Lizzy and Lissa break down the hidden costs – financial and otherwise – of content creation. While creating content can be an exciting and rewarding venture, it doesn’t come without costs. Financial costs can add up quickly between quality equipment, software, tools, and other production costs. And then, there’s burnout, creative pressure, and the challenges of building and maintaining an audience. If you’re considering diving into the world of content creation, this episode is for you.
Lizzy and Lissa break down the hidden costs – financial and otherwise – of content creation. While creating content can be an exciting and rewarding venture, it doesn’t come without costs. Financial costs can add up quickly between quality equipment, software, tools, and other production costs. And then, there’s burnout, creative pressure, and the challenges of building and maintaining an audience. If you’re considering diving into the world of content creation, this episode is for you.
Main Topics
00:00 The Creator Economy
01:10 Running The Numbers Segment
04:06 The Evolution of Content Creation
11:03 Monetizing Content & Brand Partnerships
16:11 The Hidden Costs of Content Creation
20:53 Balancing Passion and Profit
26:07 The Power of Evergreen Content
27:22 Navigating TikTok's Unpredictability
29:12 The Mental and Emotional Costs of Content Creation
31:56 Understanding YouTube's Algorithm
37:33 Legal Considerations
48:17 20 Cents Segment
References for Statistics
https://linktr.ee/creator-report/static/Linktree-CreatorReport-2022-02f3aa05a27be6fecb3537b13d5ec9de.pdf
https://influencermarketinghub.com/creator-earnings-benchmark-report/
Lissa: According to Linktree's 2022 Creator Report, there were an estimated 207 million creators worldwide in 2022. So that means more now, probably.
Lizzy: Sheesh.
Lissa: That's a lot.
Lizzy: That's a lot.
Lissa: So today we are talking about is content creation worth it?
Lizzy: Let's talk about it.
Lissa: Welcome to Net Net with Lizzy and Lissa, where we analyze hidden costs and empower you to make your own damn decisions in life. Each episode covers a different facet of life, and at the end of each episode, we each give our takes on whether we think something is net positive or net negative.
Lizzy: I'm Lizzy, a strategist and consultant with over 17 years of experience in finance and investing.
Lissa: And I'm Lissa, a personal finance expert and an accredited financial counselor. We're best friends who talk about money ...
Lizzy: And everything else.
Lissa: Content creation, is it worth it?
Lizzy: First up, running the numbers on content creation. In the same Linktree report we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, they showed that the majority of creators, 139 million, fell into the range of having between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. So yeah, well over half are in that smaller end.
Lissa: Yeah, smaller end. Now, when it comes to making money, Linktree says that around three in five beginner creators have not monetized yet.
Lizzy: Okay.
Lissa: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Lizzy: That sounds about right. For content creators who are making money, a survey from Influencer Marketing Hub in 2023 shows that 69% of content creators say brand deals are their most lucrative revenue source.
Lissa: And in that same survey, 48% of creators say that they've earned $15,000 or less annually.
Lizzy: Yeah, that tracks.
Lissa: All right.
Lizzy: That tracks. But we all know there's more to life than numbers, so let's talk about it.
Lissa: Let's talk about it.
Lizzy: Is content creation worth it? Let's go, Lissa.
Lissa: Well, let's first give context on what we do, because obviously this podcast, we're content creators, but how else do you create content?
Lizzy: Right now, this is my primary source of content for my personal brand, I guess. I do it on behalf of businesses or my main business right now. But historically, it's been a tool for me. First, I was promoting a sub-brand of mine, an event series that I made called Morning Sunshine. So I was creating a lot of content around positivity, purpose, goal setting.
And then when I started my own business, my consulting business, Liz Marie Strategy, content creation was a really huge part of my marketing strategy. And so I was big on social and then found my niche with YouTube and articles, blog content, SEO driven content, and that was really the bulk of my marketing-
Lissa: Got it.
Lizzy: ... over time.
Lissa: So content creation primarily for you has been a tool to market other things, other businesses?
Lizzy: Yes.
Lissa: Okay.
Lizzy: So this is actually my first time creating content for the sake of it.
Lissa: Of creating content.
Lizzy: I'm not doing this podcast to market another business or service. It is really just, I enjoy it, it's content I want to create and put out there. And so this is a little bit new for me. It's always been a means to an end.
Lissa: And I mean, I think that's a good example because content creation can run the gamut of promoting a brand, a product, a service, but it can also be for the sake of entertaining, educating, informing, what have you. There's so many different types of content out there that can simply exist to entertain.
Lizzy: So tell me about your history because yours goes way, way back.
Lissa: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you where I'm at today. Today I create content under my brand Wealth for Women of Color. It's sort of my personal brand as well, because I'm the face of it. I'm the only creator attached to this brand. I create content about personal finance to help more women of color learn how to build wealth and make it more accessible to them.
