Social media creators are turning to monthly subscription services to generate revenue directly from their followers in an attempt to find a stable source of income in an increasingly competitive and volatile market.
The creator economy peaked in September 2021, according to research published this month by the Bank of America Institute. While the average monthly income for content creators has increased over the past three years, a typical, full-time U.S. employee makes five times as much in monthly income on average.
“This suggests that it’s rare to earn a full-time wage in content creation — let alone get rich,” said the research, which was also conducted by the Bank of America Institute, a think tank that conducts its research using Bank of America customer data.
Analysts at the Bank of America Institute attribute this to a slowdown in paid partnerships, a more competitive market for creators, a decline in online viewership since the pandemic and a concentration of paid partnerships among the top creators.
While internet virality is unpredictable, turning content creation into a full-time career requires meeting certain financial needs, like the ability to pay monthly bills, content creators told CNBC. As a result, creators are looking to diversify their revenue streams, and in addition to paid partnerships, many content creators are increasingly looking to monthly subscription platforms like Substack and Patreon for consistency in their monthly income.
Substack and Patreon have emerged as attractive options because they enable creators to charge their followers directly for their content. Creators can offer their followers different tiers of subscriptions for monthly fees, with each tier including different perks. Since its launch in 2013, Patreon has paid creators over $8 billion, while Substack claims to host more than 4 million paid subscribers.
On TikTok and Meta’s Instagram, creators have to navigate algorithmic models that control when their content is shown, making income from those apps highly volatile. Earnings can fluctuate dramatically, spiking or plummeting based on how these platforms choose to promote their content.
“I can’t rely on that to be what pays my bills,” said Molly Burke, a creator with more than 4 million followers across her social apps. “As an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a creator, I have to figure out how I’m going to sustain this as a career for as long as possible.”
Molly Burke, a creator known for her videos about living with blindness and navigating daily life.
Social media platforms increasingly rely on algorithms to decide what content users see, based on their past interactions and preferences. These algorithms analyze user behavior to create personalized content feeds, which often prioritize posts that are likely to generate engagement, such as likes or shares.
As a result, many creators feel pressured to make content that caters to the algorithm, even if they believe it lowers the quality of their work, content creators said.
“It ebbs and flows,” Burke said. “Sometimes my TikToks are popping and I’m getting all the views, and then that algorithm just dips for a bit.”
While nearly half of creators work full time, most rely heavily on brand deals for income, with more than two-thirds having brand partnerships as their primary revenue source, according to a separate study by influencer marketing agency NeoReach. The study found that more than 48% of creators earn $15,000 or less annually, even as the global influencer market reached $21 billion in 2023. There are more than 50 million content creators worldwide, Goldman Sachs said in April 2023.
Burke, a creator known for her videos about living with blindness and navigating daily life, has been producing content on the internet for five years. While it’s not her biggest income stream, she uses her Patreon revenue to help cover essential expenses, including rent.
“I feel extremely lucky and grateful that it is a revenue stream that I can rely on, that I know at the bare minimum I can get my rent covered this month,” she said.
Subscription platforms like Patreon address this by allowing creators to bypass the algorithm entirely, connecting directly with their most loyal fans who are willing to pay for exclusive content.
“Membership alone is a huge business for creators,” Patreon founder and CEO Jack Conte said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s creating predictable, reliable, huge sources of revenue for creators at a degree in scale that we’ve never seen before.”
Zach Kornfeld and Keith Habersberger of the Try Guys
JD RENES
The Try Guys, a comedy group known for their challenge-based videos, have 8 million subscribers and 2.7 billion views on YouTube, but in May, they announced the launch of their own streaming service called 2nd Try. The group moved most of its new videos behind a $5-a-month paywall, where subscribers can watch the new content without ads.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Campus, a college startup backed by Sam Altman, has hired Meta‘s former AI Vice President Jerome Pesenti as its technology head, the company announced Friday.
As part of the deal, Campus will buy Pesenti’s artificial intelligence learning platform Sizzle AI for an undisclosed amount and integrate its personalized AI-generated educational content already used by 1.7 million people.
The acquisition advances the company’s “roadmap” by two to three years and helps the platform cater learning toward individual student needs, said Tade Oyerinde, Campus founder and chancellor.
“This is a game changer,” he told CNBC.
Campus was founded to disrupt the community college system by “maximizing access to world-class education,” according to its website. It offers accredited associate degrees taught by adjunct professors from the likes of Stanford, Princeton and New York University.
The platform has over 3,000 enrolled students, charges $7,320 per academic year and accepts Pell Grants, according to its website. It also provides attendees with a laptop, mobile Wi-Fi pack, personal success coach and 24/7 tutoring access. Professors make upwards of $8,000 per course.
