YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT THIS PART OF THE ECONOMY

Fellow over 40 creator and past show guest the incredible Sharon Gillenwater at the New Media Summit with me in Austin, Texas.

When you picture a room full of content creators, what do you see?

If you're anything like me, your brain immediately serves up a vision of 22-year-olds doing something I don't fully understand on TikTok. It does not conjure an image of a 43-year-old elder millennial who spent almost two decades in corporate America and got called a dinosaur at 37.

And yet.

I just got back from a conference packed with newsletter writers, YouTubers, podcasters, community builders, and creators of every kind. I fully expected to stick out. I didn't.

People in their 40s, 50s, and beyond were everywhere—pivoting from corporate, testing passion projects, building real businesses from their expertise, and commanding serious audience attention.

It reaffirmed my sense that people are hungry for main characters like them—people in midlife, out there doing stuff. And it showed me that our perception of the creator economy is completely disconnected from reality. And now I have the data to prove it.

First: How big is this thing, actually?

The global creator economy was valued at roughly $200 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $528 billion by 2030—growing at over 20% per year. In the United States alone, the market hit $50.9 billion in 2024. Full-time digital creator jobs in the U.S. grew from 200,000 in 2020 to 1.5 million in 2024. That's a 7.5x increase in four years.

This is a structural shift in how work gets built, how income gets generated, and how expertise gets monetized. And it is absolutely not exclusive to people who graduated in the last decade.

Who is actually in the room?

The average creator age is 37. A full 35% of creators are over 40. And here's the number that should stop you mid-scroll: Baby Boomers and Gen X increased their share of independent content creators from 27% in 2022 to 35% in 2023, according to MBO Partners.

The reason isn't mysterious. MBO Partners identified the driver directly: surging demand for content on topics that older audiences actually care about. Career reinvention. Financial strategy. Leadership. Health. The future of work. Navigating a system that keeps changing the rules on you.

These aren't niche topics. They are the topics millions of people are desperately searching for—and finding almost no one credible enough to speak to them. That gap is your opportunity.

Experience isn't a liability here. It's your entire competitive advantage.

The creator economy runs on trust. And trust is built through credibility, specificity, and the kind of hard-won perspective that only comes from having actually lived something.

When a 28-year-old talks about navigating a layoff, it's relatable. But when someone who spent 20 years in corporate, watched the whole game change beneath them, and rebuilt their life on their own terms talks about it—that's authority. Those are fundamentally different things. Audiences know the difference. Brands know the difference.

The million-follower era is ending. What's replacing it is the trust era—smaller, more engaged audiences who act on what they hear. Niche creators are 37% more likely to have secured brand collaborations than generalists. That is precisely the terrain where experienced creators win.

Nearly 60 percent of consumers have purchased something because of a creator recommendation, even though audiences are increasingly selective about whom they trust. That's real consumer behavior across every age group, driven by creators who built genuine authority in something specific.

Fellow newsletter writers, podcast hosts, and content creators (all of whom I believe are 40+) at Amy Nelson's The Riveter event in Austin,

This is a real profession. Not a hobby with delusions.

A significant and growing number of creators now identify as working full-time on their content careers. Brand partnerships are the primary income source for nearly 70% of monetizing creators—but the smartest ones aren't stopping there. Newsletters, courses, paid communities, speaking, consulting, digital products. All of it is additive. All of it compounds over time. And all of it helps insure against a world where it's getting harder to rely on a single paycheck from an employer.

Only about 4% of creators currently earn over $100,000 per year strictly from creator income. I want you to sit with that number—not as a discouragement, but as a map of where the opportunity still lives. This market is enormous, growing fast, and still deeply underpopulated by people with the credibility to do it well.

That's you. That's exactly you.

The thing nobody tells you about starting.

In my experience talking to many people navigating this, the biggest barrier isn't technology or algorithms or age. It's what I and many others call "Cringe Mountain"—that unavoidable stretch at the beginning where you feel ridiculous, overexposed, and completely unsure whether any of this is worth it.

These are not technical problems. They are confidence problems. And they hit hardest for people who spent careers in environments that punished visible failure and rewarded quiet competence. An environment, by the way, that is changing rapidly.

But here's what the data also shows: the people who climb Cringe Mountain and stay consistent are the ones who build something durable. The creator economy doesn't reward perfection. It rewards showing up, being specific, and being genuinely useful to the right people over time.

You already have the expertise. This is just the distribution system.

The bottom line.

The narrative that the creator economy belongs to young people is not just outdated—it's actively keeping the most qualified people on the sidelines.

Remember, Baby Boomers and Gen X grew their share of the creator economy remarkably recently—and the trend is accelerating. They're doing it with decades of hard-won expertise, built-in credibility, and a ready audience of people living the same story who are starving for someone who actually gets it.

You don't need to be 22. You need to be specific. You need to show up. And you need to stop waiting for someone to hand you permission and just decide to go for it if it's calling you.

The window isn't closing. For people with real expertise and something genuine to say, it's wide open.