And so I started that journey with Wealth for Women of Color on TikTok. I just started posting these short little videos and they started getting traction to where I built up an audience pretty quickly within a year, like 20,000 followers, which I think on TikTok can happen pretty quickly if you get a couple of viral videos. And then since then, I have started to focus more on my long-form content on YouTube.
Other context is I used to work at YouTube for a very long time, and I've always loved YouTube. I've always loved the idea of long-form content. I had other channels I tried in the past, but this one I started posting consistently about eight months ago, and I'm almost at 3,000 subscribers, which is great. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm monetizing and it's fun and I enjoy doing it. Especially for finance, in my opinion, the longer-form content allows me to go deeper into a topic because I don't think I can teach investing in a one-minute video.
Lizzy: Right, and most of your content right now is educational and informative.
Lissa: Yeah. I post educational and informative content. I try to throw in a little bit of entertainment in there, here and there, but primarily to educate. So that's what I currently do.
Lizzy: Okay.
Lissa: What I've done in the past, I've had such a long content creation journey because-
Lizzy: You are an entertainer at heart.
Lissa: Yeah, I feel like I never really called myself a creator or anything like that until more recently, but I guess I always have been.
Lizzy: Always.
Lissa: Yeah, back in the day, this was in middle school. I was in middle school in the late '90s, year 2000, and I was making websites to represent me and my friends. So we'd have our pictures, our profiles, little tidbits about us. I would create websites like that. And then after that I would blog. There were so many different blogging sites. Xanga was one of them. I used to blog about my dreams on there. That was a very long time ago. And so all of these were for fun. I wasn't making money on any of this.
So I've had a lot of little things like that. Fast-forward a little bit, when I started working at YouTube, this was around 2011, I also thought, "Hey, why not make a channel? I love making videos." So I started creating entertaining content. The problem was I didn't really have any means of making it cohesive.
Lizzy: There wasn't a strategy behind it.
Lissa: There was no strategy behind it. Some examples of videos that I've made over the years are different types of touchdown dances that you do in the end zone and did a whole thing of that. And it's like these were things that would've-
Lizzy: Killed on TikTok-
Lissa: Killed on TikTok.
Lizzy: ... if TikTok existed then.
Lissa: So this was back in the day, and then it'll be like, I wish I could sing, but I can't. So it'd be a video of me having a song playing and then hit pause on the song, and then it's me continuing the song singing and I can't sing.
Lizzy: Girl.
Lissa: These are all Tik-
Lizzy: You're ahead of your time.
Lissa: Ahead of my time. So I had a lot of things like that. Two other things I really enjoyed, pieces of content that I made. One, there was this video I made called Fresh Prince Jeopardy. And so what it was, I created this set that was like the Jeopardy show where there's answers and you answer with a question and all of the clues related to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
It was a whole thing because I had to get my friends to be a part of it, to help film it, and I had to write all of the clues and then had to edit it. But it was great, I loved the outcome. I still have the video. I'm actually not sure if it's public right now.
And then I made this other game show called Name that '90s R&B Tune, which is like, there was a show back in the day called Name That Tune, where you're like, "I could name that song in two seconds." And then they'll play two seconds of it and then they'll ... Anyway, all that to say, I've just always been a creator. I've always had these ideas and-
Lizzy: It's just been something as long as I've known you, and I think you even have back to middle school, like Lissa Lime-
Lissa: Oh yeah.
Lizzy: ... those days. You've always, it's just something you enjoy doing, which I think is really interesting. Doing it for the love because the process is fun versus doing it for a specific business outcome, and you can also have both, right?
Lissa: Right.
Lizzy: It can serve both purposes.
Lissa: But I never thought back in those days that it was something I could actually make money off of. And so I was never thinking of it.
Lizzy: I don't know if it was then in the way you can now. I think you probably see or hear stories of people who naturally gravitated to those things and then they go into film or they go in, you know.
Lissa: Right. Well, that's why I always wanted to work in the entertainment industry. I did not know what it meant to work in the entertainment industry, but I knew that I got to move to Los Angeles, got to go to college in LA. I studied communications, mass media in college, and I got my masters in entertainment management because I was like, "Oh, I want to work in TV and film." I didn't know what that meant. Am I going to be behind a camera? Am I going to be a producer, a director? I didn't even know what those words meant to be honest.
Lizzy: For sure.
Lissa: I just knew I wanted to be-
Lizzy: Most people don't, I think.
Lissa: Yeah, I just wanted to be in that world. It didn't end up happening that way. I ended up twisting and turning, doing other things in my career, but then I've ended up right back here where now I'm creating content.
Lizzy: Exactly. And now you have more of a lens. I mean, I feel like we talk about this stuff all the time, and even just since we both started our journey as creators, you've learned so much and you already knew so much to begin with, I think, just having worked at YouTube and getting that exposure, that insider lens.
