Lessons About the Creator Economy From Twitch and Substack

Small creators want discovery. They’re grinding away for that extra viewer or reader and don’t have the luxury to think about monetization until they have an audience.

The difference between Twitch and Substack is that Twitch has a large audience that visits its homepage, while Substack’s traffic mostly goes directly to a writer’s newsletter.

But ultimately, I think some readers just won't pay for a monthly subscription. Finding other ways for creators to monetize these readers (e.g., one-time transactions) without cannibalizing their subscription revenue could be an exciting avenue to explore.

Yet, some rebundling is already underway. It’s exhausting for a single creator to maintain a Twitch channel or Substack newsletter at scale. As their audience grows, creators might recruit a small team to edit their content and moderate their community. They might also own a live channel or newsletter with other creators to split the work.

Twitch and Substack unbundled the cable TV package and the mainstream news publication in two ways. First, they made it possible for a single creator to publish content and find an audience without being part of an organization. Second, they made it easy for fans to support their favorite creators without having to pay for a "bundle" of many creato... See more

The ability for writers to give status and privileges to loyal fans (e.g., sub-only badges and comment moderation).

Channels (e.g., threads, AMAs) for readers to talk to writers and each other.

Substack should take a page from Twitch's playbook by investing in helping writers build communities on-platform. Community features could include:

On Twitch, viewers subscribe to support a creator and stand out in the creator’s community (e.g., through sub-only emotes and chat badges). They also subscribe to get a shout-out from the creator and other viewers in a live channel.