Here’s a Framework for Creating Long-Term Wealth as a Content Creator
TLDR summary: I wrote this post for fellow content creators. Read this if you want to understand how some of the top-earning content creators and platforms build wealth. If you aren’t a content creator, and you don’t care about internet platforms, you can safely skip this post without fear of missing out.
If you’re just here for the crafts and / or planner layouts, I invite you to check out the latest posts at my crafts website.
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Content creation is like building an empire.
Historically, many content creators who got rich did so in the long term. They achieved success by building a library of content that had long-term staying power, and they were able to continue earning from it long after its initial publication.
If you stick with me until the end of this post, you’ll learn how to build your content empire with the goal of maintaining it – and earning from it – for the long term.
A few of the other things you’ll learn in this post:
- Why you don’t need to be brilliant, talented or exceptional to launch a successful career as a content creator.
- The real secret to earning your living as a content creator.
(pro tip: It isn’t getting Botox or dermal fillers in hopes of looking like the Kardashians, although I suppose it might not hurt to try that, too.)
- The top-priority things you need to keep in mind as you create your content if you’re hoping to get rich from your creative work.
- …you’re a content creator who is willing to work at building your own skills with a goal of creating long-term wealth, financial security and a legacy that outlives you.
- … you’re hoping to harness AI or automation technologies to build your wealth for you.
Those strategies might work, but it isn’t what we’re discussing here, and you’ll be disappointed if you bring that mindset to this discussion.
Ted Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss — Photo Courtesy of Al Ravenna, New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer, via Wikimedia Commons
Forbes maintains a long-running, annually updated list of the top-earning dead celebrities.
This list is fascinating to me because it doesn’t 100% consist of people that I think of as being “celebrities.”
Who are “celebrities,” in your opinion?
It appears I had this wrong – but up until now, I was thinking of celebrities as being rock stars, singers and bands; prominent actors and actresses; and A-list models, mostly.
Well, I stand corrected.
Forbes’ top-earning dead celebrities list does include many performing artists, which is what I expected; however, to my surprise and delight, some of the celebrities on the list were content creators.
A couple of examples: Dr. Seuss (real name: Theodor Seuss Geisel) and Charles Schulz were both writers who illustrated their own material. Both of these artists frequently appear on the top-earning dead celebrities list.
Charles Schulz’s Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — Photo Courtesy of Neelix, via Wikimedia Commons
And, this is interesting: Both of these legends also have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Did you know that? I didn’t, until just now.
Historically, “cartoonist” was the terminology we might have used to describe these two exceptional writers’ role in this world.
But nowadays, comics and cartoons fit under the broader umbrella of “content.” And, if you were to ask analysts at today’s think tanks where to allocate and analyze Dr. Seuss’ and Charles Schulz’ earnings, they’d categorize them as being part of the “content creator economy.”
If you’re a content creator who wants to build long-term wealth and a legacy that outlives you, Dr. Seuss and Charles Schulz are both examples worth studying.
This is my opinion: I think any content creator who’s prepared to habitually, systematically, routinely create content has the potential to become the next Dr. Seuss or Charles Schulz.
For example, YOU have the potential to do this (assuming you’re willing to make content creation a habitual part of your routine. You are, aren’t you?)
Here’s why I’ve arrived at this conclusion:
The Dartmouth Alumni magazine tells us that Dr. Seuss habitually devoted the hours it requires to be a successful content creator.
“His practice was always to stay at his desk eight hours a day, whether art was being created or not.”
So, important takeaway #1 is this: Sit at your desk (or its equivalent) and create content, all day, every day, for 8+ hours a day.
Or if you struggle with the content creation process, at least sit at your desk and think about creating content for 8+ hours a day.
Dr. Seuss graduated from Dartmouth in 1925. His first book was published in 1937. He had a book published in 1990, the year before he died. He was 87 years old when he died in 1991.
While he was alive, he authored 60 books, which, on one hand, is impressive.
On the other hand, if you look at that in light of the time frame of his entire career, he only published a bit more than one book each year.
This should be totally doable, don’t you think? Even if you’re a slow, thoughtful and methodical content creator, you could manage to create a book each year if you were systematic about sitting down to write and illustrate on a daily basis.
(Of course, you should apply this logic to your own situation as a content creator. If you’re a videographer, maybe you’ll sit at a desk writing video scripts, but otherwise, you’ll probably be spending that 8+ hours per day behind a tripod filming.)
