Social media platforms are increasingly warming up to the idea of making their platforms more earning-friendly for content creators. It is a natural choice, given that they thrive on posts made by quality content creators. In poker platforms, the grasp of poker rules and tricks decides the success of a poker pro. But in social media platforms, it is the platform’s features that define a content creator’s monetising success.

The social media market size as of 2023 was estimated to be around $219 billion. It is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 14.8%, and monetisation and content-sharing culture are expected to play a big role in this growth. Platforms are, therefore, busy innovating new features that can be leveraged by creators to monetise their content more effectively. And while the number of social media creators is increasing every day, they have dozens of different social media platforms to choose from. The competition among the platforms is intense as they try to retain their coveted creators. One of the best ways to retain them is to give them the best pedestal to monetise their content.

Modern-day content creators have a variety of monetisation opportunities on social media platforms. It is not just businesses that are doing a brisk business by selling directly to the consumer through social media platforms. Social media influencers are making a living through social media, partly thanks to their content and partly through their endorsement deals. Besides, there are craft and skill-based content creators with massive views and subscriber numbers.

Monetisation is helping social media platforms attract more users and businesses to their apps. With features like in-app shopping, businesses can now sell directly from the app with a minimal number of steps. There are one million in-app sales that happen every month just on Facebook Shops. For users, social media is an engaging form of recreation, with a novel and convenient way of shopping on the side.

The importance of social media monetisation can be gauged from the fact that it has multiple money-spinning mechanisms to suit different participants. It could be affiliate schemes, paid subscriptions to exclusive spaces like the Facebook Group, sales from product listing, ad revenue, in-app shopping, etc.

Social media platforms are constantly upgrading their features to make the ecosystem more supportive of the creators. Many social media platforms give the option of creating online communities. By creating paid communities, content creators can generate recurring revenue for their content. Besides, the existing revenue from created content continues to flow in.

It’s the platform’s way of giving you the chance to create a social network within the platform and reduce your dependency on the platform’s algorithm. Similar to this model is the option of creating subscription-based premium content. Your regular content keeps a hook, enticing ardent followers to subscribe to such premium content.

Popular content creators are also opening up merchandise stores in the in-app purchase model. From celebrity YouTube gamers to popular comedy channels, content creators with massive fan followings have opened up additional monetisation avenues through merch stores.

Social media platforms are seeing an increasing volume of traffic with every passing day. An average person spends as much as two and a half hours on social media. Money is bound to flow where the wind blows, metaphorically speaking. Businesses, startups and brands have a distinct social media marketing policy in place. Business spending on influencer marketing alone was estimated to be somewhere in the region of $4.14 billion by the end of 2022.

It is estimated that 76% of local businesses in the US are on social media, similar to the 77% in India. 41% of these businesses aim to develop it as a revenue stream. Take TikTok, for instance. 45% of its user purchases are driven through influencer and creator collaborations. 37% of these sales take place immediately after the product discovery on the popular platform. According to Forbes, 50% of social media users trust the brand recommendations of influential content creators.

The influx of business funds into social media platforms creates two distinct beneficiaries. The content creators and the platforms themselves.

Apart from the skilled art of content creation, gaming content creation is proving to be quite rewarding as well. One must mention the importance of platforms like Twitch and YouTube Gaming in this context. Celebrity gamers are raking in funds through ad revenue, donations from viewers, channel memberships, merchandise sales, etc. With various revenue-sharing models in place, the efforts of the gamers towards attracting more viewers to the platform are getting handsomely rewarded. Apart from live streaming, you can even amass a sizeable following by creating gaming skill-related content. Perhaps a channel for poker fans that demystifies poker rules and tricks.

Content creators are turning out to be the vital pillars on which the billion-dollar social media superstructure stands. Given their crucial role in turning social media into a strategic business consideration, content creators continue to reap rich rewards for their creative efforts.