On the first June weekend The Mandalorian and Grogu opened to theaters worldwide earning $167 Million dollars. Which I’d be thrilled to make in 72 hours. But for Disney it was a punch in the face. Because it was the lowest opening weekend of any Star Wars movie and even worst, two other movies topped it. Backrooms and Obsession both being original movies made by Creators.
Now everyone is crying wolf, obsessing over Creators being the new Hollywood.
Which brings up a bigger question.
How does media make money?
For movies at the box office it’s quite obvious. Ticket sales that get divided to all the companies involved in an overly complicated structure. Unless your name is George Lucas, who gave up any ticket sales revenue in favor of having the rights to toy licensing. But that’s a story for another day.
Before we get creator specific it's worth looking back in time at traditional media.
Just so we don't have to reinvent the wheel again.
And if we look at traditional media like newspapers, magazines and TV the audience isn’t actually the main income, or at least not the way we think. Even if some people paid for newspapers that was never the main income stream.
Every traditional broadcast or media company was built on 🥁🥁🥁
Advertising*
Because even if you had to pay for a particular publication the main revenue source has always been selling space in to advertise someones offer. From tiny classified ads to two page big brand spreads.
What does that mean for you as creator?
→ Don’t reinvent the business model. Just pick the right flavor.
The standard creator business model from 2016-2020 was: Build an audience then big advertising money will follow. This path isn’t gone but it’s not as common anymore.
Because as a someone with your own distribution channel you have a choice. What do you advertise?
- Name sponsors
- Your own products
Now creators increasingly sell their own products and people will tell you to build up 33 different income streams to diversify. But each of those income streams has a different requirement for it to make sense.
For example if you want to promote a product that’s less than €100 you need to have 100K long form views per month and/or 10K newsletter subscribers. For it to turn into meaningful revenue.
(something I’m miles away from 😅)
Anything below that lends itself much more towards high ticket products on a 1:1 basis.
At least that’s where Ali Abdaal’s former head of YouTube, Tintin Smith draws the line. My conversation with him will be out on Friday where we get into more details behind his 100K YouTuber Roadmap
💛 Valentin
PS: If you’re trying to figure out which business model actually makes sense for your audience, we can work together to turn your content into a sustainable media business.
*European Public Broadcasters exuded, but not entirely