It doesn’t matter what kind of content you’re creating. Whether you’re filming, writing, photographing or drawing, getting to work is the most important first step to building wealth as a content creator.
And, you don’t need to be a creative genius to make this first step work for you.
The folks over at Dr. Seuss’ alma mater, Dartmouth, tell us that he
“ won a Pulitzer Prize, three Academy Awards, two Emmys, and two Peabody Awards for his literary creations.”
So, nowadays, in hindsight, people feel comfortable calling him “brilliant” and “talented.” But he wasn’t always perceived that way.
Writing about Dr. Seuss, NPR says,
“Geisel wasn’t a brilliant illustrator from the start and his writing wasn’t great from the get-go. In fact, he worked at both for years, turning in work that ranged from slightly funny and unique to mediocre and immediately forgettable. That he managed to become an international sensation is a testament to his perseverance…”
And furthermore, some of his peers at Dartmouth voted him “Least likely to succeed.”
The New Yorker tells us,
“The genius of Dr. Seuss was the outcome of a personal and artistic evolution … Geisel wouldn’t fully embrace his profession or achieve his most significant triumphs until midlife and beyond.”
Furthermore, they tell us that
“Geisel’s few film projects that saw fruition ranged from disappointing to disastrous.”
So, important takeaway #2 is this: You don’t need to be brilliant to launch a successful career as a content creator. You’re fine even if much of your work is “mediocre” and “immediately forgettable,” and your friends have labeled you “least likely to succeed” in your group.
Important takeaway #3 is this: You can succeed as a content creator even if you initially create some content that is “disappointing” or “disastrous.”
Important takeaway #4: If you aren’t a brilliant content creator to start with, perseverance is the key to success.
Perseverance means that you sit down, day after day after day, and create new content.
You will hit hurdles, but despite the hurdles, you do not give up. You persevere.
Whatever problems or conflicts arise as a result of the content creation process, you deal with them.
And by doing this, even if you start out as a mediocre content creator, you will improve.
And the more effort you put into it, the more you’ll improve.
And if you continue in the long term with this process of exerting the effort it takes to succeed, there’s a high likelihood that you will improve your skills to the point of brilliance – or at least to the point of complete competence.
This will take time. I’m not aware of any short cuts for it.
Pro tip: If you systematically use artificial intelligence technologies to create your content for you, you are quite unlikely to develop your own skills to the point of brilliance.
So in that case, you’re settling for perpetual mediocrity.
You can probably think of examples of mediocre writers who’ve earned an okay living in the past.
But in the future, I think they’re unlikely to be able to continue with that.
My opinion: From here on out, I believe human writers will have to master their craft until they become absolutely brilliant at it, or make a career change.
Because who’s going to pay humans to create mediocre content when AI will do that at no cost?
Important takeaway #5: Don’t expect immediate success.
Successful content creation is like slowly, deliberately building an empire.
As a content creator, your day-to-day job is to create individual pieces of content:
- newsletters
- posts
- articles
- photographs
- charts
- illustrations / paintings / drawings
- videos
- books / e-books
- white papers
- reports
- essays
- memoirs
- or whatever types of content it is that you’re creating.
But if you want to be a successful content creator in the long term, it’s important to look beyond each of these individual bits of content. You must consider the long-term value of your entire body of work as a content creator.
Historically, many of the content creators who’ve achieved wealth, fame and success got rich over the long term:
- They formed a habit of creating content;
- And, they systematically worked at creating a body of creative work that has long-term value.
So, if you want to get rich as a content creator, it’ll serve you well to get in the habit of thinking of your content as an empire.
Are you actually building a powerful empire with your content creation process?
Will the content you’re building now have long-term, lasting significance to humanity?
Give some thought to this, because this is another one of the most important keys to building long-term wealth as a content creator.
If you’re creating content that is valuable today but won’t have lasting relevance for tomorrow, next week and next year, you will perpetually be like a gerbil on a wheel, always chasing the next paycheck.
(Ask me how I know this. I’ve done far too much of this type of work, myself.)
If you’re creating content that has long-term value and significance, you’re much more likely to build long-term wealth as you build your content empire.
Also important: How are you maintaining what you’re building?
You can compare each bit of content you create to the structures within an empire: cities, towns, skyscrapers, cottages, barns, roads…
Empires rise and thrive.
Inevitably, they also fall and decay.
If you’re a proactive content creator, you can build an empire that will rise and thrive during your lifetime, and then continue to provide for your heirs long after your passing.
