Hi Mark,

Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.

I'll quickly comment on the points you say I failed to point out.

a) Promotion = Creation

Repurposing your content for different platforms, guest posts, getting interviewed, copywriting, paid ads, etc. are all different forms of creating. I don't feel that promotion takes away from creating. Promotion is creation. Sure someone can produce great content that no one sees. However, I wouldn't call that person a member of the 'creator economy.'

b) I'm not sure what you mean by "cultivating a following." Again, I call that creating. You need to create to get followers and subscribers. That is why I wrote this post. It's the reason I publish my newsletter. I'm not "cultivating a following". I'm creating.

Why would creating have a low expected value when you have few followers? I think the opposite is true. The smaller your audience, the more you have to gain from incremental growth. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something there?

c) I agree that it's difficult to engineer virality, but it sure helps to have an audience. Content doesn't need to go viral to benefit you. This post has been shared in about 10 newsletters now. That is because I built up a small audience with my newsletter.

Again, I don't call it "cultivating a following," it's creating. The more you create and experiment, the more likely you will publish content that gets shared and builds your audience. I don't understand your distinction there.

I think this is a great time to be a creator. Anyone, anywhere in the world can publish their content online for essentially free.

It's not the platforms that are making the stars. Did YouTube make MrBeast successful or did MrBeast learn how to make content that people want to consume?

The power law distribution applies to every backlink, like, follow, mention, article, etc. everywhere. When MrBeast opened hundreds of burger restaurants on one day, he got hundreds of press mention around the world. That is a genius act of creation. YouTube didn't make his cloud kitchen idea a success. However, his cloud kitchen idea likely got him a lot of new YouTube followers.

Virtually every top creator I know of started from nothing and put in massive amounts of work to get to where they are. The point of this article is that opportunity is available to anyone willing to put in the work.