A fantastic but vain hope (from fantasies induced by the opium pipe).
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY DEFINITION FOR "PIPE DREAM"
Content creators are having a tougher time making money online as a bigger slice of the revenue pie goes to those at the top of the creator economy.
The percentage of Bank of America customers earning income as content creators has continued to decline and is now 0.20%, the bank said in a note Thursday.
In fact, the share has now fallen three years in a row after peaking in 2021, when it was 0.25%. Back then, the pandemic had helped fuel a surge in content creators as lockdowns kept people at home looking for recommendations on what stuff to buy. In 2019, the share of people making money as content creators was just a tick above 0.10%.
***
At the same time, the average monthly income for content creators, excluding possible paid partnerships, is just 20% of the average monthly income for a typical, full-time US employee, the note added.
***
“And only once in the past five years has the average monthly income of a content creator been higher than the average weekly income of a typical full-time worker, suggesting that very few people earn a living from content creation, let alone get rich from it,” BofA said.
More people are dropping out of the creator economy as those at the top get a bigger share of brand deals
The internet has followed book publishing, movie making, the music business, and television in becoming a lottery where the very few earn the big money while everyone else wastes their lives chasing a dream that will never become reality. The dream is that you can give up your day job and make a living from home making content for the internet and even become rich in the process. The people who actually pursue the dream are deluded fools. My hope is that this is a wake up call for them.
There is no harm in making podcasts, YouTube videos, and blog posts. Just don't give up your day job. This includes the unlikely event you "make it" as a content creator. Even those who make it earn less than what they would do on a real job. You can read those statistics for yourself in the cited article above.
I have never been successful as a blogger, and I know that I never will. This is why I don't waste my time with search engine optimization, clickbait titles, and trying to promote my content on social media. This amounts to trying to increase your luck with the lottery.
The fundamental dream of being a successful content creator is finding an escape from working for a living. The irony is that the successful content creators work pretty hard at it. Writing blog posts is relatively easy compared to editing audio and video. Most content creators film themselves doing real work.
I think content creation is great as a side gig and supplement to your real work. It amounts to free advertising for what you do. Many of the YouTubers I follow run real world businesses, and their videos help to promote those businesses. Those folks are the models for how to approach content creation. Content should be the catalyst for real work.
Most people are never going to win the lottery. Likewise, most people are never going to win the lottery of the content creation game. Treat it like most blue collar workers treat playing the lottery. Buy your ticket, dream a bit, and keep on working. Luck takes care of itself. Let that luck find you working.