If you’re haphazard about your content creation process, it won’t ever achieve empire status.
So far, we’ve looked at two content creators whose work has had a lasting impact on humanity.
Now let’s take a look at a platform that failed to achieve such an impact.
More importantly, we’ll talk about why it failed.
The platform was originally called “Associated Content.” Anyone could register an account and submit articles for publication at the platform; writing for them didn’t require a degree, any special skills or any inside connections. Content creators at the platform could submit text, images, audio and / or video.
On May 18, 2010, Yahoo announced its acquisition of Associated Content. They rebranded the portal as “The Yahoo Contributor Network.”
In December of 2011, Searchengineland reported that Yahoo was rebranding yet again, along with deleting 75,000+ articles that were “inactive and outdated.” The surviving content would be moved to Yahoo’s domain under the brand name of “Yahoo Voices.”
On July 30th, 2014, Yahoo discontinued Yahoo Voices.
I had been a contributor at all 3 of these iterations of the platform: Associated Content, the Yahoo Contributor Network and Yahoo Voices. In fact, I’d been a “Featured contributor” at Yahoo Voices, and editors at Yahoo had selected multiple articles of mine to be promoted on the home page of Yahoo.
One of my greatest frustrations with that gig was the inability to update the content I’d published on their network. Once the content had been reviewed by their editors and published, they didn’t allow authors to edit it.
I am 100% convinced that this was the reason their platform ultimately failed. Nobody was in charge of updating it, so they ended up with a library of outdated and useless content that nobody wanted to read.
– Kurt Vonnegut
When it comes to content creation, the people who catch onto Vonnegut’s logic and grit their teeth, dig in and do the maintenance are often the long-term winners.
That said, not all content needs updating.
Media people have a label we use for this type of content: We call it “evergreen.” Like an evergreen tree in wintertime, evergreen content has lasting relevance.
If you want to see enduring examples of evergreen content, it’s as easy as picking up some of Dr. Seuss’ or Charles Schulz’s most popular works. Technology has greatly changed since their old books and comic strips were originally published, but the characters and story lines you’ll find in the books are just as relevant now as they were when the books were brand new.
In the past, you could reliably build a content empire by creating “evergreen” content. But AI has introduced new challenges with that model.
I could have this wrong — but looking ahead to the future, I think that sizable numbers of human content creators will have to discover their most lucrative opportunities at the cutting edge of technology.
And the cutting edge of technology is just about the opposite of “evergreen.”
So if you’re building your content empire by creating non-evergreen content, then your top challenge will be avoiding the mistake that the Yahoo Contributor Network made: It’s absolutely imperative to avoid getting stuck with a library of outdated content.
That means you need to go back and update your old content to perpetually keep it relevant for current readers.
This is not an easy task, but I’ll explain the secret to approaching it:
- Don’t build what you can’t maintain.
- And, habitually, perpetually, systematically maintain what you build.
(In the physical world, these are a couple of critically important principles in environmental sustainability. But I think these ideas are just as valid if you apply them to your content. In fact, I first encountered these ideas at one of the media sites I used to write for.)
So each time you create a new, non-evergreen piece of content, choose a date and time in the future when you will update it.
And mark that date and time in your planner. (You do have a planner, don’t you?)
Amy Solovay’s Planner Layout for the Week of Christmas, 2024
And when the date and time arrives to update the content, you’ll actually need to make the needed updates to it.
Do that consistently to avoid ending up like Associated Content, the Yahoo Contributor Network and Yahoo Voices.
There are multiple ways to succeed as a content creator. This is one in a series of articles I’m writing with a goal of pinpointing the most reliable step-by-step success strategies I’ve been able to identify.
I’m doing this mostly for myself because I need to make a pivot in my own approach to content creation. So I’m systematically looking around at my options.
So to put that in other words, I’m ditching the content creation blueprint I used to follow in the past, and I’m trying to nail down a new, improved step-by-step process for what I need to do to succeed in the future.
Although I’m doing this for me, I also think there’s tremendous value in sharing my thoughts on this topic with you because, in the past, I have been part of other communities where I had the opportunities to share insights with other groups of smart, talented content creators — and give-and-take participation in such groups has been the ultimate key to my long-term success.
But I’m now at the point in my career where I don’t want to join another entity’s community. Forget that! I want to build my own community. And I invite you to become a part of it, if you want to be.
Let’s revisit an obvious axiom that you already know: Past performance does not reliably predict future results.
