the hidden shift happening in the content economy

0:00Creators have officially lost their leverage in 2026. And I don't bring this with good news as someone who has had multiple brand deals and made multiple six-figures as a UGC creator without a big following. It sucks to report this, but there are now creator infrastructures that brands prioritize that work really well for creators, but only if you're making great content. So, we're going to talk about those platforms and how you can make the most

0:23amount of money in 2026 as a creator. So, first things first, why has this happened? Why is it harder to charge big retainers now and why are brands getting smarter? The first thing is demand. So many people have moved to content for a career that it's becoming more normal for brands to have standardized units of scale and they have a lot more leverage because if you're not willing to take their deal structure, they can go find someone that will. So, the first massive update would be a platform called SideShift. This is ran by my friends and SideShift is a place where all creators can go and start their content journey

0:56and make good deals and this works really well for the brands because they're usually paying between a two to three, maybe four dollar CPM for content and creators are kind of getting the shaft here. But the reality is there's so many good creators now that it's very possible for brands to do this and they're just not going to give creators retainers because they know they can get content that will perform with the

1:16styles and systems they have in place. So, SideShift has over 800,000 creators and they have no reason to ever switch their performance model that seems to be working really well. I'm a brand, I've personally hired creators off of SideShift and they're great. The founders also great. The platform works great and it's getting better all the time. And SideShift did a massive organic UGC push by making creators post about SideShift and that's how it kind of took off. And so now they have all these hundreds of thousands of creators, there's no reason for them to pay creators if they don't know they're going to perform a big base pay. It's

1:49more likely that only the top creators are going to get those retainers and everyone else is going to be kind of on performance problems to start. But then there's actually another update that's probably even more pivotal, and that's the Andromeda update from Meta. So, Andromeda, if you guys have never ran ads or never been part of that world, what it looks like now is instead of all this very specific targeting and ad managing and all this stuff, Meta is extremely good now, and basically the way to scale on Meta is through quantity of creatives. So, whoever has the most

2:17creatives and the best creatives wins. So, you can put all these different ads in a test campaign, label it test campaign, and essentially spend money every single day, and any videos that perform, those get moved to the winning campaign or scale campaign where the rest of the budget will be allocated. But, the reason why this hurts creators is because brands are now prioritizing quantity more than quality. So, you used to be someone like me that would charge anywhere from $750 to $2,000 per UGC video, there's no reason for a brand to do that anymore. They can just pay you a 10% revenue share of however that ad

2:49performs, and it's actually a good incentive for me because I can make way more than $2,000 per video. I can make up to 20,000 or more depending on how much that brand spends on that ad every single month. Which leads me to the final platform. So, enter Tribe. Tribe is a platform that offers a revenue share for how well your ads perform. So, instead of a brand just paying you a base pay, they are now going to pay you a revenue share. And on the brand's point of view, this is better for you cuz they're willing to pay you way more than they would for a revenue share

3:18because they're only paying for performance, and they spend a lot of money, so you're kind of guaranteed to make more money as long as you make a good video. Here's how it works. A creator produces a video, uploads that video to Tribe, and then Tribe will then send that video, if it's approved by the brand, to the brand's ad account. If the video starts performing, Meta will automatically allocate more spend in the budget to that video, and some of these brands spend hundreds of thousands, if not multiple six figures a month, on that ad. Which means if you're getting a 10% revenue share, you're going to make

3:46significantly more money through this model, which is fantastic for the top creators. But, how do you know if you're actually a top creator? Well, it's based off performance now. Are you able to go viral on organic platforms like Sideshift? Are you able to get winning ads on platforms like Tribe? The biggest thing now is how good can your content be? So, what I did is I built an app called Artech with my co-founder CJ Weber. We have hundreds of thousands of views. We've generated over a million dollars from social media alone. And what we've done is take all of this knowledge and put it into an app. So,

4:17when you give you feedback on how you can improve it for ads, for organic content, you feedback on how you can improve it for ads, for organic content, or for TikTok Shop. And recently, we just added group chats with people like Briar Cochran, who is a content strategist for massive personal brands. And you can go talk to Briar and get feedback directly from the best and smartest people in the world. But when you upload a video into Artech, it'll give you a score and then it'll tell you how to make it better in your hook, body, and ending. And then it'll give you actual text hooks that you can use,

4:44as well as things like TAM topics and other formats to test for your content. What's going to happen now is a person who tests and iterates on their content even a single time is going to have a massive advantage over the 90% of people who are just putting content out every day. So, if you want to stand out in 2026, you have to use something like Artech or work with a content coach. I do have a content coach community. It's called Content Economy. We have six coaches in there and all of them have done multiple six figures through content as a career. And it's one of the

5:14last places where you can reliably get brand deals that pay you retainers every single month. We have creators like Nash, Thomas LaHart, Colin Madden, all of these different people making tens of thousands, if not over a hundred thousand dollars a month with social media and content. And if that seems crazy, I understand, but we also have this all documented and you can check the description below for these people's personal testimonials and stories on how they've been able to have content as a career in the content economy. And I

5:40don't tell you all of this to scare you. What I'm telling you is that now more than ever, it's super important to be around people and being groups of people that are going to take this stuff seriously because those are the small groups that are going to go above everyone else. Right now, brands are literally paying creators more than they've ever paid creators before, but it's off of performance. It's not off how good you are or how cool you are or how many followers you have. It's how well does your ad actually perform, which means brands feel safer than ever spending money as long as it's

6:11generating them a return. So, you can make tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in this economy and you don't have to be a genius. If you need help with someone holding your hand through it and showing you how to get started, DM me on Instagram. I'm Owen Nurminen. I've been doing this stuff for years. I have a giant creator community and everyone in that group is getting brand deals consistently. We

6:30literally help them make the portfolio. We give them our content economy seal of approval and then we introduce them to brands. There's no easier way to get a social media career from this. And if you want special access to our tech like 1 month free, also DM me on Instagram. I'd be happy to share it with you. Talk

6:47to you later.