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How big is the creator economy?
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Over the next few weeks, we’ll be diving into the creator economy and shedding light on questions like: How can a content creators start to monetize? Which apps are the easiest and quickest to grow on? And how do brand collabs happen?
But to kick it off, here’s a question: Just how big is the creator economy?
Let’s do the math. A creator is anyone who produces content to earn money (independent curators, community builders, social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers). That means there are about 200 million creators. There’s different types of content, niches, and audiences – but there’s truth in the fact that creators are influencers.
An extreme example of an influencer is Cristiano Ronaldo. While giving a press conference, the football star pointedly moved two bottles of Coke away from him and replaced them with water. This resulted in a massive $4 billion decrease in Coca-Cola’s market cap. It goes to show how buyer behavior can be manipulated by influencers of that magnitude. This is true for creators in every niche, given the right content, message, and approach.
Ronaldo also happens to be paid the most of any influencer on Instagram. With 476m followers (Instagram’s most-followed account), he earns over $2 million for a single sponsored post.
Instagram’s top accounts are all the usual suspects: Athletes, celebrities, singers, and actors. But what’s fascinating is just how lucrative sponsored posts can be for top influencers. There are so many micro-influencers and content creators on the app that roughly 30 million of the 1.3 billion accounts on Instagram are creators with over 1,000 followers.
To frame it: If all micro-influencers formed a country, it would be the 49th most populated country on Earth… with a heck of a ton of curated selfies.
Next week, I’ll be sharing more updates on the creator economy – which apps pay the most, which ones you can grow the quickest on, and the tea on AI created influencer accounts (yep, they exist).
MORE ON THE CREATOR ECONOMY
Check out some of our recent coverage of the creator economy:
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