Being a Content Creator is the hardest job in the world
Successful creators make content for an average of 5 years before reaching $100k in income.
The majority of the income for most creators happens from year 5 to year 20.
In 2026, short form video is the #1 way all creators are increasing their discoverability.
Those three facts make being a content creator in 2026 the hardest job in the world in my opinion. There is no other job in the world that requires you to create, and show your creations to the public, every single day for 5 years straight, just to get started. Even musicians and athletes have off-seasons and breaks between tours. But if you’re a content creator and you take an offseason, the algorithm will forget you, and you have to start all over again when you come back.
It’s a brutal, grueling, unending, challenge. But the rewards are infinite. If you establish a content web that leads back to products that you own, both in revenue and equity, then you can build for yourself infinite wealth, just by creating content. So it’s worth it, but it’s the hardest thing in the world.
I think the best creators with the most longevity treat it like a professional athlete would. They spend huge amounts of time building a system that helps with emotional regulation, so the constant drumbeat of putting themselves out there for the world to judge (because that’s just what people do), doesn’t beat them down.
Creating content is also dastardly hard because the platforms change all the time. As soon as you get yourself established on one, they change the system so your content, and everyone else’s is devalued in favor of ads. Then you have to go rebuild on another platform. And that happens reliably every 5-7 years. So you have to remain adaptable. This is also the same as being an athlete. Think about the NBA, and players who didn’t adapt when Steph Curry changed the game and all of a sudden everyone needed to be a pinpoint three point shooter. They quickly got phased out.
So you’ve got to be consistent for 5+ years to break through the noise. You’ve got to be ready to adapt when the platform changes. And you’ve got to remain vigilant to improve your craft every day as younger, more ambitious, people come on the scene at all times. It’s the hardest thing to do, but the payoff is infinite.
