The internet sold us a dream. Build an audience. Post valuable content. Grow to 10,000 followers. Then monetize. Launch a course. Build a membership. Scale to six figures. Hire a team. Become a thought leader. I bought into this dream too. It left me exhausted and broke. These online gurus set you up to completely misunderstand how creator businesses actually work. It’s hard to escape because everyone around you has been fed the same playbook. I spent three years building newsletters, launching programs, and working with 3,000+ creators. I figured out how creator businesses really work by watching who actually makes money. Here’s the brutal truth about the creator economy that nobody wants you to know... The disgusting lie hidden in plain sight The traditional path teaches us to build an audience first, monetize later. This is financial suicide. So you spend 12-24 months posting content, growing followers, “providing value” — all without making a dollar. You’re told this is “planting seeds” and “building trust.” It’s b*s. and you know it. What’s really happening is you’re working for free while social media platforms extract value from your content. They get ad revenue. You get likes and comments. Every time a creator guru tells you “focus on audience growth first,” they’re keeping you broke. Why? Because they make money selling you courses on how to grow your audience. They don’t make money from their audience — they make it from YOU. Let’s go deeper down the rabbit hole. All the advice you consume about building a creator business comes from people who built their business in 2015-2019. Back then, social media algorithms were different. Competition was lower. People hadn’t heard this advice 10,000 times yet. That world doesn’t exist anymore. Yet no one questions whether 2015 strategies work in 2025. It’s odd when you think about it because creators work their entire lives following outdated playbooks. Now we get to the math problem. Most creators are told they need 10,000 followers before they can make real money. Some say 50,000. The magic number keeps moving. But here’s what nobody tells you: Audience size doesn’t determine income. I’ve seen creators with 500 subscribers making $5K/month. I’ve seen creators with 50,000 followers making $200/month. The difference isn’t audience size. It’s business model. But the creator economy Industrial Complex doesn’t want you to know that. If you knew you could monetize with 200 people, you wouldn’t buy their $2,000 “Scale to 100K Followers” course. You’d just build an offer and sell it. Maybe you’re reading this thinking “But Ana, I only have 1,000 followers. I need to grow first.” The lie continues. You don’t need more followers. You need more revenue per follower. A creator with 1,000 followers making $10 per follower per year earns $10,000. A creator with 10,000 followers making $1 per follower earns the same. Except the first creator spent 3 months building their business. The second spent 3 years. The average creator doesn’t know that. So they keep posting. They keep hoping. They keep waiting for the day they’re “big enough” to monetize. That day never comes. Now we get to the good bit. Successful creators do the opposite of what you’re told. They don’t build audiences. They build offers. They don’t wait until they’re “ready.” They launch immediately. They don’t scale. They stay small and charge premium prices. It’s why you’re seeing creators with tiny audiences making $10K-$30K months. While influencers with millions of followers are broke. The next question is why... The bigger picture that’s easy to misunderstand None of this is a conspiracy. Creator coaches and social media gurus aren’t trying to screw you. They’re just repeating what worked for them in 2017. But here’s what billionaire investor Naval Ravikant said: “Play long-term games with long-term people.” This tiny statement changed everything for me. Here’s what it means: The creator economy rewards depth, not breadth. One client who pays you $5K and stays for two years is worth more than 100 people who buy your $97 course once. But the entire creator advice industry is built on selling you courses. So they teach you to build $97 products. Then they tell you that you need 10,000 followers to sell enough of them to make real money. It must be this way. Their business model depends on it. These short-term tactics create the hamster wheel. Post content → grow audience → launch cheap product → make $3K → do it all again next month. Tax on your time. Tax on your energy. Tax on your mental health. When you need more money, you need more followers. You can’t scale your income without scaling your audience. This game of chasing followers is happening to every creator. It’s a deadly trap. And history shows it won’t stop. It gets worse. As you grow your audience, engagement goes down. Algorithms change. Platforms die. What worked on Twitter doesn’t work on LinkedIn. It definitely won’t work on Substack. What worked in 2023 doesn’t work in 2025. So you’re on a treadmill. You must keep running just to stay in place. You may not care. But when your income depends on platforms you don’t control, algorithms you can’t predict, and audiences that expect free content forever... you don’t have a business. You have a hobby that occasionally pays. This entire process also creates burnout. Given that most creators start because they want freedom and flexibility, ending up more stressed than their corporate job is a cruel irony. “I quit my job to be a creator. Now I work 12-hour days and make less money.” A normal person would see this as failure. A successful creator would think to themselves, “Did I build a bad business or did I follow bad advice?” Can you now start to see the illusion? People work for years building audiences without understanding what they’re really building. You could even call this modern sharecropping. It’s so sophisticated most creators will never work it out. And unless you understand how creator businesses work, you’ll be enslaved by them. No matter how great your content is, how engaged your audience is, or how many followers you have... you cannot outrun this systematic flaw. The flow-on effects nobody is paying attention to We’re living in two separate creator economies. One economy is the 2015-2019 playbook: massive audiences, cheap products, scale through volume, constant content, social media dependence. The other economy is emerging now: small audiences, premium pricing, depth over breadth, systemized launches, platform independence. These two economies are diverging. And most creators haven’t figured it out. The limitations of the old model are becoming obvious. Creators are burning out. Platforms are changing rules. Ad revenue is collapsing. Audiences are exhausted. This is why we’re seeing mass creator exodus right now. People going back to corporate jobs. It’s a sign the old creator economy playbook is broken. The old world assumed infinite attention and infinite energy. The incentives made no sense for the creator or the audience. As more creators opt out, things will keep breaking. What’s really happening is the market is quietly rearranging itself. The way people build businesses, the way they monetize, the way they define success — it’s all fracturing. In the meantime, the guru Industrial Complex will continue selling the old playbook. They’ll tell you that you need more followers, more content, more products. Eventually more creators will wake up to the fact that this path leads nowhere. This isn’t a reality to be afraid of. It’s a huge opportunity. But it starts with understanding why the old model is broken, and why most creators’ understanding of how business works is backwards. What I’m doing I am not a multi millionaire. And I don’t know everything there is to know about business. I’m nowhere near as successful as some of the creators on social media. I’m writing about this in my 40s because I’m dealing with it right now. I built a newsletter to $50K/month in 14 months. I work 2 hours a day. I started with 0 subscribers, not 50,000. I am mostly active on 1 platform, not on 10. I’ve been forced to figure out how creator businesses really work. If I followed the traditional advice, I’d still be “building my audience” and making $500/month. So I’m never going back to the old playbook. I’m focusing on premium pricing, small audiences, and depth. Every day I learn more about what actually makes money (versus what gurus say makes money), so I can prepare for the next phase of the creator economy. I study business models. I learn from people making real money, not people teaching how to make money. I stay curious. I don’t fear going against the grain. What this really means for you Understanding the lie — that’s been planted in your mind by the creator guru Industrial Complex — is the first step. The next part is to rethink what success looks like. That’ll likely lead you to stop chasing followers and start building offers. You’ll probably realize you don’t need a massive audience to make real money. The old creator dream is to hit 100K followers and monetize with ads, sponsorships, and $97 courses. In most niches this is now unprofitable. It forces you to be a content machine, forever at the mercy of algorithms. Plus, the exhaustion of posting daily causes enormous stress and limits your options. You’ll need to look at alternative business models. Small audiences. Premium pricing. High-ticket offers. Depth over breadth. The final part is freedom. The whole myth is you build a creator business to have freedom. But if you’re posting 3X a day, launching every other week, and constantly chasing growth... you’re less free than you were in your 9-to-5. Harsh truth: Most