I’m convinced that most writers and content creators in the current environment are like those proverbial Thanksgiving turkeys.
Pretend it’s the day before Thanksgiving. Are you listening to a group of turkeys who are explaining to you how to reliably stay well-fed and comfortable?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna be in that group of turkeys. You with me?
It’s become obvious to me that there are bunches of things that used to work, that won’t keep working in the future.
So what I want to do is understand my options for what will work.
But what I’m finding is that any formula I’ve come up with so far has either oversimplified or overcomplicated the content creation process.
Nevertheless, I think there is value in identifying formulas to use as a starting point, even if the formulas overlook some of the details.
Do you agree?
Would you find it more useful to have a broad and somewhat oversimplified five-step formula, or would you find it more useful to have a 5,280-step formula covering every nuance of every possibility?
As I’ve been writing these articles, they keep growing into the 5,280-step versions.
So I’ve started and scrapped a bunch of them, because y’all are perfectly capable of overcomplicating things on your own. You don’t need me to help you with that, right?
- To be a successful content creator, you need to habitually create content.
- It doesn’t always have to be excellent content that you’re creating. You can succeed as a content creator even if you initially create some content that is “disappointing” or “disastrous.”
- You don’t need to be brilliant to get rich as a content creator. Dr. Seuss’ early work was “mediocre” and “immediately forgettable,” and he’s high on the list of top-earning dead celebrities several decades after his death.
- Don’t expect immediate success, and don’t lose sight of the fact that the content creators who get rich typically do so in the long term.
- Perseverance is the key to success. This is true even if you aren’t a brilliant content creator to start with.
- Think of your content as an empire and create it with a goal of building a strong, long-lasting empire that will thrive.
- It’s ideal if you can create “evergreen” content; but in the age of AI, evergreen content may not be realistic for a sizable percentage of content creators.
- If you aren’t creating “evergreen” content, you’ll need to keep your content updated to avoid ending up with a library of work that is useless and out-of-date.
- Don’t create content you can’t maintain.
- Create, and stick to, a schedule for maintaining all the content you create to keep it relevant and useful.
- Approaching your content creation in this way maximizes the chances that you will become a brilliant content creator who builds long-term wealth and maximizes your chances of success.
- Choose a specific group of people you will create content for. For Charles Schulz, his group of people (initially) was newspaper readers. Dr. Seuss floundered a bit in this step, but he finally found success with creating content for children who’re learning to read.
- Get to work producing a body of creative work that will have long-term value to the group you identified in step 1 above. Do this habitually, systematically, routinely on a schedule of your own choosing. It’s best to do this daily, all day, every day, for at least 5 days per week.
- Update old content habitually, systematically, routinely with a goal of keeping it relevant, useful and up-to-date. Do this on a schedule of your own choosing.
- When you hit hurdles, persevere.
- Repeat steps 1-4.
(I want to give it a label because we’ll be referring to it again in future newsletters.)
Up until now, have you been creating content that’ll crash and burn, or have you been building a content empire for the long term?
If you’ve been building for the long term, what habits have you established that are working well for you?
If not, what changes can you make in your content creation process that’ll increase your chances of long-term success?
I don’t know if reading this post sparked any ideas for you – but writing this entry certainly gave me some insights I’m going to use for improving my own strategies.
So, I invite you to consider your long-term plans and then join me for a discussion of our future content creation strategies. See you in the comments!
Other Places You Can Find Me Online:
You’ll find me online in bunches of other places, including the following:
My Ravelry Store: I’m a craft pattern designer. If you crochet, please check out the digital PDF crochet patterns I make available.
Your clicks to my beaded crochet necklace pattern and fingerless gloves pattern help me out, even if you don’t buy them (because Ravelry has an attention-based algorithm that elevates any patterns getting a lot of views.) So thanks heaps for any clicks or purchases you send my way. I really appreciate your help and support with this.
My Ko-Fi Shop: If you crochet, I invite you to shop for my digital PDF crochet patterns at Ko-Fi.
If you don’t crochet or craft, I invite you to shop for an eclectic selection of handcrafted items. Ko-Fi is my brand-new outlet for selling the project samples I create while developing and testing the patterns I make available. When I get that far, it’ll also be a place for me to offer the one-of-a-kind experiments I’m fond of creating. You’re invited to check this shop often, because you never know what you’ll find!
My craft blog at KnittingCrochetCrafts.com
Thanks so much for reading, and thanks also for considering all of the above requests. Wishing you continued success!
Best,
Amy
