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The five pillars of the creator economy
Summary
‘Pixels to Profits: A Systematic Deep Dive into the Creator Economy’ shares a few secrets with content makers to take their game to the next levelThere are five pillars of the creator economy. So far in this book, we have been talking from the point of view of the creator, but the remaining four pillars govern how the creator interacts with the other parts of the ecosystem—of how the creator is making money, where the brands are coming in and how the ecosystem functions for the tech that is enabling all of this, with the audience never leaving the centre stage.
Pillar 1: Creators
Find a voice on a platform that you are the best at. Double down on it. Rinse and repeat.
James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, is a classic example. Atomic Habits was released early in the year 2018, and for six years after that, all that James did was consistently write his newsletter. As of January 2024, he has over 3 million subscribers to his newsletter. At this point, in February 2024, James went on to a different vertical and launched his app called ‘Atoms’, taking all the principles from his book, and being a daily guide to help people form better habits. No reels, threads or long form videos. Just the same thing, over and over again.
To paraphrase none other than James Clear, ‘Do less, but better’.
Pillar 2: Channels
The platforms that disrupted the marketplace didn’t start with the intention of doing so. They simply identified a small market gap, listened to customer feedback, innovated, and iterated. And, day by day, they sparked a movement and caused massive disruption. Thus, as an innovator, it is important to bring platforms that address gaps for the audience and help them connect better. An excellent example of this is Kajabi, a SaaS (Software as a Service) company that develops a platform for creators to create, market and sell digital content. It alleviated the pain of so many creators and likely prompted all the integrating platforms to rethink their strategies.
Pillar 3: Consumer/Community
The Consumer is the ultimate driver of the Creator Economy. Consumers seek content that informs, entertains, or inspires. Unlike traditional media audiences, today’s consumer communities are more interactive, often engaging directly with creators through comments, shares and direct messages.
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Pillar 4: Collaborators
This is a golden opportunity for Collaborators or brands to capitalize the most where their ideal audience lies. If you are a skincare or a beauty brand, no other platform is better than Instagram. It’s a platform where the audience is more likely to buy such products.
If you have a learning product, LinkedIn or X (formerly Twitter) might be great places to spark that chatter. Before reaching out to an influencer and choosing their platform, a brand must first be clear on the desired output from the influencer marketing campaign. Only then should they select the platform, followed by the creator. This follows Simon Sinek’s golden circle of ‘Start with Why’. For brands, here is what the golden circle looks like:
Why: The result they are looking for from the campaign—brand recall (think of this as the 95% of the Attention/ Interest/Desire) or drive action (the sales or conversions).
How: Platform of choice or media mix by the brand—Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
What: Creator or influencer on that platform to be decided by the brand.
A few things brands need to monitor are:
1. The right influencer matters the most. For example, if you want to promote a new launch by Louis Vuitton, it is best to work with an influencer who creates luxury content (even if they have under 1,00,000 followers) instead of working with someone who creates videos of flea markets (even if they have over one million followers). The right audience from a smaller sample is always more useful than window shoppers from an irrelevant cohort for the brand.
2. The influencer should have grown their audience organically, and certainly not purchased followers.
3. Comments on former posts of the influencer should be by genuine accounts and not by bots and fake accounts.
4. A data-driven brand will also analyse statistics from the influencer’s previous brand collaborations compared to their organic posts and observe the differences. This is where they are predicting the growth of their brand campaign.
Pillar 5: Commerce
Commerce involves converting content and influence into revenue streams. This can be achieved not only through ad revenues, but also through sponsored content, merchandise sales, online courses and more. The beauty of the Creator Economy lies in its scalability; creators can start small and gradually expand their income streams.
The Amazon Affiliate Programme, which started as early as 1996, allows people to share and market any product on Amazon, and they get to make a commission between 1–10 per cent of the price of the product. On the other hand, Walmart, which is considered one of the largest retail chains globally, launched a creator programme in 2022, that allows users to create affiliate links of their products, build an online storefront, and make money through commissions, while at the same time allowing them to track the performance of their sales.
These are a few examples, but the scope of growth of platforms—both online and offline (by venturing online like Walmart) are limitless. The onus on the platforms is to build something that the audience would like to jam on, which is what we discovered as an innovator.
Excerpted with permission from ‘Pixels to Profits: A Systematic Deep Dive into the Creator Economy’ by Ankur Mehra, published by Penguin Random House India, March 2025. The excerpt has been edited for length and context
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