Lissa: And I'm no different from most people, actually, I still think my videos are cringe. I was going to say, all my first videos ever, cringe.
Lizzy: Oh, yeah. I think that's the way it goes.
Lissa: Natural, it's just natural. I'm going to leave them up. They're there. It is what it is. But yeah, that's the journey. And then it wasn't until recently that I realized not only can I use content as a marketing tool for my business because I also do financial coaching, but it can be a part of the business. It actually is where I make the most money in my business is through content creation.
Lizzy: So talk about that, because that was something I honestly never really realized or was unaware of until this started happening for you.
Lissa: Yeah, my first brand deal. So a brand deal essentially for those who don't know is when other brands want you, a creator, to help promote their brand. There are different types of deals that can happen, but in more recent years, it's been they'll pay you to create a video where you mention them or tag them and they'll pay you a flat fee.
The first brand deal I got offered when I started getting a couple thousand followers on TikTok was this deal for a 20-second video for $300. That is a very low amount relative, just so you guys know. But I had never gotten a brand deal offered to me before. So I was like, "The second I take this, sign it, do a video, I can say I am a paid influencer."
Lizzy: Yeah, for sure.
Lissa: And so I said yes to it. I think the terms of that deal were that I had to keep it up for three months or something like that. Because that determines how much you actually get paid is who has the rights to it, where is it going to be posted, how long does it have to stay up, what do you have to say in it? There's so many different things like that. And so that was my very, very first paid brand deal that I can remember, and it was a couple of years ago.
Lizzy: Okay. And how has that evolved? Is that a big part of your business now?
Lissa: I would say it's big in terms of, I've had a couple of big deals that have contributed to my business the last two years, so five figure range, over 20,000 for a day's work, which Is great, but the problem is that's once a year. I haven't gotten to the point where I'm getting those regularly.
I actually don't have brand deals every month. Some creators do. I think for me it slowed down because I've taken these pauses from posting content, and we'll talk about that, why. I've taken pauses on TikTok and Instagram. I'm focusing a lot on YouTube right now. I'm going to start posting more short form. But getting to this consistent habit of posting on every platform has been a struggle for me. So I think aligned with how often I'm posting is how frequently I get brand deals.
Lizzy: Makes sense, honestly.
Lissa: But I will say I still get them from time to time. They're more in the 1,000 range now. I rarely will take anything less than 1,000. And this is for a combined following of, I don't know, 30,000, which is higher than that, what is that stat we said earlier where most influencers are micro influencers between 1,000 and 10,000? So I have more followers than that, but to be honest, my followers, especially on TikTok, are like a vanity metric. Those are not the people who are actually watching my videos.
Lizzy: Isn't that so interesting?
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: I mean, if we want to get into it, that's one of the challenges in navigating this is you can build up a following, but does it really translate to anything in terms of organic selling or whatever that may mean. And you're investing so much in getting there and you may be building the wrong audience, right?
Lissa: Something I will say, I mentioned that I grew an audience pretty quickly over a year. To be honest though, it wasn't like I wasn't an overnight success. I think what you see a lot, especially on TikTok, is one video will go super viral and you'll go from 1,000 followers to 100,000. I actually think that that's worse than having steady growth because you're getting a whole new funnel of people who liked you for that one video. So unless you can create the kind of appeal that that same video has over and over and over again, those people are going to not care and not stick with you.
Lizzy: You're typecast in that specific type of content.
Lissa: Yeah, whereas I feel like I rarely had, I haven't even had any super viral videos. I've had videos do well, and over time, every day I get new followers. I never wake up and all of a sudden I've doubled my following.
Lizzy: Right. It just kind of stays there.
Lissa: Sometimes I feel like we all wish for that, but it's kind of-
Lizzy: Maybe not as meaningful or as sustainable long term.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: That makes a lot of sense. All right, so let's dive into these costs.
Lissa: Oh yeah, the costs of content creation. Time.
Lizzy: Time.
Lissa: Time.
Lizzy: That's the biggest one in my opinion, time and the energy. I mean, creativity is a resource. It is a finite resource, and it takes a lot. For people who don't create content, I think a lot of people who don't create content are like, "Oh, you're just posting. It's easy." Talk to me a little bit about everything that goes into it.
Lissa: Well, I do think there are everyday people who post content because they catch something funny happening on the street or something, and they'll post it and it'll go viral and they might get some followers, get a lot of comments, engagement. Whether or not they can monetize that clip or their account is another thing.
So there's that. There's that level of you don't even need a setup, you just capture things as they happen, use your phone. Most people have a phone. I think when you get into more of the consistent content creation, then you start to think about what tools do I need, software for tracking everything, editing software, but then also, do you need a better camera, a better microphone?
Lizzy: Lighting.
Lissa: Lighting, actual equipment. And then for more long form, typically you see it more polished where you have-
Lizzy: We're in the studio.
