The Creator Economy Is an On-Ramp to Self-Employment
7 income-generating skills to acquire to conquer the creator economy.
The more value we generate in the marketplace, the more opportunities come our way. Obtaining new skills and knowledge is the quickest path to make yourself marketable and valuable. There is no easier time to do so. If you can increase your human capital (the work you do like creating an online business through scalable income) the more income you’ll generate.
Thus, knowledge-based skills are an investment in your future self, leading to rewards in the long term. Think short-term pain (output, like an expense for a class or course) to get long-term rewards (more income generated from your increased skillset).
Here are 7 skills that can help you earn in the creator economy
1. Writing well
If you can write, you will always have a job. Writing well is one of the most important skills in today’s creator economy.
Here is a universal truth — put your thoughts on paper and then distribute them.
Put your thoughts in code. Put your business in code.
Most influencers started with writing; Leo Babauta from Zen Habits. Samantha Irby, who wrote the bestseller, We Will Never Meet in Real Life. And, Tim Ferriss, who started his empire blogging (and puts out one of the most comprehensive newsletters each Friday for his large audience, for free.
They all started with writing.
When I decided to get serious about making money online, the first money I spent was for a writing class. It was a $600 expense that made me money within a few months of sharing publicly.
- At the bare minimum, it got me thinking about how to write better.
- The maximum upside is that I’m now earning a living from freelance writing and blogging.
Writing is an income-generating skill with a quick return thanks to easy access to the internet.
2. How to build a blog
Learn high-paying skills, like how to build a blog.
- No, you don’t have to take a coding class. Although that is a valuable skill in the creator economy, but you should know how to build a basic blog.
- No, you don’t have to build blogs as part of your online business unless you want to.
But if a Luddite like me can — I’ve made several blogs for myself and my partner (he is even less tech-savvy than I am) — using WordPress and SiteGround, so can you.
When you build your own website, you learn a lot about marketing, SEO, and paid ads. Experimenting with creating a blog is a great way to grow your skills. Google “How to build a blog.” You’ll find plenty of solid resources on everything required to build a basic blog.
This doesn’t require a class. Don’t make the mistake I did. I paid for a course that was well over $1000 that taught how to be a successful blogger. I still haven’t finished the course, because it isn’t very good.
Information on how to build a basic blog is constantly evolving, and you can find it all for free. This isn’t a skill you have to pay for to get better at. In fact, building it will be the best course of action for learning how to do it.
3. Networking on social media
This is one of the most marketable skills you can have in the creator economy and one I don’t excel at. I don’t like social media. I resist it.
I just want to write.
This holds me back. I have messages on LinkedIn that I have never opened.
Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook make meeting people in the creator economy easy. Part of networking is knowing the right people to follow and cultivate a genuine give and take with creators in your domain.
Having a small group of like-minded creators, you work with and cross-promote can help you in many ways. You can sell each other’s courses, books, and products through affiliate marketing, making it a win/win for everyone.
Establishing the right relationships with writers in your domain is the key. Work with others who are positive and inspire you to do your best work and inspire those they influence.
4. The ability to sustain focus
The majority of people are addicted to their smartphones. It’s built to be addicting. And why most execs in Silicon Valley do not allow their children smartphones.
Because of this, most people have forgotten how to work for long periods uninterrupted.
Uninterrupted time is my favorite time of the day when I have no idea where my phone is.
There is plenty of shallow content on the internet; if you can go just a bit deeper and produce more profound, more meaningful work, which is often the result of concentrated focus, you will stand out in the creator economy.
Deep work requires the ability to focus. The ability to focus comes from ditching all distractions. You will be amazed at how much you can get done during hours of concentrated focus. Not only that, when you optimize your time and add your most cognitive work at the beginning of the day, the energy from getting your most essential task complete will drive the rest of your afternoon and evening hours.
Putting the task most important to you at the beginning of your day is what generates energy. And who couldn’t use more fuel?
5. Listening and non-reaction
Listening to your audience will make you a better creator.
For the last ten years, I have been practicing non-judgment and nonreactive. If you can get to a place where you do not react to negative comments, advice, judgments, misinformed opinions online and from family and friends, life will be cake.
This is a superpower.
The more you practice nonreaction to anything you perceive as a slight or as a positive, for that matter, the more balanced your emotional state will become. I promise this is true; I’ve felt it happen to me.
I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.― Georgia O’Keefe
Each time you practice the art of nonreaction, the next time will be a bit easier. If you can wait a beat, a breath, a minute, an hour, a day, a week to respond, the less drama you will have. When you wait to respond to a perceived negative in your life, your feelings about said slight will, nine times out of ten, subside and gain more clarity.
You’ll gain more energy to focus on creating the art the feeds you most by practicing mindfulness. Your creative abilities will increase and sharpen because you won’t be giving time/energy to those things that take your time and energy.
Rarely does anything bother me, except for politics. Then my blood boils. I know why it upsets me. It upsets me because I feel powerless to change the disaster that is our political system in the US.
6. The ability to fail and to embrace trial and error
Successful people are constantly trying new things; they are constantly iterating. Naval Ravikant (my latest mentor) said in a podcast that for every 100 businesses he’s launched, one was successful.
That is how low the success rate is. Trial and error drive innovation. If we don’t try, nothing will change.
More iterations make you better. Especially when it comes to writing or anything that you have an interest in. Interest drives passion.
My tenth article was better than my first. Article 100 was better than my 25th. Article 400 better than article 200. Article 900 was better than the one I penned two weeks ago.
If you can improve at anything 1% per day, you’ll be better at it by 37 times by the end of the year.
It isn’t that you have to put in 10,000 hours of creating before you’re knighted the best writer in the world; it’s the showing up part that counts. It’s the number of times you show up and try to improve that makes an impact. The number of iterations increases your differentiation from all other writers because you get better and better each time.You gain more knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. By the time you’ve put in 100 iterations, most people have gone home.
7. Self-directed curiosity and passion.
This is probably the most important skill of all. Not everyone is interested in everything. But I bet everyone is interested, obsessed even, with at last one thing.
Everyone has something that drives curiosity. What is yours? Drill down on it, write about it, make a YouTube video about it, teach it. Charge for your knowledge. Obsessing about your passion from every angle might look like work to others and feel like play to you. If that is the case, you’ve found your thing. Lucky you. Run with it.
Everyone has some personal curiosity and obsession. You can build a small audience around it and then charge for the expertise in that domain.
Final Thoughts
These are the basics to start in the creator economy. They are reasonable and doable. And don’t take much money or time to develop.
They take practice and showing up to solidify them. Repetition creates the habit, start building one skill today, and then add one each week, and pretty soon, you’ll have a lucrative habit in the creator economy and knowledgeable skills to market.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
