New Report Calls Attention to Creators and Overlooked Creator Economy Trends.
May 16, 2022
Creators with a combined 11,000 years of experience and a collective $66M in 2021 earnings shared what they are up to, how they work, and their current struggles.
BOISE, ID – Today, ConvertKit, the leading creator marketing platform, published its first-ever 2022 State of the Creator Economy Report with data collected from 2,704 creators from the U.S. and abroad.
The report provides key creator economy insights and trends, as well as tells the stories of how real creators work and make money and identifies personal struggles.
Key insights the survey and report uncovered include:
- Female creators outnumber male creators by nearly 2:1 and were the most likely to have earned revenue in 2021, but males were more than 2x as likely to earn over $150k.
- 15.4% of all creators surveyed earn middle-class incomes from their work ($50k- $150k per year) versus 21.98% of full-time creators.
- Creators earning at least $25k a year were happier than creators earning less while creators earning more than $150k reported the highest happiness level.
- 61.3% of creators experienced burnout in 2021. And for 38.6% of those creators, that burnout lasted for many months up to a full year.
- 23.8% of creators who responded to our survey said they became creators during the pandemic.
Learn more about the findings of the 2022 State of the Creator Economy Report here.
Nathan Barry, Founder and CEO of ConvertKit shares:
“As the creator marketing platform, we believe the future belongs to creators. That’s why we were so excited to put together this survey. It gives us the opportunity to tell the story of who creators are, how they get the job done, what they’re struggling with and more. Creators are shaping culture and completely changing the way we look at work. Focus is often placed on companies when talking about the creator economy. With this report, ConvertKit is shining the spotlight on the beating heart – the creators themselves.”
Creators use ConvertKit to learn about, connect with, and sell to their audience with simple yet powerful tools:
- Commerce – Launch digital products and tip jars to your fans.
- Automations – Build visual automations (custom paths) for your audience.
- Landing Pages – Set your ideas live in minutes with a custom landing page.
- Newsletters – Send personalized and customized newsletters to your audience.
- Email Designer – Send simply designed emails with high deliverability rates.
About ConvertKit
ConvertKit is the first creator marketing platform built for creators, by creators. As the hub for creator businesses, ConvertKit centers its platform around your most important asset—your audience. We build simple yet powerful tools so you can learn about, connect with, and sell to your audience with ease.
For more information visit: https://convertkit.com
Contact:
Charli Prangley – Creative Director
charli@convertkit.com
(208) 402-5568
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State of the Creator Economy Report Methodology
ConvertKit State of the Creator Economy Research (2022): This report aims to help define who a creator is in 2022, what they work on, and how they create a living online. The main categories we used to segment creators throughout the report are 3 creator status: Full-time (creating is their full-time job), Part-time (they create on the side of a full-time job), and Hobbyist (they create without expectation of income).
ConvertKit Creator Survey (2022): Surveyed 2,704 creators. The survey had a 39.8% completion rate and took respondents on average 31:35 minutes to complete.
All data was self-reported by creators in our survey of 87 questions. These questions were a mix of multiple choice, Yes/No, scales of 1-10, and write-in answers. In multiple choice questions, the choices were listed in alphabetical order along with an “I don’t know”, “Other”, or “I’d prefer not to say” answer option.
Response rates to individual questions varied due to open-ended questions and qualitative data. Percentages for all quantitative data were rounded to the nearest tenth or the nearest whole number as fit.
Because the survey was sent out to ConvertKit users, the data does not represent a completely randomized section of creators at large. The majority of respondents were ConvertKit creators living in North America.
ConvertKit Creator Survey Analysis (2022): The data from the Creatory Survey was compiled and analyzed by multiple ConvertKit team members and synthesized by topical themes to understand how creators at all stages of the creator journey work and earn a living online.