Are Creators Recession-Proof?

And what will happen to them when we hit one?

Kate Ward
2 min readMar 24, 2021
Photo by Wahid Khene on Unsplash

The creator economy — in it’s current boom — hasn’t been around for a recession. Which begs the question…

What will happen to creators when a recession hits?

Here are a couple of potential outcomes:

More creators will start. Being a creator is permissionless. You can start while working a day job or collecting unemployment. We saw this last March with Substack newsletters and TikTok accounts. Being a creator is increasingly becoming a brilliant hedge and source of leverage.

The cream will rise to the top. Top-tier creators will crush during a recession, buying up all kinds of distressed assets with excess cash, while smaller ones will struggle to get deals.

Top-tier creators will bank roll smaller creators in exchange for IP. Imagine MrBeast just goes and buys up 50% of 10 channels he believes will be really successful over the next 10 years.

Creators will be forced to look for other ways to monetize. We’ll see a merging between gig and creator economies. This will be everything from freelance editing to consulting.

Views will increase, but CPMs and consumer spending will go down. This means, a creator’s…

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Kate Ward

Thinking deeply about how to make myself and the world a little better. & writing about creators mostly | email: kate@onedayent.com