In the past few years, startups like Substack, Patreon, and Shopify have created alternative ways for creators to build businesses online through direct transactions, rather than advertising. This shift exposed a simple fact: in an ad-driven world, creators were generally under-monetizing their audiences.

- There are multiple ways to monetize an online audience: subscription plans, conferences, consulting sessions, selling premium content, etc.

For a person such as Hannah, it's far more valuable to get a few thousand people to pay her $4.99 directly than to have a shared model where she merely gets a few cents per thousand views.

It's far more valuable to 'get picked', but it's also much, much harder.

But this is the reality of the 'young creators' today. They are not talking about a Spotif... See more