Have We Hit Peak Content?
Rumors of the demise of the creator economy are greatly exaggerated.
AI and Web 3.0 have lowered the barriers to content creation with... mixed results.
On the bright side, everyone and their Aunt Sally can become a podcaster, a YouTuber, or a self-published author.
On the flip side, not everyone chasing the dream-life of the influencer has what it takes to be the next Joe Rogan, MrBeast or Seth Godin.
Have we hit Peak Content?
Spotify announced big layoffs last December. Companies like Vice Media and BuzzFeed have been forced to make "fundamental changes" (read: firing journos) to their strategies.
If you're trying to make it big as an e-celeb, or media company, then yes, the road is steep and narrow.
But if you have something of functional, emotional or financial value to contribute—even to a relatively small niche—there's never been a better time to ramp up your content engine and make money in the process of getting your message out there.
Here's why we're nowhere near Peak Content:
Like the clever geologists and engineers who always manage to stave off Peak Oil to the dismay of the doomsayers, the Internet is always finding new ways to deliver content to meet the insatiable demand for knowledge, entertainment, and niche interests.
The rise of newsletter platforms like Substack, and decentralized social media are serving a flourishing number of niches.
In a similar vein, the rise of AI—and in particular, large language models—is like the fracking of content creation. The technology lowers the "activation energy" necessary to get the juices flowing, refine your ideas, and get jobs done that were previously impossible.
While some predict that the content bubble is about to burst, I see a bright horizon for independent content creators and media 'solopreneurs' who learn to harness this technology—augmenting their human knowledge and creativity with artificial intelligence.
The Cyborg Advantage
The combination of human + AI proves to be more powerful than either alone.
Just as in Chess, a mediocre player with a machine can outwit the top-rated grandmasters, as well as the best AI-powered chess engines.
The upheaval of the media and content landscape has already begun. Unlike chess, where tournaments are strictly divided between computer-assisted and human-only, there is no prize for making the best "unassisted" content.
Where it used to require a sophisticated team of diverse specialists to tend to a legacy media organization, a strategic individual can now jumpstart a media empire of One overnight.
Many have discovered that you no longer need actual writing chops to churn out blog posts and social media posts—as long as you know how to whisper the right words into an AI's ear. The problem is, most of what the newbie content creators are pushing out with AI is crap.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The AI hype brigade, peddling fantasies of passive income through mass content production, is arming dilettantes everywhere with just enough knowledge to wreak havoc—creating content for its own sake, without regard for the quality or usefulness.
Here's the truth the AI scam artists won't tell you
Content is not king anymore.
With so much AI-generated keyword-vomit flooding the web, the only content that matters is the content that gets real jobs done for real people.
Lost in the stampede for AI-powered conversions and clickthroughs is a basic question we creative types need to ask ourselves:
Are we producing content that improves lives? Or are we just adding to the noise?
Traffic ≠ value.
Yet at the same time, there's a certain kind of old-guard elitism that regards any AI-assisted content as automatically suspect or worth less. In fairness, I have yet to see AI produce any writing that rivals the literary merit of, say, David Foster Wallace, or the poetic brilliance of a Chaucer or Poe. But when given proper instructions and confined to its proper domain, AI does dozens of jobs humans won't—and even can't—do.
For practical, functional writing, AI has become an indispensable tool.
The Single Criteria for AI
Does AI help you get your jobs done better, faster, and cheaper compared to not using it?
If so, don't let anyone tell you it's wrong or bad to utilize it.
If not, you might just be using it wrong.
AI-generated content becomes just more clutter without a strong reason for existence. That's on you as the creative force behind the curtain. No amount of AI assistance will transform mediocre ideas into brilliant ones.
But AI can help clarify the ideas already percolating in your head so you can share them with the world much faster. Viewed as a content generator, AI will produce mediocre results 10 out of 10 times. Viewed as a reasoning engine, however, for transforming and polishing your rough ideas into something useful to people looking to solve their problems, it starts to look a lot better.
The Job to Be Done
Helping you leverage AI to make better content, faster, and with more confidence, so you can finish your work and go outside.
I view content creation as a means to an end: Helping your audience get their jobs done.
AI, in turn, is a part of that means—a tool for automating and accelerating certain subtasks so you can stay focused on the big picture and more creative elements.
You won't build an audience based on amusement or frivolity. But if you learn to integrate AI creatively into your workflows, you will discover new possibilities for outputting valuable content that people will crave more of.
Instead of chasing clicks with high-volume clickbait, you can use AI to instead earn trust in the process of delivering on the jobs to be done. What you do with that trust is up to you.