When I started Știri de Bine (a Romanian good-news website I ran for several years), publishing every day meant you needed a website, a server, someone to write, and a lot of patience until Google found you. When I launched IconicMan last year, things had already changed. But what I see in 2020 is another league altogether: a kid with a phone, a cheap light and a good idea can build in a month an audience that a local TV station would not reach in a year.
They call it the “creator economy” and, in this strange year, with people stuck at home and glued to their screens, it has grown like nothing else in digital. I sat down to put my thoughts in order: what has changed, what it means for brands, what it means for the people who create, and where the traps are.
From TV channels to people with audiences
For decades, reaching millions of people took three expensive things: production equipment, access to distribution and someone to sell advertising. Now all three have become dramatically cheaper.
- Production fits in your pocket. Phones shoot better than the professional cameras of ten years ago, and editing happens on the same phone, in minutes.
- Distribution is handled by the algorithm. You no longer need a broadcast slot or shelf space: if what you make keeps people watching, the platform shows it to even more people.
- Monetization is direct. Ad revenue shared with the platform, tips, subscriptions, your own products, brand partnerships. You are no longer waiting on a sales department.
The result is that anyone with something to say can, in practice, be their own TV channel. With a staff of one, who is also the host, the camera operator, the director and the head of sales.
2020, the year TikTok rewrote the rules
If I had to pick a symbol of the year, it would be TikTok. The app existed before, but it exploded during lockdown: short vertical clips set to music, and an algorithm that shows you content from people you do not follow. That is the key difference. On TikTok, a complete unknown can go viral with their very first clip, without spending years building a community.
Success came with trouble. Over the summer, the US administration threatened to ban the app over data security concerns, and there was intense talk of a forced sale of its American operations to US companies. As I write this, the story is not over and it is hard to say how it will end. For creators, though, it was a useful wake-up call: you can have millions of followers on a platform that could become unavailable overnight for reasons that have nothing to do with you.
The rest of the market reacted fast. Instagram launched Reels in August, an almost shameless copy of the format. YouTube, the old giant of online video, is testing a short format too, but it remains the place where lasting things get built: tutorials, reviews, long shows that people still search for years later. Twitch, the live streaming platform born in gaming, became during lockdown a place where people cook, make music, chat or simply work live, with thousands of others keeping them company.
Subscriptions, newsletters and fans who pay
The part I find most interesting is not the video, it is the money model. Platforms like Patreon let fans support their favorite creators every month, in exchange for extra content or simply the feeling of being part of something. Substack has done the same for writing: journalists and experts are leaving newsrooms and launching their own paid newsletters, straight to readers.
It is an old idea, really. Magazines lived on subscriptions long before the internet. The difference is that you no longer need a printing press and a distribution network. You need a thousand people who care enough about what you do to pay the price of a coffee every month. And a thousand loyal people are worth more than a hundred thousand random views.
What this means for brands
Two years ago I wrote about the shift from celebrities to micro-influencers. What has happened since is that people started telling an influencer apart from a creator. An influencer is often a billboard with a human face: put the product in the photo, get paid, move on. A creator has a subject, a style, a relationship with their audience. People do not follow them for their looks, but because they say something useful or make them laugh.
For a brand, a few things seem clear to me:
- Long-term partnerships beat one-off posts. A single mention is forgotten in 24 hours. A creator who uses the product for months and talks about it naturally builds trust.
- Authenticity cannot be written into a brief. If you hand a creator a script to read, the audience can tell instantly. Let them present your product their way, even if it does not come out exactly as you would have liked.
- Pay for results where you can. Discount codes, affiliate links, commission on sales. Performance models align interests: the creator earns when you sell.
- Measure what matters. Likes and followers can be bought. Sales, sign-ups and real traffic to your site cannot. Ask for real statistics and set up your own tracking.
I think the coming years will bring more and more tools that connect creators directly with brands and products, with automatic measurement of results. Today, much of it is still done by hand, with spreadsheets, messages and trust on a handshake.
What it means for creators: treat it like a business
If you make a living from content, you are an entrepreneur, even if you dislike the word. And a few old business lessons apply perfectly:
- Own your audience. Followers on a platform are not yours, they are rented. An email list is yours. I have written before about why email still drives the most sales, and for creators it is even truer: it is the one channel nobody can take away from you.
- Diversify platforms. TikTok for discovery, YouTube for lasting content, a newsletter for the direct relationship. If one falls, you do not fall with it.
- Diversify income. Ads, sponsorships, subscriptions, your own products. A single big client, whether it is a platform or a brand, is a risk, not a business.
- Keep your books like a company. Income, expenses, taxes, written contracts. It feels boring until the day you need them.
The risks nobody talks about enough
The first problem is exhaustion. Algorithms reward consistency, and consistency means publishing every day, for years, under the pressure of numbers displayed in public. I have been through entrepreneurial burnout myself and I can tell you it is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign that the system you work in has no brakes. Many creators are already announcing breaks, and that will only become more common.
The second is platform dependency. You have built everything on someone else’s land, and the landlord can change the rules whenever they like. What I wrote last year about who decides what we see online applies directly here: an algorithm change can cut your audience in half in a week, with no explanation and no right of appeal.
Television is not dying, but it is no longer alone
I do not think TV channels will disappear. But their monopoly on attention is over. They now compete with millions of people making content from their living rooms, faster, cheaper and often more honestly. For brands, that means more options and more work choosing well. For creators, it is a huge opportunity, as long as they treat it with the seriousness you would give any business.
Who do you actually follow, patiently, every week? And would you ever pay a monthly subscription to a creator, the way people once paid for a magazine subscription?