Recession creators.


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Be a better creator.

Hi, hey, hello 2023! ✨

Chiara Amisola turned YouTube comments into art. Chiara took a close look at the stories and revelations that people leave below online videos...

Chiara Amisola, an artist from the Philippines, believes that the YouTube comments section is “one of the last sacred spaces of the internet.”

Amisola is fascinated by the commenters who, as she puts it, “gush out stories (real or fake?) about falling in love, being saved, or just tripping madly to some low qual upload of a post-rock song.”

Clicking on a song uploaded more than a decade ago, you end up falling down a rabbit hole, or hundreds of rabbit holes, if you take a look at the archive of feeling that unfurls beneath the video, like some mixture of bathroom-wall graffiti and Talmudic commentary. Read further on The New Yorker.

In this edition, you'll find:

💸 Recession 2023: How creators can prepare

🎙 YouTube is coming for ASMR creators

📚 BookTok creators are changing publishing in 2023

Recession 2023: Here's how content creators can prepare

For social media creators, the economic outlook is a cause for concern. Companies often cut marketing and advertising budgets first to save money. Most influencers rely primarily on brand partnerships for income.

Here are some ways content creators can survive an economic downturn:

Diversify your income streams. It's important to build up a portfolio of income streams in case one dries up. Josh Harmon (4.5 million TikTok followers) estimates that brand partnerships account for about 85% of his income, but he's trying to redress this imbalance. He's writing a book, working on original music and is considering going on tour, to diversify his income streams.
Communicate with your audience. Find a way to communicate with your fans in a way that isn't dependent on the whims of social media platforms. Maybe consider launching a newsletter.
Invest in your content. If the content stays good, the fans stay engaged. When money is tight, people are often hesitant to make big investments. But if you're serious about being a creator, it's always worth investing in yourself.
Manage your finances. If you're self-employed, it's crucial to get to grips with handling your own money. When preparing financial forecasts for 2023, outline predicted income and expenditure and try to line up longer-term partnerships that I can rely on.

Sensual ASMR has boomed on YouTube — but creators are facing a crackdown

A popular niche risks running afoul of the site’s rules against ‘sexually gratifying’ content.

According to ASMR University, there are roughly 500,000 ASMR (an abbreviation of autonomous sensory meridian response) channels and 25 million ASMR videos on YouTube alone, and the hashtag #asmr has attracted more than 460 billion views on TikTok.

Clearly, there is an audience for the ASMR content — but YouTube doesn’t see the appeal in her line of work.

Continue reading (The Verge)

How will BookTok change publishing in 2023?

Creators on TikTok are fighting for a more diverse book world — and running into some deep-seated problems in the industry.

BookTok, a TikTok community of readers, reviewers, and authors, has redefined publishing’s relationship with book content creators.

Since its rise in popularity in 2020, the group has been directly responsible for millions of book sales, hundreds of trending conversations around new releases, and an organic word-of-mouth marketing structure that has publishing entities desperate to get a piece of the action.

In 2022, BookTok darling Colleen Hoover even outsold the Bible by at least 3 million units. But a new wave of growth from BookTok has seen less prioritized issues like compensation, diversity, and collaboration with publishers become major sticking points. Yet BookTok creators say that while the community continues to have a bigger footprint in the book world, a failure to diversify could mean its eventual downfall.

In November, FutureBook, a publishing trade conference, named BookTook as its Person of the Year, noting that creators’ passion for books has directly impacted millions in sales.

Read further on Rolling Stone