Our team works with thousands of creators every day—this is what they’re seeing
Every day, our team works with 80,000+ creators using Kit. And every day, we get a birds-eye view into what’s working, what’s failing, and what’s quietly transforming the creator economy.
Right now, we’re witnessing some of the biggest shifts we’ve ever seen—not theoretical trends, but actual behavioral changes from real creators across our customer base.
We’ve been helping creators earn a living for over 12 years, and a lot of what built the first wave of the creator economy is breaking down fast. But we’ve always bet on creators because they’re, well, creative. What keeps creators in business through every major shift is the ability to adapt without losing sight of their purpose or their people.
Here are the five biggest shifts we’re seeing among successful creators right now—and what they’re doing to build valuable businesses through the change.
Shift #1: Smaller audiences are becoming more profitable
“Raise your hand and tell me your favorite creator,” a conference panelist asked at a recent event our Head of Creator Partnerships Maggie Goldstone attended.
Someone shared their favorite creator, then the panelist turned to the room of 100+ people and asked, “Ok, does anybody else follow that creator?” According to Maggie, nobody raised their hand.
But this didn’t surprise her—it’s a trend she’s been seeing even among celebrity customers and creator talent agencies she works with every day.
“People are catching on to the fact that only a very small percentage of your social media followers actually see your content,” Maggie says. “These numbers that we were once taught to have so much faith in—like having millions of followers on Instagram—are way less impactful now.”
What Maggie is seeing is a shift toward building real connection with superfans instead of chasing mass reach. Even celebrity talent who built their initial following on social media are pivoting their strategy to focus on the smaller subset of their audience who are really invested in who they are and what they do.
“They don’t necessarily have the highest follower counts out there, but they’re listening closely to their superfans, niching down on those topics, and building products and content around that.”
When Maggie started at Kit two years ago, she says the conversation was completely different. “No one was talking about niching down then.” The conversations she’s having now, she says, “have completely shifted. There’s a wider understanding now that having a niche and speaking to an audience you own, even if it’s a small one, is a huge asset.”
Maggie references one creator who has 20 million YouTube subscribers but is focusing most of their future content strategy around their 1,000-person email list. “They’re asking that list of superfans questions about what they’re interested in, spinning up various related products, and using email to communicate with those die-hard fans.”
Kit’s CEO Nathan Barry puts it simply:
A crowd is people paying attention to you. An audience is the right people paying attention to you.
Shift #2: Creators are paying to acquire the right subscribers
For years, creators focused almost entirely on organic growth.
But many of the top creators on Kit are now doing something different: paying to acquire subscribers intentionally.
Our Creator Growth Managers, who work closely with our top accounts every day, are seeing more creators turn to paid ads—especially through Meta—and actually find success there. The key distinction: they’re not paying for just “any” subscribers. They’re paying for the right subscribers.
Instead of chasing mass list growth, these creators are building funnels around ads designed to attract subscribers who are also a perfect fit for their paid offers. The result? Higher intent, higher click rates, and better overall engagement than subscribers coming through other channels.
One reason it’s working is smart segmentation. Many creators run different ads for different audience types, then use Kit to automatically segment new subscribers and send them hyper-relevant content through automated email sequences. The subscriber experience feels personal from day one—and that makes all the difference.
Shift #3: Courses are giving way to community-driven learning
For years, online courses were one of the most profitable creator business models. But with AI making information easier to access than ever, many creators are seeing declining course sales.
Haley Janicek, Head of Creator Community, has a front-row seat to these conversations.
Creators are shutting down their courses because they weren’t driving meaningful revenue in their businesses anymore—because of the rise of AI and everybody having access to information in an easier and more consumable way.
Even course platforms are pivoting away from individual creators and toward corporate training.
But the creators shutting down their courses aren’t shutting down their businesses. Instead, they’re shifting from a 1:1 video model to community models—where learning lives alongside real connection and conversation among students.
And these communities aren’t staying online-only anymore.
“What’s interesting is that this community trend is also expanding to more in-person experiences,” Haley says. “Everyone is moving toward IRL meetups and in-person education. The traditional course business is gone and community is the path. But learning isn’t gone—it’s more the format and location where people consume content that’s changing. They still want the learning. And especially the real relationships.”
Shift #4: Email is becoming the foundation of creator businesses
Our Senior Director of Marketing Christina Liu is in the data every day, and here’s what she’s seeing:
On average, creators using Kit earn 3.5× what they spend on the platform from products sold directly through Kit—and that’s before counting sales from other platforms.
That number speaks for itself.
Lead Creator Growth Manager Morgan Kitzmiller shares that the most successful creators she works with are constantly making business decisions based on what they’re learning from their email data.
“They’re looking at what’s working and what isn’t. They’re also looking at unsubscribes more closely than ever now, almost like a SaaS company would look at churn. They want to know which growth channels aren’t worth investing in anymore.”
Morgan says this data-driven focus is a real shift because the creator space is more saturated than it’s ever been. “There is still a lot of opportunity, but bigger creators are needing to hone in and focus on what’s working more than ever—because they just used to not have to. Things grew without them worrying about it.”
But they’re not interested in growth for growth’s sake. “I’ve had creators tell me they don’t necessarily want more subscribers—they want to learn how to earn more and serve better the subscribers they already have.”
Maggie is also seeing agencies, managers, and celebrity teams who were never interested in email now building the core of their business around it. “With email, there’s nothing in the way between you and the person you want to reach. We’re all bombarded by visual media all the time and people are craving written content. It’s like what’s old is new again.”
Shift #5: A newsletter is not an email strategy
One of the biggest misconceptions in the creator economy today is that a newsletter itself is the business model. But what we see across successful creators is something different: the newsletter builds the relationship—but the business is built through email systems.
“Newsletters are such a trend right now,” Haley says. “A lot of creators and celebrities are saying they’re going to start a newsletter and follow the creator trend. But the mistake we’re seeing is they confuse a newsletter with an email strategy. A newsletter is one part of an email strategy that fuels a much greater ecosystem in a creator business.”
The culture seems to be correlating newsletter with revenue—but that’s not how most creators actually make money.
“There are very few newsletters that drive meaningful revenue on their own. But there are a lot of businesses whose backbone is email. And those are the multi-million dollar creator businesses—not newsletter businesses.”
The creators winning in this shift understand the newsletter is the beginning, not the end. They build an email strategy around it that includes surveying their audience, segmenting based on what they learn, sending hyper-relevant content through automations (instead of emailing everyone everything), and creating automated welcome and sales sequences that turn their newsletter into revenue that grows on autopilot.
“In any of the successful creator businesses I’ve worked with, none of them just have a newsletter—even the people known for their newsletter. They have so many other things built into their email strategy that make their business work.”
Start by asking: What does your audience want to pay you for? What are they struggling with? What goal are they working toward? The newsletter opens the door—your email strategy is what gets you all the way in.
The future belongs to creators who adapt
We’ve watched the creator economy evolve for over a decade, and one thing hasn’t changed: the creators who thrive aren’t the ones chasing trends—they’re the ones who stay close to their people and build systems that focus on quality over quantity.
The shifts we’re seeing might feel big, but they’re pointing toward something better: businesses built on real relationships, not rented attention. Smaller audiences who actually care. Revenue that isn’t tied to a single platform’s algorithm. And work that scales without burning you out.
The creator economy isn’t dying. It’s just getting more honest about what actually works.
The future belongs to creators who remember their work is about the people they serve—not the platforms they’re on.
