This is a Guest blog by Mr. Varun Saxena, CEO & Founder- Bolo Live
The creator economy is going through a paradigm shift in India and it is only the beginning. The Creator Economy, once known primarily only in the gaming industry, is now expanding its reach across other categories like Entertainment, Lifestyle, Fitness, Astrology, Life Experiences and more.
The Pandemic push towards creator economy
Like the rest of the world, the Covid lockdown has given a big flip to internet usage in India, with everyone wanting to work on their own terms, from the comfort of their homes, in their own hours, and having everything on their fingertips, just a phone tap away. Apps like YouTube, Instagram, and more recently Snapchat, Twitch, OTT services have rewritten the rules of the game. With this evident change in people’s working patterns, mundane work cultures are being traded with creative and alternative careers that are more aligned to their hobbies, interests, and passion and creating a money-making opportunity out of them.
Certainly, there have been content creators for many years engaging in their passions. Yet, now all of them were able to monetize their creativity. However, nowadays, these creators are experimenting and exploring many more career avenues to monetize their content and make a living.
Today, content creators have gained widespread popularity amongst a wide range of audiences for their creative and engaging content. Having developed fandoms that follow them off-platform, creators have realized that they can become full-fledged businesses with multiple revenue streams beyond ads and dependency on brand collaborations. Companies like Bolo Live, Roposo, Trell etc. have arrived to help creators earn money by monetizing their content either by fan engagement, coaching, consulting, speaking engagement through a live stream or by selling products, merchandise etc. This lets creators focus on delighting their biggest fans and making more unique niche content, rather than desperately seeking the biggest possible audience and making more generic clickbaity content.
According to a report by Influencer Marketing Hub, the total Creator Economy market size is around $104.2 Billion and on par with a substantial growth trajectory similar to the Gig Economy. More than 50 million people worldwide consider themselves to be creators. Of these, 46.7 million think themselves to be amateurs, with two million-plus considering themselves to be professional creators, earning enough from their passion to consider it their full-time income.
The Key enablers
2022-25 are going to be the years of social apps which could drive the creator economy at scale. This scale will be majorly driven by microtransactions by fans for the content creators of their choice.
Microtransactions, which once contributed only 10% to the creator economy for gamers a few years back, are now contributing to 75% of gamers’ earnings in 2021. This is expected to reach 90% in 2022. Similarly more than 50% of the creators in social live streaming industry will be led by micro-transactions in 2022 in 2022 and close to 90% by 2023 end.
The big trend we see here is that over time, creators are becoming more diversified in their revenue streams and are being funded directly by their fans. One of the newer niches of this booming trend is live streaming which provides an ultimate way for creative minds to express themselves to a broad audience.
Platforms supporting multiplayer games like Twitch, Ustream, to fan engagement-led platforms like Bolo Live and Tango come with integrated real-time gamification driven by microtransactions led gifting option, which can be redeemed in real money. Indian social live-streaming platform Bolo Live has evolved into a powerful channel that comes with virtual gifting enabling a 360-degree stack of content consumption for our users, taking earnings for the creators more than INR 1,00,0000 per month.
What’s worth watching ahead
In this new ecosystem, creators are the new currency. The creator economy relies heavily on tech enabled engagement between content creators and their fans. Content creation is now almost reflexive and has almost everyone glued to it with a smartphone and internet!
With live streaming being one of the key enablers, India is very well placed and will dominate the industry in the next 5 years. Moreover, there is a rising demand for Indian streamers as they can have a good connection with the Indians living in the middle east and western countries. We can expect made-in-India live-streaming apps to go global and register India’s presence globally. Faster adoption, deeper penetration, and much larger earnings for live streamers are expected in the next few years.
In the coming years will be exciting to watch the next 500 million internet users carving out a new journey on social media, not just for entertainment, but for a primary source of income as well. This is definitely the best time in the Digital Age where there is more diverse content than there are people on this earth and it still is only just the tip of the iceberg. Exciting times ahead!