Campus has raised over $100 million from the likes of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, General Catalyst, NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, venture capitalist and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and Figma CEO Dylan Field.
Singapore authorities are investigating artificial intelligence computing firm Megaspeed, a customer of American AI chipmaker Nvidia, for allegedly helping Chinese companies evade curbs on U.S. chip exports.
“The Singapore Police Force confirms that investigations are ongoing into Megaspeed for suspected breaches of our domestic laws,” the police told CNBC in an email.
The probe comes as the New York Times reported Thursday that the U.S. Commerce Department was also investigating whether Megaspeed skirted American export controls, citing anonymous officials and other people familiar with the matter.
The twin investigations into Megaspeed could raise questions about Nvidia’s ability to track its chip exports effectively and to comply with U.S. restrictions on the sale of its most advanced AI chips to China.
According to an Nvidia spokesperson, the company had engaged the U.S. government on the matter and performed its own inquiry, without identifying “any reason to believe products have been diverted.”
“NVIDIA visited multiple Megaspeed sites yet again earlier this week and confirmed what we previously observed—Megaspeed is running a small commercial cloud, like many other companies throughout the world, as allowed by U.S. export control rules,” they said in a statement shared with CNBC Friday.
Megaspeed didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the U.S. Commerce Department.
The Times reported that Megaspeed, which spun off from a Chinese gaming company in 2023, bought nearly $2 billion worth of Nvidia’s most advanced products through its subsidiary in Malaysia.
Export loophole concerns
The case surrounding Megaspeed highlights broader concerns about the effectiveness of U.S. export restrictions on advanced technologies, such as Nvidia’s AI processors.
The U.S. government has, for years, restricted sales of advanced AI chips to China, citing concerns they could strengthen Beijing’s military and give it an edge in broader AI development, among others.
But experts and lawmakers in Washington have long warned about loopholes in Washington’s export controls, while reports indicate that a massive black market for smuggled Nvidia chips has also emerged.
The House Select Committee on China in April questioned Nvidia’s shipment of chips to China and Southeast Asia after reports that Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek used the company’s chips to train a groundbreaking AI model.
Just a few months prior, Singapore had launched a separate probe into the alleged smuggling of restricted Nvidia chips, which were declared bound for Malaysia but may have been diverted elsewhere, including China.
In response to such cases and mounting U.S. pressure, Malaysia announced in July that it would begin requiring permits for all exports and transfers of Nvidia chips.
Outsourcing to Southeast Asia?
Chinese companies have also exploited a legal gray area by tapping into computing power from data centers in Southeast Asia equipped with restricted Nvidia chips, according to recent reports.
For example, Megaspeed was using its Nvidia chips for data centers in Malaysia and Indonesia, which appeared to be remotely serving customers in China, according to the Times.
Nvidia didn’t directly address this claim, but said in its statement that the Trump administration’s recent AI Action plan “rightfully encourages businesses worldwide to embrace U.S. standards and U.S. leadership, benefiting national and economic security.”
The Trump administration has recently signaled interest in ensuring Nvidia maintains its global market dominance — even in China — though its AI Action plan also called for strengthening enforcement of export controls globally.
Lawmakers in Washington have also proposed bills that could see Nvidia required to outfit its chips with tracking systems.
Such proposals have received pushback from Beijing, which froze imports of Nvidia’s chips after the Trump administration said it would roll back restrictions on some of the firm’s chips made specifically for China.
Microchip and Qualcomm logo displayed on a phone screen are seen in this multiple exposure illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on April 10, 2023.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Qualcomm shares fell on Friday after Chinese regulators said it would investigate the American tech giant’s acquisition of chip firm Autotalks, ramping up tensions between the U.S. and China ahead of key meetings between the country’s leaders this month.
Shares were last around 3% lower in premarket trading.
China’s State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) said that Qualcomm is suspected of violating the country’s anti-monopoly law in regards to its acquisition of Israeli firm Autotalks. The acquisition officially closed in June, just over two years after it was first announced.
In a short statement, the SAMR said it would initiate an investigation into Qualcomm.
Qualcomm was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC. The company sells its smartphone chips to some of the biggest players in China such as Xiaomi.
U.S. tech companies have recently been in the crosshairs of Chinese regulators ramping up tensions between Beijing and Washington ahead of key talks.
This week, China also tightened export controls on rare earths and related technologies. Rare earths are critical to high-tech industries, including automobiles, defense and semiconductors.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to meet in person on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum during the last week of October in Gyeongju, South Korea.