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Platforms like Anchor, Revue, and Piano Media all launched recently with the explicit goal of helping independent publishers generate revenue more easily. Co-founder Hamish McKenzie told me that Substack already has 25,000 paying subscribers and is seeing substantial growth every month. Substack, an email tool that allows writers to easily charge users for access to premium newsletters, launched last year, and soon after was generating six-figure incomes for some of its most high-profile journalists. We’re also seeing the debut every year of new payment platforms that help independent creators generate income. The crowdfunding platform Kickstarter claims it’s now surpassed $4 billion in pledges to over 154,000 projects from creators. It allows people like Evan Puschak, a YouTuber who creates fantastic video essays on pop culture and art, to make upwards of $170,000 a year directly from his fans. It’ll soon surpass $1 billion in total payouts. Recently, Patreon, the membership platform that allows fans to subscribe to their favorite creators, announced that it has over 3 million patrons who will pay out half a billion dollars to over 100,000 creators this year.
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Not included in the report? Well, crowdfunding sites for starters. “As a result,” the report states, “the numbers of American creators and their earnings are unavoidably understated.” Its most recent report found that “more than 16.9 million independent, American creators earned a baseline of $6.8 billion from posting their music, videos, art, crafts and other works online in 2017.” What’s more, Re:Create’s research only accounts for nine platforms: Amazon Publishing, eBay, Etsy, Instagram, Shapeways, Tumblr, Twitch, WordPress and YouTube. Let’s start with data from the Re:Create coalition, an organization that produces an annual report tracking the money made by online creators in the U.S. In fact, I would argue that there’s never been a time in history where it was easier for a writer, journalist, photographer, videographer, or musician to make a living off their work. We also pay a lot of attention to the health of a relatively few large media companies - the kind that employ north of a thousand people - allowing their successes or failures to represent the state of the entire industry.īut if you take a much broader view of what constitutes digital publishing, it’s hard not to conclude that it’s an incredibly vibrant time for online content, particularly for independent creators.
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It typically doesn’t make news when a media org hires a new staff member, whereas layoffs, because they involve dozens of people losing their jobs all at the same time, tend to attract more notice. And some companies - Little Things, for instance - have shut down completely.īut when it comes to measuring the health of the digital publishing industry, I think it can be easy to fall victim to a form of confirmation bias. Venture-back publications like Mic and Mashable have been subjected to fire sales at prices much lower than their initial valuations. Vice, BuzzFeed, Verizon Media Group, and Gannet have all announced substantial layoffs in recent weeks. After all, the last year has treated us to a near constant blast of bad news for online media organizations. I can’t really blame you if you work in digital publishing and don’t feel exactly optimistic about the state of the industry.