Robert Shapiro with Siddhartha Aneja
Re:Create Coalition, Link (CC-BY)

Executive Summary: Over the span of just two decades, the internet has unlocked the gates to the new creative economy, empowering nearly 15 million Americans to create their own content and earn billions of dollars in revenues from posting online. Internet platforms like Amazon Publishing, Instagram, Etsy and YouTube have been driving forces behind the growth and expansion of the dynamic, multibillion-dollar new creative economy.

Under the old model, individuals and artists relied on traditional gatekeepers like movie studios, recording labels and publishing houses to decide who and what was successful. Today, the internet has leveled the playing field. Budding music artists can post new songs to YouTube, and craftsmen can sell their homemade products on Etsy. Fashionistas can make a living showcasing their personal style on Instagram, and authors can self-publish to Amazon Publishing. Internet platforms enable and empower new creators to develop their creative work, promote it directly to followers, and earn the resulting financial success and personal fulfillment.

Here is a summary of the study’s principal findings:

  • An estimated 14.8 million Americans used the following nine platforms in 2016 to earn income from their independent, personal creations.
  • These independent creators earned an estimated $5.9 billion in 2016 from their creations.
  • Most creators who earn income from their creations do so to supplement their primary incomes, but a large share of creators derive significant incomes from these internet activities. For instance, in 2016 more than 42,000 Americans earned more than $11,141 each on YouTube just
    from advertising-supported revenue.
  • Social media has enabled a surge in amplification and sharing. Most visitors to these platforms visit directly or through search engines, but we also found that a significant share uses links from other websites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit and Twitter. Online traffic from these social media sites was responsible for generating more than $350 million of the 2016 earnings by creators using the nine platforms.
  • These independent U.S. creators are located in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Based on U.S. Census Bureau industry-level data, we estimate that the top five states for new creators in 2016 are:
    • California: : 2,830,720 creators
    • New York: 1,655,654 creators
    • Texas: 905,479 creators
    • Florida: 823,202 creators
    • Illinois: 532,017 creators
  • The five states with the smallest number of creators still have sizable numbers of internet creators and earnings for 2016:
    • Alaska: 33,802 creators
    • Delaware: 28,200 creators
    • South Dakota: 27,774 creators
    • Wyoming: 22,621 creators
    • North Dakota: 20,091 creators

This study is the first rigorous quantitative analysis of America’s new creative economy; therefore it is merely a baseline estimate for measuring its scope and economic power.

  • Though there are thousands of internet platforms, we showcase only nine with the best publicly available data: Amazon Publishing, eBay, Etsy, Instagram, Shapeways, Tumblr, Twitch, WordPress and YouTube.
  • The study focuses on independent creators — as opposed to mainstream creators, like Selena Gomez or Kim Kardashian, who generate substantially more money from the internet than the average independent creator thanks to Instagram brand sponsorships, YouTube revenue-sharing, and other methods.
  • We assume that each account, channel or store on those platforms is affiliated with only one creator, when in reality there are often multiple creators involved.
  • In most cases, creators are earning money through a variety of methods, including website ads, sponsorship/influencer compensation, social media traffic and direct sales; however, we count only the most prominent source of earning for each platform.
  • The study is also limited to American new creators, despite the existence of millions of international new creators.

Driven by constant innovation and entrepreneurship, the internet is constantly expanding its reach and strengthening its economic impact, so this inaugural study only begins to scratch the surface of the new creative economy’s full impact in the U.S. Furthermore, the new creative economy is virtually certain to grow much larger as the public’s awareness of these opportunities increases and technological advances produce even more advanced platforms.