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Have We Reached Peak Creator Fund?
Inc.com / Publish Press
The pandemic saw a surge in funds from nearly every platform—from Pinterest and TikTok to LinkedIn and Snap.
Each has set different terms and amounts, such as Meta paying up to $4,000 for original content on Reels and YouTube creating a $100 million fund for Shorts creators.
When Snap’s Spotlight feature debuted last year, where creators could post 60-second videos and be compensated if the videos performed well, creator Cam Casey reported making $2.7 million in four weeks shortly after the program launched.
Today, news we hear of creator funds often skews towards disappointment. Most recently with TikTok.
In January, Hank Green shed light on how TikTok’s fund actually worked against creators. By offering a fixed amount of money, the more creators that joined the fund, the less money each creator earned.
In response to the wave of criticism and calls to have TikTok work more like YouTube, which splits more than half of its ad revenue with creators, TikTok recently made a commitment to split half of their ad revenue with the platform’s top 4% of creators.
Through mixed experiences, the bubble around most creator funds has burst—revealing the platforms to look more supportive than they actually are. Most meaningful creator compensation comes with advertising revenue splits. If funds can exist in addition to revenue share, it can help supplement the low ad dollars that short-form content brings in relative to long-form.
As creator compensation currently stands, YouTube could be best suited to solve the problem of monetizing short-form content. “Our goal is to pay creators in a much more sustainable way,” YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently shared with Ludwig. Shorts are inherently different than long-form content not just in length, but also in how they’re discovered and consumed. The platform is currently testing a few ways to monetize Shorts to account for this.
“If we succeed, you succeed and vice versa. We will apply the same principles to Shorts,” YouTube Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl told Colin and Samir. “Clearly monetization is part of YouTube’s heritage—we don’t have all the answers yet, but we are working on it and it’s part of our business model.”
Our Take
Creators need sustainable income streams, and current funds–although a nice bonus–aren’t consistent or reliable. If creator funds do ultimately dissolve, the money could instead be allocated toward grants that involve mentorship and education, which would bring more holistic benefits that creators could utilize long after cashing the paycheck.
While monetization of short-form content may always pale in comparison to long-form, it’s unbeatable at helping creators find audiences quickly, which makes it worth finding ways to monetize–even if to a lesser degree.
Sponsored by ConvertKit
The Creator Life Can Be Lonely
Forming connections and friendships with other creators is a great way to combat that isolating feeling and make this career more sustainable and fun. Online friends are awesome but nothing beats spending time with fellow creators face-to-face.
Enter: ConvertKit’s creator-led conference, Craft + Commerce.
The 3-day event is based in Boise, Idaho and chock-full of programming to help you level up as a creator, including:
Main stage talks led by a diverse group of online creators like Tim Urban and Glo Atanmo
Intimate workshops to gain practical tips and tactics
Attendee-led meetups to connect with like-minded creators
If you’re ready to turn internet friends into IRL friends, sign up and use code “CREATE1” for $100 off your ticket.
🤝 CREATOR SUPPORT
Publish Press readers share a problem they're facing and creators and Colin & Samir respond with their advice.
Q: I've been posting weekly for about 4 months with no real progress towards finding my niche. Is it possible for the niche to be you and your personality? Does that work in the long run?
A: We spoke about this in our video on Amelia Dimoldenberg, who hosts Chicken Shop Date. Today she’s interviewing big-time musicians like Rosalia and Jack Harlow, but got her start in the UK indie scene. Through that, she found her wedge—her way to get into a community. That’s what every creator has to do from the start. Find a community that will give you access, is underserved, and interested in what you have to say. Then you can layer on your personality.
For example, our episodes now include a lot more personality than they used to two years ago because we didn’t want to show too much of ourselves early on, and we had to build trust with our audience over time. Once you earn trust, you can start to layer in new things and your audience will be there for you. Your personality can be your niche but it takes time.
Facing a creator problem you want help with? Share it here→
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