sari

Everyone knows that the way to get good is to be prolific. But it’s incredibly hard to be prolific. For most of us, it means reaching way beyond the output level that feels natural. I keep trying to dig deeper in my writing, which means that I’m always saying the thing I’m most scared of saying at any given moment.

Unfortunately, we never cracked how to get huge by going direct. Our customers loved us, we just couldn’t get enough of them. We were growing. Our high fixed costs meant that we had to grow at a pace that we never were able to reach though.

In 2019, Wired reported that 125,000 creators -- podcasters, YouTubers, musicians, webcomic artists, etc…-- had generated a combined 5 million monthly subscribers. At the end of that year Patreon announced that it had paid out $1 billion to its users since its inception, with $500 million amassed that year alone.

Using the collaborate before you commit approach empowers both the candidate and the person hiring, because they both have the agency to decide whether the situation feels right to them. Was there chemistry? Was there magic? Was it more awkward than you might have liked?

But the more interesting development in the business of celebrity is the shift away from advertising.

For example, for the first time ever, creators can now sell works as NFTs that are hard-coded to generate royalties from all future resales, in perpetuity. This means that every time one of their works is re-sold at auctions, on a marketplace, on streaming services, etc. the actual creator is compensated directly, along with the new seller.