Hey! Welcome back to the Creator Economy NYC newsletter, your weekly hit of insights and strategies to help you build, monetize, and scale as a creator.
Quick gut check before we get into it. If you disappeared from every platform for a month, how many people would actually notice?
Not liked your last post. Noticed. Missed you. Went looking for you…
That number is smaller than your follower count. Probably smaller than you'd like it to be. And it turns out that smaller number is the entire business.
A few weeks ago we sat down with Amy Wang, Varun Rana, Hannah Wilson, and Jeff Kohn, the CEO of TopFan, to talk about what happens after someone follows you. This issue is built around that conversation: why your true fans are worth more than your reach, how to actually spot them, and what to build for them once you do.
Let's get into it. Plus, our September event on Money Moves down below.
Most of your followers were never going to buy anything from you
Here's the number that should change how you think about your audience. Jeff told us it's usually between 3 and 7 percent of an audience that ever crosses over from watching to actually engaging, buying, joining, whatever the ask is.
That means 90-plus percent of the people who follow you were never converting. Not because they don't like you. Because leaving the feed takes effort, and most people won't spend it on anyone.
The ones who do are telling you something important. Clicking a link, handing over an email, joining a waitlist, showing up to an RSVP, paying for something. Every one of those is a small vote of trust.
"Those are your superfans," Jeff said. "Those are the fans that generate 80, 90% of your revenue."
Social will always be where people find you first. It's the front door. But nobody builds a business by getting strangers to glance through a window. You build it by giving the people who already stepped inside a reason to stay.
🔒 Don't fuhgeddaboudit: Your social audience isn't one audience. It's a lot of people standing at different distances from you. Build for the ones who keep walking closer.
Platform math counts millions. Ownership math counts people who actually pay you.
Every platform has trained you to think in huge numbers, because that's how their math works. Views, impressions, followers, all measured in pennies per person.
Jeff put it plainly: creators have been taught for years that you need millions of fans to make real money, and that math falls apart the moment you own the relationship instead of renting it.
On the platforms TopFan works with, average revenue per user lands around $100 a year. That's not a guarantee every fan hits that number. It's a way to see what's actually possible once you have something worth paying for and a direct line to the people who want it.
Your social following | 3% who convert | 7% who convert | Illustrative annual value at $100/fan |
|---|---|---|---|
10,000 | 300 people | 700 people | $30K–$70K |
50,000 | 1,500 people | 3,500 people | $150K–$350K |
100,000 | 3,000 people | 7,000 people | $300K–$700K |
Stop asking how many followers you need to have a business. Start asking what 300, 1,000, or 3,000 people would actually pay for, join, or come back to.
Jeff's example: 10,000 superfans paying $100 a year is a million dollar business. That's the whole point of ownership math. A smaller group of people who can't imagine going without you gets you there faster than chasing everyone on the internet ever could.
🔒 Don't fuhgeddaboudit: Platform math is measured in millions because each follower is worth almost nothing. Ownership math is measured in thousands because each relationship is worth something real.
Your real fans have already told you who they are, you just have to be listening
Finding your real fans isn't a mystery. It's a pattern you're probably already sitting on.
Take Amy Wang. When she started blowing up on YouTube, a mentor told her to start collecting emails. She almost didn't bother, she didn't want to split her focus from the platform that was already working. But she built a free five-day mini course, started a newsletter, and gave her audience a different way to know her.
When she launched her coaching app, more people converted from that newsletter than from her 800,000 YouTube subscribers.
"When you have attention, you want to do something with that," Amy said. "You're not always going to be getting 100K views on every single video."
A YouTube subscriber might enjoy one video. Someone who opens five emails, works through a resource, and keeps coming back has already shown you something a view count never will.
Varun's version of this looked different. He noticed people responding to short storytelling experiments on TikTok, so he took that signal to YouTube, where he had room for video essays, sketches, and eventually short films. His long-term bet is something he called ‘Varun Plus’ a world where the format and the relationship aren't stuck inside a single short-form feed.
The pattern in both stories is the same: pay attention to where your audience is asking for more, then give them a deeper version of the thing they already love.
A superfan rarely looks like a big number. It looks like a paragraph in your DMs about how one video changed something for someone. A friend tagged because your work made them think of a specific problem. Someone who recognizes you in an airport and repeats your own phrase back to you.
🔒 Don't fuhgeddaboudit: Views tell you how many people saw it. DMs, repeat customers, and people using your own language back to you tell you who's actually in your corner.
Don't build the whole empire before you've built one door
Here's where people usually get ahead of themselves. They hear all this and decide they need a newsletter, a community, a course, a subscription, a podcast, and an app by next week.
Don't.
Jeff's advice was to start small. One waitlist. One RSVP. One free resource that earns an email. One paid offer that solves a problem your audience already keeps bringing you.
Ask yourself one question: what's the one thing I could make that gives the right people a real reason to step outside the feed and get a little closer to me? Build that. Pay attention to what people click, ask, buy, and come back for. Then build the next layer from there, not from guesswork.
Steal This Playbook
Find the people raising their hands. Skip follower count. Track replies, repeat customers, RSVPs, emails, DMs, shares, anyone using your language back to you.
Build one door outside the feed. Give people one simple next step, a newsletter, an event, a community, a product. It doesn't need to be a media empire, it needs to be useful.
Make the crossing worth it. If you can't say what someone gets by joining your world that they can't get from a single post, fix the offer before you touch the funnel.
Let behavior build the next layer. Amy's newsletter numbers and Varun's move into longer formats both came from watching what people already wanted more of. Your audience is showing you the roadmap if you're paying attention.
Our next event: Sept 9th - Creator Money Moves Mixer with Relay
We’re teaming back up with our friends at Relay for another night bringing together some of NYC’s top creators, operators, and industry leaders.
This time, we’re talking money moves as a creator.
Join us for great vibes, meeting people worth meeting, and a live conversation with leading NYC creators on how they’re growing beyond brand deals, building new revenue streams, and turning creator income into something bigger.
If you’ve already built real momentum and are thinking about what’s next, this night is for you.
Two free tools top creators use to keep themselves moving
The Creator Goal Setting Guide (FREE): A simple but powerful document to help you declare who you want to BECOME in 2026. Get it here.
The Creator Accountability System (FREE): Your visual companion for consistent creation in 2026. Get it here.
Thanks for reading. You do not need everyone. You need the people who care enough to come closer, and then you need to give them a damn good reason to stay.
F*ck It, Create It,
Brett
With research, interview and editorial support by Taylor Cromwell - a newsletter and creator economy expert and founder of Creator Diaries. Follow Taylor on LinkedIn.