Creator Businesses Are a Risky
One of the biggest blind spots in creator economy discussions is about just how risky creator businesses really are. This is for quite a few reasons, but predominantly:
- Creator mental health / burnout: it’s hard to keep up with the joneses.
- Hype cycles: time on top has an expiration date.
- Poor decision making: one bad decision and a creator’s career is over.
- Platforms and algorithms: at the will of platform changes, decisions, and distribution.
- Revenue inconsistent and not diversified: a lot of creators have over 50% of their revenue coming from one source.
The MCN model was to de-risk through volume in exchange for 10% of ad rev. This hasn’t played out because it heavily favored MCNs.