Guide To the Creator Economy 2023 — Predictions For Creator Economy India
Creator Economy 2023, reflecting on the learnings from the creator economy 2022 we gathered a list of data, trends, and predictions to help you prepare better for the future
In July 2022, I wrote “Creator Economy India — The Complete Creator Economy Landscape”. And I made the below infographic to summarise the creator economy market map. The article was very well received by thousands of readers and many founders and investors reached out to me with their own views and thoughts on the industry.
Now as we move towards the end of 2022 and into 2023. It’s time to write a small piece to try and articulate my predictions for the creator economy 2023.
Though it is difficult to make specific predictions about the creator economy in 2023, as it depends on many factors such as technological developments, market trends, global economic conditions, and unfortunately on the global response to the health crisis. However, here are a few tailwinds that will shape the next year of global creator economy.
Tailwinds:
Give the factors like population growth, being one of the youngest countries in the world by the population of working age people, and India’s unique geographical positioning. Investors and founders are unanimously praising and celebrating the growth India will witness in the next 10 years.
We’ll see what ever happens over a time period of 10 year. As of now, we are most interested in the immediate year, 2023. Increasing number of new smartphones, growth of population with Internet connectivity, and faster & reliable Internet will continue being the hot tailwinds for years to come.
Internet in 2023
The internet consumption will continue to increase in the coming years due to the growing importance of the internet in many aspects of modern life and the increasing availability of high-speed internet connections.
In India, there are ~840 million total Internet users (60% of population) by the end of 2022, up from 357 million (27% of population) in 2017. As per a study conducted last years, Indians were spending 5 hours on average glued to their smartphones. This screen time is likely to increase and go upto 6 to 8 hours in the next few years.
Adoption of 5G
One factor that may affect internet consumption in the future is the adoption of 5G technology, which is expected to enable faster and more reliable internet connections. This could lead to an increase in internet usage, as people may be able to access more online content and services more quickly and smoothly.
The transition to 5G may not be as impactful as the one of 3G to 4G in India. The internet users will continue rising though.
Global Smartphone Market
In 2022, India reached 1.5 devices per capita. The internet connected gadgets are slowly making their way into the Indian households. The fundamental businesses will experience ease in reaching the end users/buyers but also fierce competition at the same time.
The global smartphone market declined by 12% YoY even as it grew by 2% QoQ to reach 301 million units in Q3 2022.
Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, hit by China lockdowns, suffered double digit YoY declines in their respective shipments. This trend might continue. Apple seems to be the real winner from the decline in smartphones coming out of China.
YoY Decline in smartphones shipped by China is a great opportunity. But only if companies can contract the manufacturing to countries with high capacity for production and quality other than China. No one has capitalised on it yet except Apple. But their bet would still take a decade to show results and payoff.
10 Predictions for Creator Economy 2023
All trends are overrated.
Here are my 10 predictions from creator economy 2023:
1. Short Form Content Entering New Areas:
With YouTube expanding its revenue share program to Shorts in early 2023, the video-sharing platform is expected to see growth in 2023.
Short form videos have been the most successful content format in the recent years thanks to Musically and TikTok. It got adopted by almost every social media platform in the world. If you are in content space, social media, etc. and you are yet to adopt this content format, the best time was yesterday.
Every content app should find ways to include infinite short video feed in their application without thinking about “it’s cringe // we are different” etc.
2. Growing LinkedIn Creators
LinkedIn has established itself as a platform for content creators. Whether you like it or not, LinkedIn is ON!
LinkedIn has release a bunch of creator tools this year. And it also got well received by many professionals who are using the platform. Just like there are creators on Instagram and TikTok, LinkedIn creators are becoming a norm. There’s huge opportunity for creator-led commerce, influencer marketing, and community building on LinkedIn.
3. Live Streaming will be bigger
It is going to be super important for creators and brands to formulate a strategy for live streaming. Live streaming is huge on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok). The trends will shortly get into USA and then the rest of the world. The implementation of live streaming and the strategy creators follow may look different in the West across platforms. But I predict live streaming is going to play a big role for creators next year.
4. Use of AI in Content Production
The creator economy has been growing rapidly in recent years, and this trend is likely to continue as more people turn to online platforms to share their creative work and earn a living.
ChatGPT by Open AI is already making an impact in the content creation space. We have seeing Generative AI tools in video, podcast (podcast), image, and text. As a creator, one must learn to use these tools to their advantage. Instead of ignoring these AI tools and sticking to 100% to the traditional method is not ideal in the path of progress.
Just like pro athelets use highest quality shoes, clothes, and accessories to enhance their game. The content creators will use AI to enhance their content. And there’ll be accusation of doping on creators who over do it.
