Good morning everyone, happy Sunday…

The creator economy is projected to grow 18% this year to $43.9B.

We hear these big numbers all the time, and it really signals that we’re all in the right business. We get to make videos for a living and there’s a growing industry to support us. 

But alongside that big number is a few others that tell a bit of a different story. 

I read this new survey of 1,000 U.S. creators that reports:

only 16% of creators surveyed make more than $50K a year.

Nearly half make under $10K.

And just 5.7% make $100K.

So where is most of this $43.9 billion going?

It really is a great time to be a creator. You can absolutely turn making videos into a career. But you also need to understand how the money in this industry is distributed… because it’s not evenly.

So let’s get clear first that when we are talking about these numbers, we’re talking about brand deals. That’s how the majority of creators (including ourselves) make money. 

And how the brand dollars move is largely driven by who today’s biggest advertisers are.

In the past few years we’ve seen more Fortune 500 and blue-chip brands move deeper into creator marketing.

Brands like Visa, Google, Adobe, and even Apple are starting to move portions of their billion+ dollar marketing budgets towards creators. 

And as these fortune 500 and blue-chip brands move deeper into creator marketing, their creator budgets are getting bigger. But their tolerance for complexity isn’t. 

To put that in simple terms: 

A big brand doesn’t want to manage 50 creators at $10K each. They would rather partner with a handful of creators at $500K, $1M, or $3M for a long-term partnership.

So that means the deals go to 3 types of creators:

1 - those with massive reach

2 - those with companies built to service enterprise-level clients

3 - those who are organized (i’ll explain)

So as brand spend grows, creator income grows too — just unevenly…which is why we’re seeing some creators make $10k / year and others make far upwards of $100k+ - and very few in between.

Bigger checks are being written.

They’re just being written to fewer creators. But let’s get into that concept of #3.. 

“The Organized Creator”

“The Organized Creator” is a creator a brand can understand, trust, and buy from quickly. 

This is not because you have the biggest audience, it’s because you behave like a business. You can clearly explain who your audience is, what you offer, what it costs, why your content aligns with the brands desired outcome, and how a partnership works. So when that brand shows up with a budget, there’s no friction… instead you give the brand a clear path to yes, and a clear path to a renewal. 

Colin & I became Organized Creators in 2021. And then… 

We made our first $1M in brand deals before we had anywhere near 1M subscribers.

Which is why I want to break down exactly how we did it, because before that I assumed our income was capped by audience size, when it was actually capped by organization.

4 Rules For How To Organize Yourself To Receive More Money

Our first “big” brand deal was $800.

At the time, that was crazy. Someone wanted to pay us to make a video? That felt huge.

But then reality hit. And the numbers didn’t add up. Especially divided by 2… in Los Angeles. 

I remember having some really hard conversations about how if we didn’t figure out how to pitch and price ourselves in a way that made sense, this dream wasn’t going to last and we might have to get “real” jobs.

It took us a lot of trial and error (and plenty more small deals) before we finally built a system that worked. But once we did, it really worked. 

These 4 rules are that system: 

Rule #1: Know Who’s Watching

Your obligation as a creator is first and foremost to your audience. Every deal should feel honest, relevant, and valuable to them.

I use this metaphor where saying yes to a brand is the same as inviting a new person to hang out with your friend group. 

There’s a huge risk of that being awkward. It’s your responsibility to make sure it isn’t.

If you want to win brand deals with a smaller audience, your competitive advantage has to be how well you know your audience.

If you can clearly explain who your audience is and why they watch, you’re instantly more valuable. I’m not talking about a screenshot of your YouTube analytics.. I’m talking about describing who they are and what stage of their life / career they are in. 

Rule #2: You’re Not Selling a Video 

The reason knowing your audience is so important is because you’re not selling a video. The video might be the deliverable, but ultimately what the brand is buying is access to your audience. 

That’s why brands are choosing to pay you instead of pay Meta for ads. The brand can buy reach from almost every platform… what they are buying is the authentic connection to an aligned audience. 

Rule #3: Make It Easy to Say Yes

A lot of brand deals don’t fall apart because of price, they fall apart because of friction.

I was a huge culprit of this early on.

A brand would reach out.
I’d wait for them to make the first offer.
They’d send a number.
I’d counter.
We’d go back and forth. 

And a lot of the time… I would forget to email back, or they would lose interest and the deal would just die. 

Remember: Advertisers have a low appetite for complexity and a high preference for organization.

So we changed our approach.

Instead of negotiating from scratch every time, we assigned clear prices to specific offerings.

Our deck showed exactly how to buy into the Colin and Samir Show: a 60-second integration, sold in a 3-episode package, across 3 months.

It was basically: Here’s what it costs. Here’s what you get. Yes or no.

Once we did this, deals closed faster, and more of them closed.

So how did we come up with our price?

We came up with our own way of calculating our rate, and I think it’s really helpful for everyone so I pulled it out of our Brand Deal Blueprint course so you can access it for free.

Just click that link, enter your email and you can watch the video and get the calculator for free. 

It’s not an exact science, but it’s what we did - and it helped us set our rates and put our menu of offerings together that made it easy for brands to say yes. 

Rule #4: Credibility is Your Most Valuable Resource

Tim Ferris has this great quote on our show:

“Trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets.”

We’ve turned down big checks when a brand didn’t feel right, because one bad deal can permanently damage your relationship with your audience.

If you’re going to do brand deals, you have to do it in a way that doesn’t break your audience’s trust and make the commitment to yourself to be highly selective about what you say yes to. 

If you only take 2 things away from this email let them be this: 

1 - You are selling audience and value alignment, not reach 

2 - Be clear about your product and make it easy to buy. 

The creator economy is growing. And that’s exciting because for those of us who want to be lifelong creators, it means there’s an industry that can sustain that choice.

But remember, the deals go to the organized, so if you’re not already, it’s time to get organized. 

If you’ve got a brand deal you’re working on right now and want some mentorship through the process… submit a question through our Creator Support form.

We’re looking to chat with someone who is working through this in real time. 

Until next Sunday,

- Samir

PS – If you want to take a step to build your pitch deck, check out our Brand Deal Blueprint course.