Hello Antlions! Today we're going to take a peek under the hood of our public relations team to answer a core question: How hard is it to be a content creator?

The Numbers:

Approximately 4.9% of content creators within our target group with an audience reaching 1,000+ viewers per video quit every year.

It may not sound like it, but that's a lot. To put it into context, in the United States the "quit rate" is around 2.1%. Meaning content creators are over 2.3 times as likely to quit being a content creator as people are to quit their 'normal' jobs.

In an effort to not bury the lead, the primary cause of this is just simple burnout. Because of the way channel owners (YouTube, TikTok, etc) operate, breaks from producing content can harm growth and distribution. This creates what most would describe as an unhealthy work environment. It'd be like working seven days a week and when you ask about taking a day off your boss telling you "Sure! Just work a 16 hour day instead of an 8 hour one and you can have tomorrow off!" No matter how much you love what you do, eventually that kind of schedule is going to catch up to you. More on that at the end.

How did we arrive at this data?

We keep an internal database, hand curated, of every content creator covering tech, audio, gaming, podcasting, and more. It's literally a non-stop job to keep adding and updating the list, but it's a valuable tool in our ability to get the word out about ModMics and Kimura products. In fact, the only other tool even close to as valuable is word of mouth, so please support us and tell your friends!

We looked back over our data for the last 3 years to track how many channels went from being regularly updated to being either deleted entirely or having no updates in the last 10+ months. This data only includes channels receiving around 1,000+ views per video and does not include smaller channels where I imagine the abandonment rate is significantly higher. Our thesis is if you're getting 1k+ views per video (or the equivalent ~100 average live viewers on streams) you're probably at least doing this as a part time job (whether that pays enough for the effort is beyond the scope of this article). This list also only includes channels of interest to us, which is primarily tech, audio, VR/sim, and gaming. The abandonment rate may vary significantly from industry to industry and is beyond the scope of our work here.

If you'd like to be on our press list and meet that criteria above, just send our support team a message and they'll put you in touch with our PR team!

Why'd we bother writing this? 

If you dream of making content it is vital you take care of your mental health. Content creation isn't some dream job with no downsides. I've worked with content creators for over 20 years and it can be rewarding, even making some select few of them real celebrities. However, the reality for most is it can be socially isolating, stressful, and has little to no monetary upsides.

Plan accordingly! From all my experience talking to and being friends with large content makers here's my big 3 tips.

• Take time in your day to find social outlets beyond content creating.
  • Streaming with your viewers doesn't count! Your viewers are your lifeblood and they are important, but they are not friends. Your relationship with them (and theirs with you) is transactional. That isn't a bad thing, but a transactional relationship can collapse much faster than most 'real life' relationships, leaving either party feeling incredibly isolated. Value your viewers, even cherish them, but they are not a replacement for relationships. Make a constant effort to continue building relationships outside of your streams and videos.
• Get a therapist and see them at least somewhat regularly.
  • Mental health can be as much about prevention as it can be about improving your current state. Think of it like getting your annual physical for your brain, only do it more than once a year ideally. Even if you feel fine, check in with a professional and talk about your work life balance. They may catch potential problems long before you see them or experience the impacts.
• Keep regular hours.
  • In my experience the content creators who succeed over the long term treat it (at least somewhat) like a regular job. When they're on, they're on. When they're off, they're off. Mixing your creator life with the rest of your day is a recipe for burning out. Growing slightly faster is meaningless if you sacrifice everything to get there!

None of this is to say you should not make content (or get an Antlion Audio product to do it!), but we want you to be armed with knowledge whether you're at the start, middle, or end of your content creation journey. You are not alone out there.