5. Creators Owning Their Audience
Competing with the ever-changing algorithms of social media apps is painful for creators. Creators across the world are looking to build and own their audience outside of the social media platforms. This means having control over their content, ownership of their work, and community. This also reduces the risk of getting deplatformed if something happens to their social media accounts.
There are many platforms in India and around the world that have tried and failed at this. The primary reason is that the social media apps have a very strong network effect and the audience do not want to leave them. It is full of friction for audience and creators to engage with each other outside the mainstream platforms.
The biggest issue if 10 different creators decide on using 10 different apps for community building and monetisation. The 3rd party apps are required, but must be used only for a value added purpose. We’ll see more and more creators taking fights with the social media platforms, people getting de-platformed, and then moving onto other platforms to build their audience. But it is not clear who’ll win that space and that’s the reason I am not mentioning any names here.
6. Gated Content Formats and Community Platforms
We are probably in a recession or it is looming ahead. With that in mind, I predict that more creators will try to establish income earned directly from their audience, rather than relying much on brands or platforms to fund their businesses.
Throughout 2023, we will see more content behind a paywall — especially if advertising budgets of brands decline. Creators will publish free snippets on social media and then larger content behind a paywall. In 2023, I expect more creators opting to interact with their fans and audience through offering extra content in paywalled communities.
7. Growth in Creator-Led Commerce
Towards the end of 2022, we saw a couple of startups in the category created by Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) from China with 85M MAUS and LTK raised funds in India. They are trying to put a new spin to the old affiliate income industry.
My prediction for 2023 is that more and more creators will add commerce-led income into their platter of online income. Be it affiliate income or by launching their own D2C brand or merchandise.
YouTubers in the USA earn anywhere from $100k to $5M a year from their own brand labels. In India, a handful of creators have explored this with full commitment. In 2023, we’ll see a lot more creators trying their hands in D2C.
The barrier to entry has reduced greatly in working with contract manufacturers, launching e-commerce store, going omni-channel, and making sales. Not only social media celebrities, even bollywood and TV celebratities will get into this space and collectively write the playbook.
8. Diversification of revenue streams:
Creators will continue to look for ways to monetize their work, whether through sponsorships, partnerships, or direct payments from fans. Another year to look forward to for platforms that enable creators to monetize their work effectively.
As a creator, you should not put all your eggs in one basket (just like with any other business). Creators must look beyond brand deals and build multiple income streams to become a sustainable business of one.
Diversifying their product offerings would be a big thing for creators. The longevity of the creator-led business is how they use platforms to create new revenue streams beyond sponsorship and other ‘influencer’ offerings.
Creators will continue to explore different ways to generate income from their work, such as merchandise sales, live events, paywall, and subscription-based models.
9. Greater competition:
As the creator economy grows, it is likely to become more competitive, with creators needing to find ways to stand out and attract attention from a limited pool of audience.
Though it helps that the consumers are also growing, screen time is increasing, and there are more and more opportunities and ways to consume content (podcast, for example). But the space is become more and more competitive for content creators. This will increase the value of the attention and audience these creators command on the Internet.
Not only increased number of creators become competition for each other. They also give a strong competition to established products and businesses in other sectors. One of the biggest example of it is EdTech Industry. Content creators undercut into millions of dollars of potential revenue for EdTech startups (Read: India’s EdTech Landscape) by creating free content for students that is of much higher quality in comparison to what startups are selling.
Creators also undercut into services industry to putting up resources for free, by being more discoverable in selling their own services, and also by providing additional value. The creators are in a way indie makers. They are become one-person businesses and soon will be launching their own startups given the influence and distribution they have.
10. Increased demand for education and training:
As the creator economy becomes more competitive, both established and new creators will seek education and training to improve their skills and increase their chances of success.
Nas Academy is one such example in this space. There is also room for dedicated edtech and upskilling startups in creator economy to educate and help creators land part-time and full-time in industry. Content creators are self learners, creative, fast learners, good at communication, good with creative tools, and work with passion.
Overall, the creator economy is likely to continue to evolve and change in the year 2023, and it will be interesting to see how it develops.
Closing Thoughts
The rise and demise of Clubhouse in a short period of time reminds us how strong the network effects are on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn. These platforms have survived many years in the market with meaningful user base and impact.
Content, commerce, and brand deals are three pillars of monetisation for content creators. We’ve seen dozens of content moneitsation platforms coming on the Internet from 2020 to 2022. We’ve also seen many new companies expanding and building on the agency model to connect brands and creators. And now we are starting to companies that enable creators to monetize via commerce be it affiliate, merchandise, or owned brand labels.
We are entering year 2023 with great expectations and also fear for a number of reasons. Whatever it has in its pocket, the entrepreneurs, creators, and people around the world will take it head-on.
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