Lessons About the Creator Economy From Twitch and Substack

On Twitch and Substack, top creators have thousands of fans and make hundreds of thousands every month. But the vast majority of creators stream to an empty room or write for a few readers. It’s very hard for creators without an existing audience elsewhere (e.g., on Twitter) to grow organically on the platform.

But ultimately, I think some readers just won't pay for a monthly subscription. Finding other ways for creators to monetize these readers (e.g., one-time transactions) without cannibalizing their subscription revenue could be an exciting avenue to explore.

On Twitch, viewers subscribe to support a creator and stand out in the creator’s community (e.g., through sub-only emotes and chat badges). They also subscribe to get a shout-out from the creator and other viewers in a live channel.

Yet, some rebundling is already underway. It’s exhausting for a single creator to maintain a Twitch channel or Substack newsletter at scale. As their audience grows, creators might recruit a small team to edit their content and moderate their community. They might also own a live channel or newsletter with other creators to split the work.

The ability for writers to give status and privileges to loyal fans (e.g., sub-only badges and comment moderation).

The difference between Twitch and Substack is that Twitch has a large audience that visits its homepage, while Substack’s traffic mostly goes directly to a writer’s newsletter.

Channels (e.g., threads, AMAs) for readers to talk to writers and each other.

Twitch and Substack unbundled the cable TV package and the mainstream news publication in two ways. First, they made it possible for a single creator to publish content and find an audience without being part of an organization. Second, they made it easy for fans to support their favorite creators without having to pay for a "bundle" of many creato... See more

Small creators want discovery. They’re grinding away for that extra viewer or reader and don’t have the luxury to think about monetization until they have an audience.

Substack should take a page from Twitch's playbook by investing in helping writers build communities on-platform. Community features could include: