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  • The Creator Economy: A Radical Change is Happening Right Before Our Eyes - Issue #73

The Creator Economy: A Radical Change is Happening Right Before Our Eyes - Issue #73

A little bit about this so-called Creator Economy*:

  1. The top-earning writer on the paid newsletter platform Substack earns more than $500,000 a year from reader subscriptions.

  2. The top content creator on Podia, a platform for video courses and digital memberships, makes more than $100,000 a month. And teachers across the US are bringing in thousands of dollars a month teaching live, virtual classes on Outschool and Juni Learning.

New digital platforms enable people to earn a livelihood in a way that highlights their individuality. These platforms give providers greater ability to build customer relationships, increased support in growing their businesses, and better tools for differentiating themselves from the competition.

In the process, they’re fueling a new model of internet-powered entrepreneurship.

‍It’s akin to the dynamic between Amazon—the standardized, mass-produced monolith—and the indie-focused Shopify, which allows users to form direct relationships with customers.

"That shift is already evident in marketplaces for physical products; it’s now extending into services."

These new platforms share a few commonalities:

  1. They’re accessible to everyone, not only existing businesses and professionals

  2. They view individuality as a feature, not a bug

  3. They focus on digital products and virtual services

  4. They provide holistic tools to grow and operate a business

  5. They open doors to new forms of work

These stories are indicative of a larger trend: call it the “Creator Stack”.

Whereas previously, the biggest online marketplaces flattened the individuality of workers, new platforms allow anyone to monetize unique skills. Gig work isn’t going anywhere—but there are now more ways to capitalize on creativity.

Users can now build audiences at scale and turn their passions into livelihoods, whether that’s playing video games or producing video content.

This has huge implications for entrepreneurship and what we’ll think of as a “job” in the future.

“New integrated platforms empower entrepreneurs to monetize individuality and creativity. In the coming years, the passion economy will continue to grow.

We envision a future in which the value of unique skills and knowledge can be unlocked, augmented, and surfaced to consumers.”

*Adapted from the original version which you can read here by the one and only: Li Jin.

No-Code Launches of the Day:

Are you:

  • A Creator and struggling to find the right tools to user or even compare?

  • A Builder looking to build for the Creator Economy but don’t know what’s already in the market

  • An Investor looking to understand the Creator landscape but find that many creator startups are bootstrapped and not in traditional databases?

I built Creatorbase to solve all these problems and so much more!

Features:

  • A Filterable and Searchable database of a 300+ and growing collection of Creator Tools

  • Find detailed data on each Tool / Startup like pricing, funding data or the makers

  • A curated library of some of the best thought leadership and content on the Creator Economy

  • Database is updated regularly to add new tools and remove less relevant ones

  • Many more in-depth features to add value to the Creator Economy on the roadmap!

If you run a creator tool company, feel free to submit your tool on the site by clicking the ‘Submit a Tool’ button in the nav bar!

Heep‘s co-founders share how their freelance platform connects no-code, low-code, and automation experts to customers looking for app help.

Creator News of the Day:

Today, anyone can literally build any type of software application using no-code; be it an enterprise-grade business application or a chatbot.

No-code tools are rapidly increasing in number -- literally by the day. They are bridging the gap between professional developers and consumers, enabling individuals to become citizen developers and achieve technological goals which seemed out of reach before the recent no-code boom.

No-code is not just a term, it’s a movement that is opening up several possibilities for various organizations and individuals. As coding is an integral part of the development of No-code platforms, the work of IT professionals is not being undermined. Instead, no-code and low-code platforms are assisting IT professionals by reducing their burden.

Through their ease of use, no-code platforms can be about 10 times faster than traditional coding. No-code also reduces the financial burden of organizations, as it is a much cheaper alternative to traditional coding.

Therefore, it is a great boon to small organizations that would otherwise be unable to afford traditional coding for product development or workflow automation.

Although no-code platforms are revolutionary, there is not a “one-size-fits-all” solution. Understanding the optimal no-code tools that will result in an "optimal output" application, which is vital and that requires a commitment to learning (using) them yourself...forever!

No-code is stackable, fast, and mature

No-code isn't an all-or-nothing proposition.

No-code platforms can be used with no-code tools, and even no-code concepts, in harmony with real code, real code platforms, real code tools, and even real coders.

The result is the ability to test new logic and flow, allowing developers to extend existing software or even create new software to solve existing or new problems without a large upfront time and money outlay. 

No-code is fast. Very fast!

In today's world of two-week release periods, no-code tools can speed development and knock out a lot of questions and variables associated with any new development.

This creates an obvious time-to-market advantage, whether the project is a brand-new application or just a new way to track sales aka it’s a BIG DEAL!

Databricks today announced that it has acquired German startup 8080 Labs, the company behind Bamboolib, a popular GUI for the Python-based Pandas data analysis and manipulation tool.

Bamboolib allows data scientists to quickly and easily explore their data and transform it without having to write any code. 8080 Labs offered both a free community edition and a premium, paid edition.

What happens when a product company tries to run a platform?

The Creator Economy has grown massively in the past few years, but what we see today is actually just a small slice of what the Creator Economy could be if Apple were not stymying its growth.

“Apple’s gatekeeper status is holding back the growth of the Creator Economy.”

Without Apple’s policy restrictions, there’s an entire universe of creators—including those who aren’t participating in the Creator Economy—that could flourish on iOS in ways we’ve never seen.

This deep drive will unpack each specific Apple restriction, how it holds back creators, what Apple can do to fix the situation, and what the impact on the Creator Economy might be if they did.

While working as a software engineer in Japan, Singapore and San Francisco for the past 10 years, Ryo Chikazawa, CEO and Co-Founder of Autify, came to realize that there’s one common problem in the software development industry; software testing takes excessive time.

Chikazawa and Co-Founder Sam Yamashita started Autify to expedite this process and now they have $10 million (USD) more in the bank to deliver!

In a world where we’re deluged with opportunities to interact online, it’s not easy to convince people to make the effort to engage in yet another community, much less pay for the privilege.

By following the six principles in this research, you’re much more likely to create a resource that is truly meaningful to participants and adds real value to their lives, while creating a robust business model for yourself.

*This study was conducted at Harvard University.

Li Jin has become something of a soothsayer on the creator economy. After nearly four years at Andreessen Horowitz, where she penned a much-discussed essay about the proliferation of people turning their interests into livelihoods, she founded early-stage venture firm Atelier Ventures last year ...

No-Code Tools of the Day

No-code has hit the mainstream

Business and Technology leaders are currently facing increasing challenges around enterprise application delivery. The growing requirement for software development professionals has already resulted in a resources shortage of 40M workers worldwide and forecasts a deficit of 85.2M by 2030 according to US labor statistics.

This is impacting the ability to deliver increasing levels of business automation rapidly and reliably.

Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies. The impact of this will see in-house teams building solutions with no coding background and see the implementation of low-code or no-code solutions become standard in the next few years.

No-code technology solutions will enable non-technical individuals to create technology faster and easier, and without prior knowledge of programming.

However, if you haven't heard of no-code, you're not alone.

Scale your e-commerce shop!

Help e-commerce businesses scale operations through automated and multi-channel fulfillment. This no-code system has helped clients in the US created competitive advantages through their supply chain.

Key Features:

  • Simplified and automated workflow for hybrid fulfillment systems that scales.

  • Connect directly with Shopify

  • Integrate with suppliers using our platform (gone are the days on Zapier and Google Sheets).

  • Never be locked into any supplier or fulfillment as a service, we scale with you

Wix Branded app, a DIY mobile app maker that is now officially a contender in the no-code mobile, native app space! You can start to build an app easily with zero coding and create your brand native app for Android & iOS today (for 50% off!).

Why spend the time and money to do this? Below are some of the benefits you could see.

Deliver a powerful mobile experience for your customers:

  • Shop on the go and make bookings faster

  • Keep your customers informed with notifications and updates 

  • Be a part of the conversation in Groups and Forums

  • Read latest blogs and engage with other users and interact

  • Connect with your business directly via chat in real-time

The companies that market no-code machine learning platforms include Akkio, Obviously.ai, DataRobot, Levity, Clarifai, Teachable Machines, Lobe (which Microsoft bought in 2018), Peltarion and Veritone, to name a few.

They allow non-A.I. experts to create A.I. systems using simple visual interfaces or drag-and-drop menus. Some of the software is designed specifically for computer vision, some for natural language processing, and some for both.

The first task one of these solutions -- Primer -- has focused on with their product Automate is what’s called “named entity recognition”—identifying mentions of proper nouns in documents.

That sounds simple, but it isn’t.

And it is an important building block for a decision-making chain that allows Primer’s customers to do things like track terrorist activity or keep tabs on a competitor’s pricing.

It can also be used to, for instance, build a tool that will let a company monitor its social media feeds for customers who need attention.

Whether you want to help customers select a wine for the evening based on what they’re serving or guide your employees through the process of selecting a hotel for an upcoming retreat, Form.one’s got you covered.

(And File.one too!)

How Can We Help You Create A Robust Integration Strategy?

Whether you have complexity in your data, application stack, or revenue streams that out-of-the-box or custom-coded solutions cannot solve, this iPaaS is here to help!

VL OMNI empowers Merchants to accelerate their growth through our integration expertise and technical knowledge, resources.

Tweet-storm of the Day:

Podcast of the Day:

About the Means of Creation Podcast:

Work is changing. The old structures that dominated the 20th century are gradually being replaced by platforms and cultures that have grown up on the internet that aim to help people do what they love for a living.

Li Jin and Nathan unpack this new Passion Economy in a weekly conversation with guests at the forefront of this change.

About this Episode:

Joshua Cohen is the Co-Founder of Tubefilter, the go-to source for Creator Economy news and insight.

He also co-founded the Streamy Awards — an annual event considered to be the Grammys for online video creators.

Founded in 2009, Tubefilter and the Streamy Awards have been pivotal for the legitimization of the Creator Economy. The Streamy Awards have been recognizing creators and online business trends long before it was considered a serious industry and it had nearly 7 million views in 2019. 

Currently, Tubefilter also runs two popular series profiling YouTube millionaires and TikTok millionaires!

In this interview, the following topics will be discussed:

  1. How content creation became a legitimate business

  2. Creator wellness and the commonalities shared by successful content creators

  3. How content creators and their business models have changed over the years

  4. How YouTube has remained dominant as a social media platform

  5. The changes in platforms’ creator strategies over the years 

And more!

No-Code Video of the Day:

Thank You!

As always, thank you so much for reading and I hope this brought you some value or was interesting to read!

I'm always open to feedback and changing whatever it is that you (the fans) want. That's what it is all about.

That is the Creator Economy.