JULY 11, 2023

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Welcome to The Tilt, a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs.

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5 Lies Non-Creators Tell Themselves

I’ve always struggled to describe what I do. As a creator, how do I explain content entrepreneurship to people?

Am I a blogger? Or an author? Or an event producer? Or a podcaster? Do I run a newsletter? Am I in education and training? Am I a consultant? How about a keynote speaker?

The right answer to describe what I do is all of the above.

I’m a content creator and entrepreneur. Yet most people don’t have a clue what that really means.

They have an idea of what a content creator does and think that’s all content creators do: “Oh, you are a YouTuber.” “You post pictures on the Internet. You make money from that?” “You’re a writer? That must be tough …”

In The Tilt’s 2023 Content Entrepreneur Benchmark Research, 1K content creators gave in-depth answers about how they work and make money. Though we frequently talk about this research, we’ve never talked about the question I find most interesting:

What do people misunderstand about running a creator business?

Seventy percent of the surveyed creators went into quite a bit of detail. (I think that came about because they have a lot of frustration.) Reading through their responses, some creators should be in full-time counseling. (I’m sort of kidding, but sort of not.) Let’s look at five common misperceptions about content entrepreneurship.

1. Content entrepreneurship doesn’t take much time and energy: Non-creators don’t realize that content creation as a business (what we call content entrepreneurs) is 24/7. Even when you are not creating or distributing content, you are selling. You are thinking about the next idea or content project. Non-creators can generally leave their place of work and let go of thinking about their work. That’s almost impossible for content creators.

And to make a content business profitable? It takes a long time. The research shows it takes a content entrepreneur an average of 18 months to reach some profitability. After I, as a content creator, launched the Content Marketing Institute, it took over three years to break even. It’s a long game. Sadly, most people who create a content business give up before reaching profitability because they got into it thinking profitability wouldn’t take long. It always takes longer than you think.

2. People think it isn’t ‘real’ work: Most non-creators don’t see creating content as real work. But, even if that’s true (it isn’t), content entrepreneurs spend less than 50% of their time making the content. Most of their time is spent on marketing, sales, and administrative work.

I can’t tell you how many people have said something like, “It’s great you have so much free time and can work whenever you want.” Little do they know.

3. Once you create the content, you move to the next piece of content: When I conducted content marketing workshops, I always said, “Creating content without knowing how you are going to market is insanity.”

Creating the content is a small part of the process. Getting the content into the hands of your audience, encouraging them to engage with it, and seeing them change their behaviors are the bigger parts. If only content were just about creating pixels.

4. Content isn’t the revenue source; it just makes the products possible: Non-creators always wonder how the money is made. They don’t understand the content is the source of money. It creates the connections with the audience. It builds the trust. It enables the audience at some point to buy your book or course or hire you as a consultant. They don’t understand that skipping a newsletter, a podcast, or a video is like missing a month of work.

5. Content isn’t a real business: Let’s face it. Most non-creators think the idea of content as a business is silly. But successful entrepreneurs, first and foremost, treat content creation as a business. You create content to build an audience and offer that audience a selection of products, which fuels the business.

Given all those misconceptions, is content entrepreneurship worth it? Absolutely.

I’ve been a content entrepreneur for 16 years. I don’t regret it one bit. That said, besides being a husband and father, it’s been the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.

– Joe Pulizzi

​To get the five truths, read the full story.​

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Entrepreneur: Tiffany Yu

Biz: Diversability​

Tilt: Disability representation

Primary Channels: TikTok (126.1K), personal website, Diversability website, Diversability’s social media​

Other Channels: Instagram (31.5K), LinkedIn (20.2K), Facebook (11K), Twitter (8K), YouTube (560)

Time to First Dollar: Tiffany posted on Instagram and Twitter for several years before joining an influencer marketing program that netted her $20. Her first big deal came later that year when a brand paid $5K for a sponsorship package that included about six posts on Twitter and Instagram. She had about 10K total followers.

Rev Streams: Speaking engagements, brand partnerships, platform-specific creator programs, licensing, membership community, consulting

Our Favorite Actionable Advice:

• Consider no-money gigs: Early in her business, Tiffany accepted speaking engagements in which the host paid only for travel. But that work allowed her to grow her audience and spread her message.
• Make it easy to contact you: Put your contact information in your profiles and pages to make it easy for potential sponsors to find out how to reach you.
• Show potential sponsors what you can do: Tiffany has created posts that show her using a product even though the brand didn’t pay her. She can share those with brands interested in what sponsoring her content would look like.

– Sarah Lindenfeld Hall

​All the Story: Learn more about Tiffany Yu’s story.​

Know a content creator who’s going full tilt? DM us. Or email tilt@thetilt.com.

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• ​Do This One Thing: Mid-Year Checkup (Content Inc.)
• ​Elon Gets Tangled in Threads (This Old Marketing)
• ​Want some help knowing how to share your startup story? (Your Story)
• ​How many of these startup lessons (from idea to exit) do you know? (Entrepreneur)
• Mark your calendar for 12 p.m. US ET July 18 for the Twitter Spaces debut of Tilt Your Content Business: A Weekly Mastermind for Entrepreneurs in the Creator Economy. (More details, including link, in Friday's newsletter.)

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