I went to a labor journalism seminar after attending the largest creator conference in the world. One day, I chatted with famous TikTokers about their financial worries, and the next, I was learning about the history of American labor organizing.
Labor journalism is what these topics are about. Labor beats the creator beat.
The creators are taking control of their income to make money for themselves, instead of following the traditional path of making a living in artistic industries. Consider creators like Brian David Gilbert, who built a devoted fan base as a chaotically hilarious video producer. Gilbert decided to stop working on other creative projects because he realized that he could make more money with his audience than with his media salary. Swell Entertainment and Defunctland are investigative journalism outlets that are run by video producers. Chefs who build their brands by going viral on TikTok or teachers who supplement their income by sharing educational content on social media are examples. In artistic industries that don't pay enough for the expertise that its laborers give, people are proving that creativity is a monetizable skill and that they deserve to make more than a living wage with it.
My coverage of the industry has been influenced by my belief that the creator economy is a labor beat. There are some great stories about the state of the creator economy.
Chris and his friends spent a lot of time on the internet, but they had a serious question. When they are too young to comprehend what it means to be a constant fixture in online videos, how can they protect themselves? A bill that seeks to protect and compensate children for their appearance in family vlogs was introduced in the state of Washington.
As early as 2010, amateur YouTubers realized that “cute kid does stuff” is a genre prone to virality. David DeVore, then 7, became an internet sensation when his father posted a YouTube video of his reaction to anesthesia called “David After Dentist.” David’s father turned the public’s interest in his son into a small business, earning around $150,000 within five months through ad revenue, merch sales and a licensing deal with Vizio. He told The Wall Street Journal at the time that he would save the money for his children’s college costs, as well as charitable donations. Meanwhile, the family behind the “Charlie bit my finger” video made enough money to buy a new house.
Over a decade later, some of YouTube’s biggest stars are children who are too young to understand the life-changing responsibility of being an internet celebrity with millions of subscribers. Seven-year-old Nastya, whose parents run her YouTube channel, was the sixth-highest-earning YouTube creator in 2022, earning $28 million. Ryan Kaji, a 10-year-old who has been playing with toys on YouTube since he was 4, earned $27 million from a variety of licensing and brand deals.
There are no laws protecting kids from being exploited on YouTube — one teen wants to change that
I like to watch a car crash like MrBeast. I am worried about the guy, but MrBeast is still cruising. That's right. He's doing well. His business model doesn't seem sustainable despite his wealth. We will see if he can keep escalating his stunts without being like David Dobrik.
Is going bigger always better? MrBeast’s business model is like a snake eating its own tail — no one is making money like he is, but no one is spending it like him either. He described his margins as “razor-thin” in a conversation with Logan Paul, since he reinvests most of his profits back into his content. His viewers expect that each video will be more impressive than the last, and from the outside looking in, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before MrBeast can no longer up the ante (and for other creators, this has led to disaster). So, if MrBeast’s business really is a unicorn — I’d wager it is — then he has two choices. Will he use the cushion of $150 million to make his business more sustainable, so he doesn’t have to keep burying himself alive? Or will he keep pushing for more until nothing is left?
Is MrBeast actually worth $1.5 billion?
A documentary about David Dobrik was shown at the South By Southwest festival. When he began working on the documentary, he wanted to capture the phenomenon that was Dobrik and his Vlog squad. The documentary took a turn after Insider surfaced allegations of sexual assault on Dobrik's film set. The lack of regulations on YouTube film sets can set the stage for disaster, especially when creators are incentivized to do crazy stunts to stay relevant.
Dobrik is still doing okay, calling into question just how far a creator has to go to lose his fans. Dobrik has his own show on Discovery. As a result of his accident on Dobrik's set, Wittek has had at least 9 surgeries.
“I think that there’s always a pursuit. It’s relevant for a musician – how do you keep your music interesting?” Neistat said. “But what makes individuals like David Dobrik different is that their pursuit is not coming out with the next song or making the next movie. Their pursuit is, how can I be more sensationalist? And that is a very, very, very dangerous pursuit, because the minute you achieve something that was crazier than the last, you then have to go past that.”
Casey Neistat’s David Dobrik documentary explores what happens when creators cross the line
The biggest secret in short form video is that you can't make a lot of money on TikTok alone. TikTok has been the leader in the short form scene for a long time, but next year will be different as the first platform to share ad revenue with short form creators. I am excited to see how this program will affect the short form game in the future.
A big reason why TikTok and other short-form video apps haven’t unveiled a similar revenue-sharing program yet is because it’s trickier to figure out how to fairly split ad revenue on an algorithmically-generated feed of short videos. You can’t embed an ad in the middle of a video — imagine watching a 30-second video with an eight-second ad in the middle — but if you place ads between two videos, who would get the revenue share? The creator whose video appeared directly before or after it? Or, would a creator whose video you watched earlier in the feed deserve a cut too, because their content encouraged you to keep scrolling?
YouTube Shorts could steal TikTok’s thunder with a better deal for creators
I spoke to the CEO of OnlyFans and the Chief Strategy Officer of OnlyFans about the future of the platform. Due to the success of adult creators, OnlyFans has paid out over $8 billion in the last two years. The mostly safe-for-work competitor has paid out billions of dollars. Sex workers who work online are some of the most vulnerable in the business. Changing credit card company regulations and internet privacy laws can wipe out businesses. Adult creators are skeptical about how long they can keep making money on the platform despite the company walking back its ban on adult content. I asked if adult content will be on OnlyFans in five years. She agreed.
OnlyFans has been putting a lot of effort into upcycling its image from an adult content subscription platform to a Patreon-like home for all kinds of creators, but it’s far from moving away from them as users. Today CEO Ami Gan of the platform confirmed that adult content will still have a home on the site in five years, and those creators can continue to make a living on it.
The confirmation, made today on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, is notable because of the rocky relationship OnlyFans has had with adult creators. Last year, the company announced it would ban adult content on the site after pressure from card payment companies and efforts it reportedly was making to raise outside funding. Then it abruptly suspended the decision less than a week later after an outcry from users.
OnlyFans CEO says adult content will still have a home on the site in 5 years
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