The Creator Economy: How Blockchain and No-Code change everything

The top-earning writer on the paid newsletter platform Substack earns more than $500,000 a year from reader subscriptions.

The top content creator on Podia, a platform for video courses and digital memberships, makes more than $100,000 a month.

And teachers across the US are bringing in thousands of dollars a month teaching live, virtual classes on Outschool and Juni Learning.

Consumer startups have gone through many phases: Web 2.0, Facebook apps, Mobile (remember SoLoMo?), and in recent years, some of the best opportunities have been happening in the real world. In recent years, the Gig Economy has taken over. Startups like Uber, Airbnb, Instacart, and others have been able to find product/market fit and scale their businesses.

In technology, we consistently speak on the democratizing force of the internet and the subsequent effects on society.

But lately I’ve been thinking not just on this shift of democratization and more tools in more hands. Instead, thinking of this force as “amateur-ization”.

The realization that software is able to abstract a typically professional environment, to a more open for participation amateur one.

You may look at big brands with envy. After all, they have bigger budgets, staff, and almost every tool they could need.

But brands definitely look at you – the content entrepreneur – with green envy. After all, you have and can do a lot that they can’t do or at least can’t do as easily.

Frankly, because content entrepreneurs have no politics or red tape, you can make decisions faster, almost immediately, which is a huge advantage over what larger enterprises can do!

Patreon’s novel idea of fans just directly paying the artists they love is having its hockey stick moment.

Patreon tells TechCrunch that in a year, it’s doubled the number of monthly active paying patrons to 1 million, and the number of active creators to 50,000.

In the rush to build frictionless payment features, the actual sales pitch—the “here’s why you should pay"—is too often an afterthought.

A content creator is someone who creates entertaining or educational material to be expressed through any medium or channel.

Content creation especially pertains to digital content, since that’s where the majority of content is consumed (and where the money is, if you’re looking to earn revenue through your efforts).

Where top creators teach cohort-based courses!

Learn what you need to do to become a content creator on platforms such as Youtube, Medium, Instagram and more.

This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. I recently rewrote it to convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details. This revisited essay appears in Tim

An examination of the Twitch Hack data

A lattice of new platforms and tools purports to empower online creators. In reality, it’s turning digital content into gig work.

The largest collection of passion economy resources!

The passion economy empowers anyone to monetize their unique skills 💸

Facebook’s reorganization into Meta is the ultimate bet on the power of founder control.

Marketing Podcast with Brian Clark In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Brian Clark. Brian is a writer, traveler, and serial

“Metaverse’ is the buzzword of the moment, yet it doesn’t really exist as more than a label on a whiteboard, and many of the ideas it tries to combine might not happen, or not like that. This might be…

Neal Stephenson famously coined the term “Metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, where it referred to a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people. Lots of other science fiction media includes metaverse-like systems (some of them predating Snow Crash).

But Stephenson’s book remains one of the most common reference points for metaverse enthusiasts, along with Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One.

Creators must demystify NFTs if they want to control their intellectual property rights and build a business. - The Tilt

If you only have a couple of minutes to spare, here’s what investors, operators, and founders can learn about DAOs.DAOs are a new way of organizing people. Traditionally, a company structure has been…

No-code’s rise from the evolution of programming, to components of a no-code platform, to popular use cases and key benefits of no-code application platforms

Open Makers is a community of makers who enjoy #BuildingInPublic!

Here’s how the no-code movement will disrupt software and empower entrepreneurs, project managers, mid-large companies, freelancers, and even software developers to code less and build more.