The growth of social media savvy creators is changing the media landscape, fuelling the growth of LettsArt.

The “creator economy” - the platforms and tools that allow creative individuals to share content, build an audience and make money - is rocking. It is now worth over $100 billion, and is vital to the emergence and growth of LettsGroup venture, LettsArt. The creators are fuelled by social media followers and these followers are fuelling creators - indirectly and even directly.

Creators’ cultural impact is surpassing that of traditional media - with an array of creative types including YouTube sensations, Twitch hosts, Tiktok dancers and a range of social media savvy presenters, writers, musicians and artists. 

And they have an audience to die for.

There are over 6 billion people who use a smartphone device, according to Statista, and almost 4 billion of them are active on a social media platform. Almost anyone can create content and post it for the world to see.

Less than a million people watch CNN during prime time.

According to Signalfire there are roughly 2 million professional individual creators making content full-time and we are approaching 50 million amateur individual creators monetising content creation part-time.

Of the 2 million professional creators a million are on YouTube with more than 10,000 subscribers, 500,000 on Instagram with over 100,000 followers and around 300,000 are on Twitch as either a ‘partner’ or ‘affiliate’. There are also a couple of hundred thousand writers, musicians, artists and podcasters on other niche platforms.

Creators have become the fastest growing type of small business. A recent survey found that more American kids want to be a YouTube star than an astronaut when they grow up. The big money is there for creators and the possibilities just keep expanding. These content creators are becoming experts at reaching the most niche groups, learning new tricks to become relatable and, when they gain a following, dictating current and future trends.

Apparently the latest trends in the creator economy include:

Creators moving their top fans off social networks and on to their own websites, apps, and monetisation systems

Creators becoming founders, building their teams and assembling tools to help them start businesses while focusing on their art

Creators gaining power in the media ecosystem as fans look to connect with individual personalities rather than faceless publishers.

Creators are increasingly working to diversify their revenues and getting funded directly by their fans. They are transitioning from being paid by platforms like YouTube, with a share of ad revenues for bringing their audience, to being paid by brand sponsors on Instagram and Snapchat, to being paid directly by fans via patronage, tipping or ecommerce - in exchange for entertainment and community beyond the platforms.

The creator economy has been built in three phases. First saw the development and adoption of the foundational social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Twitter - Tiktok and Twitch becoming more recent sensations.

The second phase saw the development of a new industry around monetisation models, tools and suppliers.

The third phase of the creator economy has seen creators develop businesses with all the necessary management, scaling and team building required. As they have developed mini-media companies they have sought business apps, suppliers and wider diversification of revenues - which now include courses, webinars, speaking, gigs, newsletters, fan clubs and merchandising. 

There are a growing number of platforms and tools for creators. Most of them are quite generic but that will change. They tend to focus on content creation services such as photo and music editing tools, fan marketing and audience CRM, influencer marketing tools and funding systems.

The creator economy market map of suppliers and software providers is starting to fill out. Some of the tool providers for this burgeoning new industry are growing quite large - including Splice, Kajabi, Cameo and Patreon.

The money obviously lies with the 2 million odd professional creators. And it seems that the next wave of platforms will be those focused on specific creator types, with a vertical stack of software that feels more like an integrated business app tailored for the creator economy and individual or small business users.

Like SAP supported manufacturing businesses with a sector focused suite, tomorrow’s app vendors will deliver a stack of software that will give a specific type of creator everything they need to build their content across dedicated platforms, then market, measure and monetise it.

Tomorrow’s bands might have a Patreon type software system that will not just help them to develop their fan base and monetise it directly, but will suck their content out of a dedicated media platform while auto-marketing to new fans directly. It could also manage these fans using artificial intelligence while supplying them with bespoke merchandise, all while pumping out financial statements in real time.

LettsArt is one of these emerging platforms focused exclusively on helping visual artists to develop and monetize their art directly with their supporters and fans - by email and on social media. Their art payment system, online gallery features and ability to support physical, digital and NFTart could make the difference.

Tomorrow’s creators will look for solutions tailored to their various business needs, whether in marketing, copyright expertise, investing, operations, community-building, or product launches. The companies that recognise this trend and build tools for a particular swath of creators could find significant growth opportunities.

This will help creators to stay focused on what they are good at - mostly curating compelling content and whipping up their audience.

This article was first published at the Letts Journal, a sister venture to LettsArt of the LettsGroup incubator. LettsArt is available to UK artists and galleries in limited beta. Artists can sign up at www.lettsart.com. Keep up to date with its progress through @LettsArt on twitter. Find out more about the branded incubator group, LettsGroup, and its ventures through @LettsGroup on twitter.