Lissa: Yeah, we're in the studio with actual cameras versus just your phone. Even though phones do really, really-
Lizzy: Great video.
Lissa: ... great video these days. So I think there's a lot of ways you can do it, but depending on how you choose to do your setup, it can take a lot of time and energy, and then also the equipment. Because I'll have to set up my lighting anytime I film. I kind of keep it all ready to go, I just have to place it, but it still takes effort.
Lizzy: Oh, of course, yeah.
Lissa: Not just all of a sudden I come up with an idea and I start talking because I create long form on YouTube, so I want it to be a little more polished and more prepared.
Lizzy: So for me, I'm no longer creating YouTube, but my channel is still active, I've monetized. I don't think I've posted a video in two or three years, but it's a little steady stream. But I was very seriously engaged in it for a while, and it took me a lot of time to figure out my workflow. I got it down to a very well-oiled machine and I outsourced different parts of it. I'm not a script person, but I would outline.
So first, brainstorm topics, research are these aligned from a keyword standpoint? Are people searching for these? Do people want these topics? Brainstorm it, outline the episode or whatever the video's going to be. And then it would be like, okay, plan a shoot day. It's a big production. At the time, I didn't have a consistent space in my apartment, so get it all set up, I'm going to get my makeup. I had to do the whole thing. I was just shooting on my phone, but I had lights and a backdrop and stuff. And then upload the files, these files are huge.
Lissa: Yeah, take forever.
Lizzy: Transport this media. I had a video editor, so I had everything organized a certain way. She would edit. I have to review, give feedback, add everything in. I had someone else doing my thumbnails and my descriptions, adding SEO content. I would take a transcript of every video and turn it into a blog, so I had that outsourced. Then you're posting, you have to add end screens and all the little things and engaging, sharing on other socials. It is a lot. These are a lot of steps way, way beyond just filming.
Lissa: Yeah, because the idea is one thing, creating the content is another. And then you're actually marketing your own content, which is the whole optimizations you were talking about. This is more so for long form on YouTube, for example, you have to think of the thumbnail and title and what you're going to put in the description and like-
Lizzy: How are people going to find this? If you're just doing it for your pleasure because you enjoy it, maybe that doesn't matter so much. But if the whole point is for the content to be found or for the content to be found so that your business is then found, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you're not putting energy into those things.
Lissa: Well, I guess let's talk about the difference we alluded to earlier. You alluded to some people do it for fun, purely as a hobby. So for those people, do you think there's a setup or is it more organic or does it vary?
Lizzy: I think it totally varies. Like for you, when you did the Jeopardy, you put a lot of energy and effort and planning into that for your enjoyment. Now, that's not to say maybe you didn't hope it would blow up. So I think there's people that this is what I like to do. And then sometimes those people, just for the love of it, end up finding an audience and getting popular, and then maybe over time they get more strategic. I think that's a common evolution. What do you think?
Lissa: Well, because the reason I'm thinking of that is because people do it for different reasons, and it's okay. It doesn't matter what your reason is. Is it for fun or is it because you want to make money? I think there's somewhere in the middle where if you want to do it for money, you have to think about what can you sustain doing for long-term that you'll still enjoy, still feel passionate about? Because if you do it purely for a supposed cash grab or you think you're just going to make money, you don't enjoy it at all, it is like a job. It's like how much time are you going to put into it before you burn out?
Lizzy: It's hard, people may not understand that. It's hard work to do all of this stuff. It is time-consuming. It takes a lot of creative energy. Some of it is very tedious. You have to be consistent, and that might be the hardest part is doing it consistently week in and week out, because that's such a huge factor in your success ultimately.
Lissa: I mean, consistency is probably the biggest reason that I hadn't built an audience earlier in life. I would post for a couple months and then, I wouldn't say I got burnt out, but I just didn't have a strategy, didn't have a plan. And then I'd stop and not post for a year, and then I'd try to come back to it.
And I think now, when I actually grew my TikTok, I was like, "No, I'm posting every day for three, four months." And then I did that, and then I scaled back to, okay, a couple times a week, and my growth aligned with how consistent I was being, which kind of sucks because that means you have to always be on.
Lizzy: Right. I think that's one of the other costs. And you see that and you see burnout a lot because it's like you got to keep feeding the machine, which is why I, and I know you do too, gravitate to more evergreen sources. So an Instagram, a TikTok. On TikTok there's a little bit more I think, where they're serving you not immediate, most recent, fresh content, but the expectation is to constantly be creating more all the time.
Whereas something that's more search-based, like YouTube or blogs where you can get picked up by Google and other search engines, that's something use ... You create it once and it could blow up in 10 years, but it always lives there. And so it builds momentum. It's kind of like compound interest, it grows and grows on itself. That I found to be much more sustainable for me. Like I said, I'm still making money. I haven't posted a video in-
Lissa: Two years.
