Then it abruptly\u00a0suspended the decision<\/a>\u00a0less than a week later after an outcry from users.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Amanda Silberling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer, I went straight from VidCon \u2014 the largest creator conference \u2014 to a labor journalism seminar with the Sidney Hillman Foundation. One day, I was chatting with famous TikTokers about their financial anxieties (what if they accidentally get banned from TikTok tomorrow?), and the next, I was learning about the history of American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":592943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23652,1275,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-592942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-covered","8":"category-creator","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}