Creator Revenue Attribution
Yesterday an app called Sora came out. By the time you’re reading this you might have to look it up on Wikipedia. Or you’re scrolling it as you’re reading, who knows. It’s an app for creating AI-Generated short videos, like TikTok, but all made with AI. I downloaded it and made a few, and immediately it became the same as every other app. 99% of people will make a few videos, post about it to their friends, get a lot of likes on day 1, then drop the app. Why? because after the novelty wears off, and friends stop liking the endless stream of what you’re posting, you’ll lose interest and drop it. But then something crazy will happen. A few people will stick with it, work on their creations every day, get better at refining what they are making, and 2-5 years from now will make a great living by posting Sora videos all day.
This is how every new platform goes. The initial hype is fueled by a lot of social validation, but the people who end up succeeding fight through that and continue creating until they refine something that grows sustainably. And that’s the archetype I am interested in, the archetype that doesn’t give up. The type of person who succeeds as a creative fascinates me because they are both relentless, and practical. Relentless in the sense that they find joy in their creation, it gives them energy to create what they are creating. Practical in the sense that they do pay attention to how much revenue and profit is coming in from their creation. They’re not just out there making stuff for the sake of making it, even though the intrinsic motivation is certainly present.
It begs the question, “How do I balance between the joy of creation and the need for driving revenue?” and that’s a question with no concrete answers. Mostly because the majority of revenue generating activities are directional, not direct. And in fact, the more direct your revenue sources are, the easier they are to copy, and less stable they are. So revenue doesn’t come directly from your creation activities, but they are related. Discerning that relationship, and defining it, is one of the most genius things I’ve seen creators who succeed do.
They build a model of revenue attribution for themselves, so they can predict what will come in from their creation activities, and that model is based on production instead of tracking. Here’s an example. Let’s say creator Ned runs a business that sells lawn food, so you put it on your lawn and the grass grows greener and fuller. Ned posts to TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Blog, on a weekly basis. Ned knows that the more he posts, the more he sells, directionally, but posts are all over the place in terms of engagement so it’s not like every single one delivers the same value. He can post the same video on TikTok and Reels and the Reels post gets 10k views, the TikTok gets 100, or vice versa.
But Ned knows that generally if he posts certain amounts of content that leads to revenue. But, there’s also a lag in how long people take to make their decision to purchase once they see his content, so that has to be baked in. The equation would then look something like this.
$10k per month
20 TikToks
20 Reels
20 LinkedIn posts
3 YouTube videos
3 blog posts
$20k per month
40 TikToks
40 Reels
40 LinkedIn posts
6 YouTube videos
6 blog posts
And then there’s a lag, so Ned knows that if he starts on day 1, then by day 60 these numbers will come through, and he doesn’t get bothered when month 1 only comes in at $3k. But then there’s phase 2, where Ned starts to recognize that it’s not just about content, but it’s about views and engagement, because if he posts a lot but the content isn’t resonating, then sales don’t come through, so he updates his model.
$10k per month
100k-200k views
$20k per month
200k-350k views
$30k per month
350k-500k views
And perhaps there’s even a further level Ned can take it to, if he’s got a funnel set up where he collects emails first, and then sells his product, or if he can measure based on engagement rates, something along those lines. It’s different for every content led business, because every customer base is different and their behavior is different. Like if your customer base doesn’t really engage on socials, but they watch, then you might not be able to measure on that, and views is your best metric.
If the model ever breaks, then you know something has changed in buyer behavior, and you have to tear it down and rebuild it. Relying on an old model can lead to burnout because you’re producing everything right, but the buyer behavior no longer matches up.
Happiness is the difference between expectations and reality. The creators who I’ve seen be happy, and therefore energized, are the ones who have a revenue attribution model like this built out. So they can track their revenue growth pretty closely, even if it’s not perfect. That way they can focus on the creation process, and know that as long as they stay consistent, the revenue will grow as they expect, and they can plan around it.
