Creator Business Monetization 2.0

A case for building equity, rather than extracting dollars

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

What’s the point of having an audience? Like actually, what is the point? For generations — our answer has been to make money (predominantly through advertising). But I would argue this is just a 1.0 monetization model for the creator economy.

It’s the lazy, short-term version of value creation and extraction based in the traditional media model. The truest value of a creator business is in the community they find, attract, or build and all of the latent human and social capital that sits inside.

Think of it this way: creator content acts as a top-of-funnel filter for worldview and interests. In the 1.0 old-media version, we take that information and spin it up into partnerships, businesses, and investment strategies. Then maybe, we might use this info to source employees and executable ideas. Regardless, 90% of the value is rolled back up into the creator business, rather than being re-invested in the community.

The monetization 2.0 model is about asking the question — what if we also leveraged these communities to connect dots, build great companies, and solve big problems?

Let’s use the All In Podcast as an example. The Besties have started releasing episodes more frequently — because…