Lizzy: Yeah, two or three years. And part of me is like, "Wow, if I had continued." But my business strategy changed. But that's very different than I constantly have to post forever and ever.
Lissa: Which is what I feel. Probably Instagram is the one I've struggled with the most because before, I felt I was spending a lot of time creating posts, reels, and carousels and posts, and then once it's up and it has its initial go, I found that none of those posts were ever getting picked up again or looked at. They're on my feed, so it looks nice on my profile, but other than that, they're not.
Whereas on YouTube, for example, I posted a video sometime six months ago about emergency funds, and it did okay, and then went silent. And then I created a video later on where I alluded to that video, pointed to it, put a card on the screen for it, and then immediately it went up. But then that wasn't it, it started just getting more traction altogether. So it's like, the way the search and discovery on YouTube works is amazing, which is why it's been around for so long.
Lizzy: It's why it's YouTube.
Lissa: It's why it's YouTube and why it's the second-largest search engine in the world after Google, both of who are owned by the same company.
Lizzy: Brothers.
Lissa: Yeah, they're brothers. So yeah, I do gravitate towards evergreen content. All that to say, not all my content is evergreen. There's a strategy behind posting evergreen stuff versus trending stuff, because if something is trending, it's a topic people are currently talking about, searching for, you're more likely to get traction on it now.
Lizzy: Sure.
Lissa: But the difficulty of keeping up with trends is that you have to constantly create and immediately.
Lizzy: Right. And I think in terms of building a long-term sustainable audience, that might be more challenging if you're just hopping on trends because they may not be aligned with your other content or who you're trying to reach at the end of the day. And I think that's something that can be a challenge in general if you have a strategic targeted approach to your content, is finding the right audience and having them find you and figuring out what to post. And you'll see that sometimes where you maybe have some success, but it's actually not aligned with where you want to be. And how do you make that shift? I feel like you experienced that on TikTok at a certain point.
Lissa: Yeah, basically. I feel like, well, TikTok has just always been a struggle for me. It's this weird place where there are posts that get picked up and that will stay relevant throughout time, but also you can't control it. So there are many times where I post something and it feels like, yeah, after that initial go, it's just-
Lizzy: In the void?
Lissa: It's in the void, it doesn't exist anymore. I think what you see on TikTok a lot is people will repost it again later. That's why it has the watermarks and it's worse quality because it's a re-upload of a re-upload of a re-upload. And then at that point it's just like, oh my God, there's too much on here to sift through.
Lizzy: Sure.
Lissa: So I struggle with that too, as a creator is I know that there's a game to be played when you are consistent and posting a lot and quantity almost as important as quality. Then I've scaled back because I'm like, "I think I'd rather create more quality."
Lizzy: That's an ongoing battle. I mean, I think there's probably a point of diminishing returns in terms of quality, but I mean, it seems like fairly strong correlation of volume and growth over time if you're consistent, but it's tough. I've had that too, of using different schedulers for Instagram or something where you can repost old posts, and that was a mental block for me. I'm like, "I did this already." But the fact is, who cares? No one saw it.
Lissa: And no one's going to remember and say-
Lizzy: No one's going to remember.
Lissa: ... "Oh, Liz already posted this." And if they did, they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I forgot about this."
Lizzy: Or who cares what they think?
Lissa: Who cares? Who cares?
Lizzy: Let's talk about the mental and emotional cost because this is a huge thing. It's a journey, right, going through your own head before you create, after you've put something out there?
Lissa: Oh, the mental cost. I used to care more about, all right, I hope this gets likes and views in the first couple hours. I'm moving a little bit away from that and letting it do its thing before I read into the analytics. And then now I'll take the analytics for, all right, why did this perform well? That's another reason why I love YouTube, it has so much more in-depth analytics than the other platforms.
But before, I used to stress out about, oh my God, no one watched this or someone hit the dislike button and it's going to ruin. But as a creator, you have to push those emotions to the side and get very practical with it and just take whatever feedback you get or whatever engagement you get or don't get, whatever your analytics say, and use that as a tool to tweak your strategy for the future, to redo that video, but change the intro or to not do that video because clearly no one cares about that topic or whatever. You have to test things and experiment and be okay with that.
But that's not to diminish the reality of the mental and emotional toll that it's like, you put so much effort into this thing and no one's seeing it because the algorithm didn't help you out. It's tough.
Lizzy: It's tough. I think for me, I was able to set some of that aside on YouTube because I wasn't a big YouTube person. I knew that I knew very little about it. So my approach from the very beginning was like, fuck it, it's good enough, which is so different from my approach on Instagram.
Lissa: Which is great.
Lizzy: It was very healthy for me. Now, there's certain things where I would get comments like, oh, this little detail. And in my head I'm like, "Fuck it. I put something out there. Do you not understand?"
Lissa: See, everyone needs to have that mentality.
