What’s Next for Creator Platforms? Learning to Sell

Most platforms today are hoping to capture most of the value of “creators” as they professionalize. For example, substack captures you when you are already ready to write something - it presumes you have an idea and are already to execute on it. By capturing the top of the funnel, increasing the space for exploration and inspiration, platforms can ... See more

In the past few years, startups like Substack, Patreon, and Shopify have created alternative ways for creators to build businesses online through direct transactions, rather than advertising. This shift exposed a simple fact: in an ad-driven world, creators were generally under-monetizing their audiences.

Right now in the creator space, the closest thing to this model is in the upfront advances that more and more big platforms are paying creators to join and produce content. Substack, Clubhouse, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, and others all pay cash advances to creators in the hopes that they then generate even more revenue for the platform. So far, i... See more