The Pursuit of Happiness in the Creator Economy

Welcome back to another episode of the Putty Report as we round out this week of diving into ConvertKids State of the Creator Economy. This is one I'm so happy to end on because we're talking about the Creator experience, so let's set aside the growth tactics and income goals for a moment. Are creators happy? Generally, yes, Creator satisfaction scores have remained positive for the past few years. Building an idea into a business is challenging at times. Still, moments like positive audience feedback make the journey worth it.

From productivity to outsourcing, creators gave us a deep dive on their years in lesson learned. So, so incredible and I love. There's one stat that I absolutely cannot wait to share with you. Okay, are you ready? The average satisfaction scores by creator type. That means like who's the happiest? This is so funny, Like if you were to put like a lineup of all the different types of creators who is the happiest out there?

That took the survey. Guess what was number one? Guess Can you guess? And how high did it score? Podcasters. Podcasters were number one and I, when I read this, I was so thrilled I have such a huge stupid grid on my face right now because podcasters scored a seven and a half out of 10 on the happiness scale and this was fantastic.

So this is what ConvertKit said. It says podcasters ranked number one when asked how satisfied they were with their work as a creator, followed by digital content creators, photographers and filmmakers, authors and artists and designers. And while money can't buy creator happiness, it does seem to support it. So creators making over $100,000 had an average satisfaction score of eight out of 10, compared to creators making under 10,000 a year rated their satisfaction a six out of 10. So that's super interesting and it's something that I think you know. You could dive into the details around, like why that is, but I believe it's probably because the people that are not making $100,000 a year, they're making under that 10,000, that means that they're doing multiple things, that they're working part time at their creator business and they still have a full time job and they're trying to bridge that gap right now. So if that is you like, stick with it. You're in the messy middle right now and you absolutely still can go full time in your creator business. But let's move on, because it said one more thing about income. It says income is an easy to track metric to gauge progress with, which could contribute to higher income earners reporting greater satisfaction. In fact, almost 35% of creators measure their personal success by the amount of income earned through their creator business. So money isn't the only perk of creating, though, and 28% of creators cite the ability to work full time as their top measure of personal success. So hobbyist and part timers also said they use autonomy over their content output and their amount of followers as success metrics. So this was really interesting.

I actually wanted to read a few of these testimonials that are right here, because I think that these people are full time creators and I want you to hear from them. So Jay Klaus, who is the founder of Creator Science, says even six years in, I've still built the business to depend a lot on my input, so there are constant pressures to publish and perform. I'm looking to build better systems and delegate more in order to remove some of the dependence from me. And then it says ways creators plan to increase their happiness this year. That's what we're reading from.

And then Jennifer Fishkin, a food blogger at Princess Pinky Girl, says I want to streamline my business so I can enjoy more time with my family and friends. I love what I do, but I do spend too much time behind the computer. I can absolutely relate to that. I'm so glad that she was honest about it, because that is where I find myself today. And then Austin Saylor says my biggest initiative to increase happiness is reducing how many hours I work maximum of four hours of deep work and a maximum of four hours of shallow work. So this is so interesting. So if you love people's inputs and looking at metrics, like, go download this report. It will be so, so helpful and I want you to look at it. There's actually an article around Creator Burnout that I want you to read and the stats on how you can identify it and how to overcome it. But that's all I have for you today. So, as always, remember, keep it fresh, keep it fun and just keep going.