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Kajabi, a 15-year-old software service best known for selling online courses, supercharged sales a few years ago when—armed with a big check from Tiger Global Management—it started heavily marketing itself to creators, who pay a monthly fee to host courses and sell other digital goods, such as newsletters, podcasts, coaching and memberships.
The startup’s CEO Ahad Khan says the company has been finding success with creators focused on narrow topics, such as a specific type of beekeeping.Even though a relatively small number of people sign up for courses or other digital products, these paying customers can still add up to a strong business for an individual creator.
In fact, a company spokesperson said the average Kajabi creator has between 1,000 and 10,000 followers, email lists of about 4,000 people and roughly 300 paying customers for digital products.
“A niche doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of revenue to be built. It just means you got to be able to find an audience that is interested in what you’re putting out there and build product that serves those customers very well,” Khan told my colleague Akash Pasricha during an interview on TITV, The Information’s new daily streaming show.
Last week, the startup announced it’s paid out $10 billion to its creators since its founding in 2010. As the chart above shows, those total earnings have been ticking up, rising 25% from last August, which was roughly 33% higher than the same period in 2023. Kajabi doesn’t take a cut of revenue, but the more money creators make, the more likely they’re to keep their subscriptions. Kajabi isn’t the only one seeing growth in creators’ earnings accelerating over time.
Patreon, which also allows creators to sell memberships and paywalled content, last week announced it’s paid out $10 billion to creators since its 2013 founding, up from $8 billion in 2024 and $3.5 billion in 2022. In 2019, the figure was $1 billion.
With the rise of AI, Khan is betting that people will seek out content from experts with deep expertise, rather than generic information that can be found anywhere.
With AI, “everything becomes really easy to build. You press a button, your website is up, your avatar is up, whatever it is that you want to be able to represent yourself using AI, it’s done,” he said. “I think what that’s going to create is a dynamic around people wanting genuine experiences with people. Brand and individuality is going to matter more in that world.”
Here’s what else is going on…
Deals & Debuts
See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors.
YouTube and the NFL announced that Grammy-winning Latin music artist Karol G will headline the half-time show during YouTube’s first exclusive live NFL broadcast. The game, between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs, will stream live from São Paulo, Brazil on September 5.
Pinterest is opening a new engineering office in Zurich focused on AI and machine learning as the company looks to expand personalized search, shopping and advertising capabilities.
Famous Birthdays, a Wikipedia-like site with information about creators, is partnering with Pixability to bring its “velocity” metric, which measures search traffic from its 25 million monthly visitors, to Pixability’s contextual targeting tools for advertisers on YouTube and connected TVs.
Libsyn, a podcast distribution company, said it has paid out $112 million in creator earnings since 2017. Payments to creators have grown 40% during the first six months of this year compared to the same period last year.
Gushcloud International, a creator management and licensing company, partnered with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office to launch a new headquarters in the Middle East and North Africa and a global creator hub in Abu Dhabi. The firm already has an office in Los Angeles.
People on the Move
Ashley Alexander, the co-head of product at Instagram, is leaving the company, The Information reported. She joined Facebook in 2013. Max Eulenstein, who has co-led product with Alexander for the past four years, will become the sole head of product for Instagram.
Kudzi Chikumbu is the new vice president of creator partnerships at Tubi. Previously, he was the global head of creator marketing at TikTok. Tubi also announced that its free ad-supported streaming service now has more than 5,000 episodes of creator content, including from top YouTubers including MrBeast, Alan Chikin Chow and CelinaSpookyBoo.
Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter, started a company called Parallel Web Systems, an infrastructure product to help AI agents search the web to find the most accurate information. Agrawal has raised $30 million in funding from investors including Khosla Ventures and he now has 25 employees, Bloomberg reported.
Overheard
“We are sitting on a shrinking iceberg and must be willing to look beyond our current employers,” Michele Mulroney, who is running unopposed to become the president of the Writers Guild of America, wrote in a candidate statement.
Several candidates for this year’s WGA West board and officers election have called on the Hollywood union to expand to include social media creators. “Like it or not, this is the future of television,” incumbent board member Adam Conover said of YouTube.
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