Your guide to growing and monetizing creator-first businesses.
Happy New Year, folks.
Today is my two-year mark as editor of this publication. This is my 140th issue. Time flies!
In light of that milestone, I revisit this publication’s eternal question: what is a creator?
— Francis Zierer, Lead Editor
P.S. Is there a creator you’d like to see us cover this year? We’re looking for submissions through this form.
Searching for a definition
Stare at any word long enough, and it begins to lose meaning, falls apart into shapes and lines.
Creator.
Creator has many times been that word for me. My job — the mission of this publication — is to study that word and, through my findings, make your endeavors around the creator economy more successful.
Today, January 2, 2026, marks exactly two years since I joined beehiiv as the editor of this newsletter. Two days before that, at a New Year’s Eve party, I stood talking with my friend Harris about the work I’d be doing.
He asked me a question I’ve asked nearly every person I’ve interviewed since: What is a creator? What do you mean when you say that word?
“I’m still not sure,” I told him. “Where I’m starting from is: an active user of online publishing platforms.” Two months of research, and no one definition I’d found felt quite right.
What is a creator?
I spent 2024 looking for an answer.
A definition, for one year
At the start of 2025, after a year of listening to how the creators I interviewed defined it, I solidified Creator Spotlight’s definition of creator.
A creator is an individual producing digital media for distribution on one or more online publishing platforms, developing an audience for it, and somehow monetizing that audience.
In this way, an anonymous newsletter writer whose product is a daily finance aggregation newsletter, monetized through banner ads, is a creator.
As is a podcaster who publishes an episode every other week and monetizes through Patreon.
As is a journalist who writes for The New York Times … but publishes personal essays in their own newsletter and TikToks about their work to their own account.
Now that so much of the media industry is digital-first, the only thing that really distinguishes this definition from other media businesses is the emphasis on the individual.
Take that podcaster example, however. What if it were two podcasters? The definition starts to break down; we have to remove the individual caveat.
It’s less about the individual aspect than it is about ownership. A creator owns their output, at least in part. The journalist who writes for the Times is only a creator in that they also publish their own essays and videos on their own channels, not paid for by the Times.
“Creator” means what you want it to mean. My definition is different from that of someone who leads creator programs at YouTube, at Instagram. It may be different from yours.
What is your definition? The collective you, the Creator Spotlight audience, reveals a sort of definition through the interviews you’ve engaged with most. We primarily publish interviews with independent, bootstrapped, digital-first media entrepreneurs. That’s what you come to us for. That is the definition of creator we’ve formed together.
That “independent” aspect is key. The creator economy, like the American economy that birthed it, prizes entrepreneurship. A creator is an entrepreneur, which is to say, they own and operate at least one of their channels.
But enough caveats. Creator … crteaor … racotre … Stare at it long enough, and it loses meaning.
What is a creator in 2026?
For 2026, I believe there is no such thing as a creator — only media businesses at varying levels of maturity.
Potential (individual social media user gaining traction, non-monetized)
Growing small business (media entrepreneur, individual, or small group)
Established small business (typically niche media company with more than one person, often profitable)
New institution (e.g., Axios, Vox, MrBeast)
Traditional institution (e.g., The New York Times, TIME, The Washington Post)
Those first two bullets are usually what people mean when they say “creator.” People also call MrBeast a creator — this is incorrect. He was, but is no longer a creator; he’s a founder, an entrepreneur, an on-camera host. His business is a new institution.
MrBeast’s path to success began in the creator realm, and at a time when the definition of creator was different. That does not mean the word still fits him. What he is today is shaped by his origin but no longer defined by it.
One prediction
My final prediction for 2026 is that people less plugged in to the creator economy than you and I will increasingly use “creator” to mean “digital media personality with a parasocially engaged audience.”
In conversations with friends and people who don’t work around the creator economy over my two years working on Creator Spotlight, this is generally how they use the word. To be clear, this is still a minority of the public — the further removed a person is from this industry, the more likely they are to use the word as an analogue for artist.
This year, more people outside of this industry will adopt that “digital media personality” definition. Within the industry, more people will adopt the general “media entrepreneur” definition.
Content, audience, money. That’s the business. Media, people, profit.
Doesn’t matter if you come from a career in journalism or years of making videos in your house; if you’re producing and publishing content you have a direct stake in, you are a creator.
The game is to create media products that audiences want and monetize the interplay. What we call the players matters far less than our ability to learn from the way they play the game.
Is there a creator you’d like us to cover in 2026? We’ve set up a form, let us know!
