[SolaceQuantum]

This describes how one can use individuality and a platform to provide a labor like podcasting, youtubing, online teaching, etc. It describes how it works and the shape of this industry.

It doesn't go into how feasible making a living income is actually, merely highlights the top earners in specific platforms... Rather suspicious to me.

[smacktoward]

It's telling that they call out how much money the top earners on Substack and Podia are making, rather than how much the average or median creators on those platforms make. These types of platforms generally end up creating a small number of superstars who earn orders of magnitude more than the average creator, with all other creators getting a relative pittance.

It'd be interesting to see the payouts on these platforms evaluated on the basis of something like the Gini coefficient (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient).

[troquerre]

Creator economics frequently follow power law dynamics. The same can be observed for Shopify and Youtube creators. ie Substack's revenue is based off of how much their aggregate creator revenue is, not on the distribution of that revenue across their creators. So it's not that relevant to look at the average amount creators make.

Actually, it's better for these platforms to have the average be low bc it means they have exposure to as many creators as possible. The cost of supporting each marginal creator is basically zero so they want to maximize their odds of onboarding a creator that will be successful even if that means onboarding hundreds of unsuccessful creators to get them.

[codingdave]

It is thinly veiled marketing for a handful of sites they wanted to call out.

[gruglife]

Seeing how a16z just gave Substack a ton of money, got to do some self promotion.

[joe_the_user]

Indeed, another factor to consider is that in a medium like this, "top earner" is going to change constantly. The attention of podcast consumers is going to shift constantly, $50K or $100K in a month hardly guarantees that on a continuing basis.

Anyway, "passion" is usually/often code for "doing what you love instead of being paid", which may be fun but doesn't have a good retirement plan.

[maximente]

it's a classic submarine piece. we know these distributions have tails that are long as hell and the platforms themselves subject to massive first mover advantages.