Lizzy: But I think that's only because I knew this was not my realm, even just watching YouTube. I do to some extent, but I didn't participate in it, so I didn't have enough information to be a perfectionist.
Lissa: Well, that reminds me, and that's a great point to make because there's a lot of people, and I even do this, who talk about best practices, like do this with your thumbnail and title, make sure your intro hooks people. And those are all things that do work. They stood the test of time.
I went to a conference last year and there was a YouTube creator who did a talk about how he doesn't do anything by the book. He's like, "I don't do a quick, snappy intro. I just kind of ease into it." He's like, "I don't do lots of edits where it makes jump cuts." He's like, "I just talk and people enjoy it." And then he's like, "I don't do flashy thumbnails. I do this janky-looking font and just write what the video's about."
And it turns out, his audience, he's in his probably 50s or 60s, he creates personal finance content about retirement and social security. His audience skews older and that older audience, they don't care about those various things.
Lizzy: Right. And I also think on YouTube specifically, there is a growing maybe backlash, or there are people who appreciate the opposite because now they're used to all of those best practices.
Lissa: So they're like, "Yeah, you can slow down the way you talk. It doesn't have to be like, 'Hi, my name is Lissa and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to talk about 10 things. All right, number 1.' It doesn't have to be like that."
Lizzy: It's so hard though because I think there's a mindset sometimes for creators of, if I'm creating good content, people will find it and that's just factually not true.
Lissa: It's not.
Lizzy: But then there are examples where if you're creating valuable content, and good not necessarily meaning flashy, good meaning worthwhile, some people will find that and you'll find your audience. I am curious if you have thoughts on what that difference is. Is it the consistency? Is it a little bit of luck and just happening to key in on something people want or need?
Lissa: I think it's all those elements. At the end of the day, well, watch time is very important. It tells this algorithm, this robot, this machine that whatever's in this piece of content, it was interesting enough that someone stayed through the whole video or through a lot of the video. And if on average, everyone that's coming to a video is watching it all the way through, there's something good about it.
And the problem with when you're doing your own style and not doing it according to best practice, it just might take a while to find those people. But once those people are found, and this machine starts to know, oh, it seems like this piece of content is being watched by women all the way through, let's serve it to more women and see if they keep watching it all the way through. And then so it does feed on itself, but it's getting that initial few views or whatever is what will determine almost the fate of a piece of content.
Lizzy: Sure, it makes sense.
Lissa: But I do think it's a lot of factors. If someone stumbles across something a year later and then shares it with a friend, like you said, you have a lot of evergreen content. Liz's videos teach about branding and brand strategy. And if I'm creating a brand today in 2024, your videos from 2021 are still relevant. And if it's relevant to me, I'll share it with another creator friend who it might be relevant for. There you go, it's being shared. And so it can take time, but there's always that possibility. You've already created the thing, so yeah.
Lizzy: Yeah, which that's another element is repurposing content, not in the sense of reposting, but you create it for one thing, how are you going to maximize the value of that? And that can be a burden too. So I mentioned I would create a video, and from that video I would get some social content and a blog post. And actually just to put people on game, my blog on my website drove way more traffic and actually way more sales than YouTube ever did. So don't sleep on blogs, especially if it's educational content.
But I remember falling into that of, actually, you and I just discussed this the other day, should we put stuff on TikTok? We're creating content for Instagram. It's similar. It's maybe just that last little percentage of extra effort. Should you or do you focus? And I think people fall into that and feel like they have to be everywhere because they already have the content, but then that gets overwhelming. It's a challenge.
Lissa: I think in the past, like years ago, I would try to do too many platforms at once, and it wasn't till I really just focused on one that I've built my first audience, a meaningful audience where I could actually monetize, get brand deals and create a company out of it. I don't think that's the right route for everyone, but for me, having that focus actually helped.
Lizzy: Yeah, I think that makes sense. And every platform is different. So if you're working through many of them at the same time, it might be harder or take a lot more energy to learn what's going to work on each one.
Lissa: I have some interesting thoughts on what are the legal costs of content creation.
Lizzy: Oh, okay. I have a very specific example, so just in terms of copyright. There's people out there that are grabbing a video, grabbing a meme, grabbing a photo, reposting, sharing someone else's video or whatever on Instagram. All that's technically illegal, like highly illegal. And there's kind of a don't ask, don't tell policy that creates a lot of bad habits.
We both had copyright classes at UCLA, so we learned a lot of this. I had a PDF guide, a brand archetypes guide on my website. It was like 20 pages, a lot of detail. And one thumbnail that I had grabbed was of Malala Yousafzai. I couldn't find a royalty-free photo of her. This is not a person that's going to be on Unsplash. So I grabbed one off of Google. Somehow it got scraped and found even in a PDF, which are not indexed. I got a cease and desist, went through this whole process, and I think I ended up settling and paying 600 bucks-
Lissa: Oh my gosh.
