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The creator economy has become one of the fastest-growing industries ever.
In 2021, the term “creator economy” was mentioned 150,000 times online. And ever since the Pandemic started, the creator economy has been supercharged. Millions of creators have joined and hundreds of startups have been built to help them on their content creation journey.
This article shares the most mind-blowing creator economy statistics for 2022. Brace yourself cause we’ll be going through a LOT.
To make navigation easier, I’ve divided the statistics into 4 categories:
- General creator economy statistics
- Creator startup statistics
- Creator platform statistics
- Creator statistics
Let’s do this.
General creator economy statistics
- The creator economy market is estimated at $104.2 billion. (Source)
- For comparison, the creator economy market was worth $600k. (Source)
- Currently, there are over 200 million creators worldwide. (Source)
- 70% Of Gen-Z teens trust creators more than celebrities. (Source)
- The number of creators across 50 platforms has grown by 48% between 2020 and 2021. (Source)
- 78% of consumers said they’ve discovered new products by watching videos from content creators. (Source)
- The countries with the fastest growth in the number of creators are the Czech Republic (270%), Romania (215%), and Brazil (171%). (Source)
- 63% of users have tipped their favorite creator at least once. (Source)
Creator startups statistics
Here you’ll find statistics about the types of creator economy startups and funding in the creator space. With the upcoming recession, these stats might not look the brightest but they’re still very important.
- There are over 300 startups in the creator economy. (Source)
- Creator economy funding has dropped by 60% compared to 2021. (Source)
- US startups have raised $700 million in funding in Q2 of 2022, 26% less than the previous quarter. (Source)
- The biggest pullback from funding was from the crypto and Web3 space, with $332 (12%) million less than the previous quarter. (Source)
- Funding in Q2 of 2022 fell to 5 creator-focused startups, with total funding of $142 million as opposed to Q1 when 17 startups got total funding of $340 million. (Source)
- US startups have raised $6.6 billion in funding from January 2021 until now (July 2022). (Source)
- The quarter with the highest investments in creator economy startups was Q2 of 2021 with $1.7 billion raised. (Source)
- The most common type of funding rounds in 2022 so far have been seed rounds. (Source)
- The type of startups that have raised the most funding are creator platforms, followed by creator tools and crypto startups. (Source)
- There are at least 14 creator startups that have reached unicorn status. (Source)
Creator platforms statistics
These are some of the most eye-catching statistics about how creators use the biggest social media platforms and share their content, grow their audience, build communities and monetize.
YouTube
- As of 2022, YouTube has over 2 billion monthly active users. (Source)
- More than 500 hours worth of content is uploaded every minute. (Source)
- The channel with the most monthly views and most subscribers as of 2022 is T-Series. (Source)
- The highest-earning YouTuber is MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), with estimated earnings of around $54 million. (Source)
- In 2022, YouTube’s audience grew almost twice as fast as Facebook’s. (Source)
- YouTube Ads reach more than 2.5 billion users, an 11.9% increase from the past year. (Source)
- The most searched thing on YouTube is music. (Source)
- Live video streaming is expected to grow to $184.27 billion by 2027. (Source)
- 84% of users say they’ve bought something they’ve seen on YouTube. (Source)
- 5 of the top 10 richest Youtubers are gamers. (Source)
- Channels that make annual revenue of $100k grew by more than 40%, and those that make annual revenue of $10k grew by more than 50%. (Source).
- Instagram now has more than 2 billion users. (Source)
- 59% of users log into the app daily. (Source)
- Carousel posts have the highest engagement rate compared to images or videos per impression. (Source)
- 91% of active users watch videos weekly, with 66% going to short-form videos. (Source)
- Instagram accounted for 44% of Meta’s total revenue in 2021, with $47.6 billion. (Source)
- Instagram has 300 million active users in India, making it the biggest market in terms of users. (Source)
- 70% of users are at the age of 18-35, with an increase since 2018 from age groups over 35. (Source)
- ⅓ of Instagram’s total audience use Stories (or 500 million users). (Source)
- The most followed brand account is National Geographic with 424 million followers. (Source).
- The most followed user account is Cristiano Ronaldo with 347 million followers. (Source)
- The most interacted with industry is fashion with 25% of all brand interactions. (Source)
Tiktok
- TikTok’s monthly active users are expected to reach 1.8 billion by the end of 2022. (Source)
- The biggest age group is users from 20-29 years old with 35%, followed by 10-19-year-olds with 28%. (Source)
- Tiktok is used by 18% of global Internet users. (Source)
- Tiktok is the most popular in the US, Indonesia, and Brazil (with the exception of China). (Source)
- In 2021, the top 5 creators earned a total of $46 million. (Source)
- Tiktok creators with 100k followers can make around $200-$1000 monthly, and creators with 1 million followers can make around $1000-$5000 monthly. (Source)
- One branded post with 100k views can generate up to $1000. (Source)
Creator statistics
- There are 23 million creators with 0-1k followers, 139 million creators with 1k-10k followers, 41 million creators with 10k-100k followers, and 4 million creators with 100k-1 million+ followers. (Source)
- 66% of creators are part-time. (Source)
- Creators who earn between $100-$10k, $50k-$100k, and $100k-$500k annually all spent 10 hours or more on content creation. (Source)
- 12% of full-time creators make $50k or more annually while 46% make less than 1k. (Source)
- 3% of part-time creators make $50k or more annually while 68% make less than 1k. (Source)
- Niche content creators earn more through newsletters, courses, downloadable resources, affiliate programs, ads, influencer marketing, and physical products. (Source)
- 58% of creators produce 2-4 types of content. (Source)
To wrap it up
So far the creator economy has been looking bright. However, judging by some of these stats not everything is milk and honey. With the upcoming recession, startups, platforms, and creators will struggle.
Heck, we might have to change these stats completely by the end of the year.
But for the time being, I hope you learned something new and found these stats useful, whether you’re a newbie creator who wants to learn or you work in a creator startup and are scouting the space.