Lizzy: ... for a tiny thumbnail in an irrelevant document. It could have been worse, right? And so those are things I think the average person isn't thinking about. YouTube I think it has a friendly approach of they'll remove your music. I've had that happen on one video, I think, versus taking real action. It might be only a matter of time. I don't know, do you think it's too far gone, or do you think the regulation of it is going to increase?
Lissa: I think it depends on the platform. So if you think about Instagram where if someone posts a funny meme, or if someone creates a meme out of an image of, I don't know, someone getting dunked on in a basketball game and they use that same image in the meme, technically the people creating that meme don't own that image. But having created this new piece of content with it, they can argue that there's enough differentiation that they've created on it to create this new piece of content.
That's not to say that the owner of the image can't come after each of those accounts, but will they? That takes a lot of legal power and probably for little return. They'll probably just serve a cease and desist, and it's just a lot of work where allowing it to happen might actually help the owner of the image.
Lizzy: Exposure.
Lissa: Exposure, right. So there's that where, like you said, legally it's probably not okay, but if something's going to actually happen, who knows? On YouTube with music specifically, I think for me personally, I'm lucky that my first job out of grad school was in music licensing. So I kind of understand how it works to use music or not use music. And YouTube being such a big player in the game of video, they have a copyright strike system that if you do something wrong on it, they'll give you warnings, they'll make you take down the video or not allow you to use the music.
They also now have a built-in system whereby you can license music directly through the platform. It's not like a full cat, you can't license any Drake songs or anything like that. But I think there'll be more of that because otherwise it'd be a huge miss for the major record labels and publishing houses. But that's why it's such a big deal for TikTok lives on music being available.
Lizzy: It's honestly fascinating that that even exists, that you went from YouTube, you can't use my music in this.
Lissa: To now you can use any music you want on a video.
Lizzy: And it's encouraged and it's smart from a marketing perspective for these artists. I don't know how they're being compensated, but-
Lissa: It is tricky though for an artist, because what if you don't want your song associated with, I don't know, someone of a different political background or something, right?
Lizzy: Right, it could be co-opted.
Lissa: No control over it as a creator, as an artist, but you might be making money off of it. So it's like this weird evolution of how both content and the music industry has evolved over time. But yeah, the everyday person who's creating content probably won't understand a lot about copyright of images, copyright of music. It's a interesting arena.
Lizzy: Right, and you can get caught up without even realizing it.
Lissa: There are legal costs. Luckily for most of these platforms, there'll be warnings and there's guidance, there's educational articles where you can learn, but for the most part, try not to use stuff that's not yours.
Lizzy: Quick story time.
Audio: Story time.
Lizzy: This is not about content creation, but it's about music licensing. So back in the day when you had to illegally download music on LimeWire-
Lissa: Yeah, we all did that.
Lizzy: We all did that.
Lissa: All millennials for sure.
Lizzy: One of my other best friends, we were, this was when we were at UCLA, so my freshman year. I was 17. The internet at UCLA, like in the dorms, was highly, highly monitored. So you could not download music there, you would get caught immediately. So she used to come home with me on the weekend and go to my mom's house where we had trash internet at the time, and it would be like four days to download this song, but we used to hook ourselves up.
But one time she forgot to pause it, and so she came back to UCLA and a song downloaded and she got caught. I don't know if she ended up having to pay, but they at least threatened with 20 grand, like crazy, crazy fines for illegally downloading music.
Lissa: That is wild.
Lizzy: It was the wild, wild west back then, a crazy time.
Lissa: See, and it's stuff like that. I would love to put more music in my content, but I want to make sure that my content won't ever get taken down and that it is evergreen. So yeah, I'm very-
Lizzy: You got to pick your spots, even though you might be missing out on opportunities. It's tough.
Lissa: One last thing. For people who, because I get this a lot. I have a lot of friends who are like, "I want to create content," but they'll have an excuse of, nah, someone else is already doing that, or there's too many content creators already out there, 200 plus million in the world, or it's too hard. What advice would you have for someone who's a creative and who could potentially benefit emotionally or financially from creating content?
Lizzy: They're not me. I think if this is what you want to do, put it out there. Do it, why not? What do you have to lose? You do it and no one watches? No one was watching when you weren't doing it.
Lissa: Yeah, no one would've known anyway.
Lizzy: Who cares? There are so many people in the world, so there's room for so many different perspectives, little niche subcultures. You never know what's going to resonate with someone. Your style, the way you speak, your point of view, it doesn't matter. A million people could do a video on the same topic and they're all going to be different. So I don't think that you should let any of that stop you. To me, that's just fear talking.
Lissa: Have you ever watched a terrible show on Netflix or a movie, they're not stopping creating content.
Lizzy: Wait, oh my God.
Lissa: What?
Lizzy: I've been getting ... Story time number two.
Lissa: Story time. Story time. You know what? I want a new segment for this show. I was going to tell you, we might as well do this on air. Instead of a story time segment, a permission to go on a tangent.
Lizzy: Oh, yeah. Okay.
Lissa: And I'll like, "Permission-"
Lizzy: Permission to go on a tangent?
Lissa: Granted.
Lizzy: Okay. Oh, this is low-key embarrassing. So I read a lot, lots and lots of books on Kindle, and I alternate between substance and cheesy, mindless romance novels. So a couple weeks ago, I started getting Instagram ads flooded for these other apps. I'm assuming it's self-published romance novels, and some of them are wild. But then there's these other apps that turn them into shows, but they're all shorts. And girl, the ads of Instagram got me hooked on these stupid, cheesy, cheesy shows, but they're like 60 seconds at a time, each little episode.
Lissa: Are they AI-created?
Lizzy: No.
Lissa: So someone created it from the-
Lizzy: No, no, real actors, terrible actors, real terrible actors, but quality filming, quality sets. But the gating is wild. So there's this one stupid show that I've watched in ads, and then you download the app because you're already hooked and you start watching the episodes and it's like 50 credits for each short. That's a chapter.
Lissa: So you've been paying for-
Lizzy: I haven't paid, but the first few, you can watch an ad to get the credits. So I've probably, between what was accessible on the profile and the credits, seen 15 episodes of this one, 60-second episodes. But there's like 100 in the show, and the credits are crazy expensive.
Lissa: Oh my gosh.
Lizzy: I'm like, "I would pay for a membership." I don't watch a lot of content, so if something grabs me, I'd be like, "I'll pay 20 bucks a month or whatever to watch this stuff." No, it worked out to, on the one, I think it would be 50 bucks just to watch this one little show. I'm like, "Nah, this is where I draw the line"
Lissa: Moral of the story, there is an audience for everything.
Lizzy: These are terrible, girl, terrible.
Lissa: You might have to link them in the description-
Lizzy: I will.
Lissa: ... to show people what it is you're obsessed with.
Lizzy: Terrible, and it still gets me. And then they keep showing me a new ... The marketing is masterful.
Lissa: That's funny. I mean, you got something to create as cheesy as it is, someone like Liz will watch.
Lizzy: I'll get sucked in, sucked in.
Lissa: That's hilarious, man. All right, 20 Cents?
Lizzy: 20 Cents.
Lissa: 20 Cents is the segment of the show where both Lizzy and myself, Lissa, each get 60 seconds to give our 2 cents on today's topic of content creation. Whether we think it's a net positive or a net negative, where does 20 Cents come from?
Lizzy: Well, you get the opinion of two dimes, y'all.
Lissa: All right, Liz, you are up for 60 seconds on the clock. For you, is content creation worth it?
Lizzy: Yes, that's why I'm here. But I'm going to back this up by saying my view on it has shifted. So first I used it as a tool for my business, and I do think that was worth it. It was a lot of work and it was very stressful. It took a long time to find a system that worked for me. And I actually outsourced a lot, which we didn't dive into in too much detail. So it was actually a cost center, I think technically, but I got business from it and got my brand out there.
Now I'm doing it for the love of the game, and I get to sit here and shoot the shit with my best friend, and it is so fun. And who knows what will come of this? So it's absolutely worth it. We're putting up money, we're spending to make this happen, and I love every minute of it.
Lissa: All right.
Lizzy: Net positive.
Lissa: Net positive for Liz. All right.
Lizzy: All right, Lissa.
Lissa: For me, obviously, I'm a content creator. That's how I introduce myself these days for the most part. I create content, Wealth for Women of Color, Net Net Podcast. I have some other ideas coming on the way. So net positive for me.
I will say one of the benefits that I didn't talk about in this episode was that I love not only sharing my thoughts and ideas, but over time, having been a content creator, I've learned to be better at it. I've gotten better at organizing thoughts in my mind to share it with others, because otherwise it would be a whole mess if I couldn't do that. So I feel like I've improved those skills of mine, which are important to me. So overall, it's been net positive.
Lizzy: Net positive. That's an easy one.
Lissa: Very easy.
Lizzy: Easy, baby.
Lissa: Easy. Well, remember, this is what we think right now at this moment in time. Not everyone has to create content, but if you want to, why not?
Lizzy: Let's go.
Lissa: So what do you think? Is content creation worth it?
Lizzy: Hit us up. Let us know what you think. DM us on Instagram, @netnetpodcast, or email us at hi@netnetpodcast.com. And if you want to follow us individually, here's where you can find us.
Lissa: I'm @wealthforwomenofcolor on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Lizzy: And I'm @live_well_lizzy on Instagram and TikTok.
Lissa: All references, statistics and resources mentioned can be found in our show notes. This podcast is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and should not be constituted as financial advice. Remember to always do your own research, consult a professional as needed, and feel empowered to make your own damn decisions.