Business and Marketing
Creators: Some Niches Are Easier to Monetize Than Others
Where do you fall on the “Spectrum of Monetizability”?
In 2019, an influencer launched a clothing brand to her 2.6 million Instagram followers and failed to sell just 36 t-shirts.
The story went viral because the internet loves when big influencer fails publicly. And I get — I’m still talking about it six years later.
For a lot of people, the story is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with influencers — they only create content, so they can build an audience, so they can sell shitty products to that audience, so they can make money.
But most creators aren’t in it for the money or the fame, they just want to earn enough to continue doing what they love. And those people could learn something from a case like this:
Having a big audience does not guarantee you’ll make money. Conversely, lots of creators with small audiences make an honest, full-time living.
How do we explain the difference?
Why the Launch Likely Failed
- Misaligned audience-product fit: Her followers were there for lifestyle content, not to buy branded fashion.
- Low engagement and purchasing intent: A large following doesn’t automatically mean a responsive or ready-to-buy audience.
- Possibly inflated follower count: Some speculated that part of her audience included bots or inactive users, which tanked real reach.
- Demographic mismatch: Many of her followers were teens without disposable income or purchasing power.
- Weak brand positioning: The brand kinda failed to distinguish itself from every other influencer-peddled fast-fashion.
This is just the most famous case of something that happens often to creators — there’s a huge gap between the size of their audience and the ability to monetize that audience.
The Monetization Gap
I like to lurk in the r/InstagramMarketing subreddit because it’s a great place to observe this phenomenon of the monetization gap.
Most common post: “How do I build an audience/get more followers faster/hack the algorithm?”
Second most-common post: “Okay, I built an audience… Now, how do I monetize it?”
Commenters always ask the same questions: “What’s your niche? What kind of content are you posting?”
The answer is usually something like, “I post memes,” or “I just do all the viral challenges,” or “I clip gameplay and layer it over funny videos.”
Someone will inevitably suggest brand deals, digital products, or affiliate deals, or coaching and I just kinda shake head because I know that it’s gonna be a tough sell.
Why? The Monetization Gap — the space between what (and how) you create and what your audience wants to pay for.
I see this problem so often that I’ve put some mental energy into trying to define why this happens and what you can do about it.
The Spectrum of Monetizability
Note: I know that’s probably not a word. I made it up because I think it points out something valuable, that everyone seems to know but nobody is saying explicitly: there are niches that are more or less difficult to monetize.
All niches, all types of content, all creators exist somewhere on that spectrum.
Here are some examples of harder and easier niches.
Hard to monetize:
- Reposting other people’s content
Example: Meme pages that curate viral tweets or TikToks often grow fast but struggle to sell anything because they don’t own the content or the relationship with the audience. - Low-effort, highly commodified content
Example: Faceless accounts that define simple terms, summarize trending events, or post generic “fact of the day” content can gain reach but are easily replaceable and rarely build the kind of connection or trust needed to sell anything. - Pure entertainment with no clear value-add
Example: Pages posting random funny videos or “oddly satisfying” clips rack up views but rarely attract buyers unless tied to a product or brand.
Easier to monetize:
- Original content with a distinct voice or perspective
Example: A creator who shares personal essays or stories that build emotional connection and trust. - High-value, skill-driven or problem-solving content
Example: A YouTuber teaching home workouts that can easily transition into digital products or coaching. - Educational content that solves a valuable problem
Example: A subject matter expert teaching how to land freelance clients is speaking to an audience already looking to spend money to solve a problem.
Note: There’s also a kind of monetization I haven’t accounted for — that’s in-platform monetization, like TikTok’s Creator Fund or Youtube’s monetized channels, where accounts are paid on a per-view or share of ad revenue share basis. Clearly, a big enough account could monetize through these channels alone, instead of monetizing outside the platform, though I suspect the competition for these funds crowds out smaller creators. More on that later.
How to Analyze Your Position on the Spectrum of Monetizability
Here’s a more complete way to assess where you fall on the monetizability spectrum. Ask yourself where you stack up on these 6 dimensions.
1. Audience Composition
Do your followers have purchasing power, and are they the right people for the product you’re offering? Demographics, particularly age and income, play a role here. It’s more than just size of audeince and engagement. It’s also ability and willingess to pay.
2. Content-Product Fit
Does your content naturally lead to a product or offer? If you teach cooking techniques, a digital recipe book makes perfect sense. If you post outfit pics with no personal brand, trying to sell a real estate course may feel off.
3. Problem Severity (in $$ terms)
Are you solving a problem people are already spending money on? Fitness, finances, career development are probably more monetizable than learning how to cook tiny pancakes. It’s the classic “need-to-have” vs “nice-to-have” problem.
4. Market Competition
How else can your audience solve this problem today, and how do you compare?
Closely related to number 3, there are people, companies, products that people currently pay money to solve that problem. Why should they pay you instead of someone else to help solve that problem. Your biggest competitor is sometimes not solving the problem at all.
5. Audience Relationship & Trust
Does your audience believe you have the authority and expertise to help them solve this problem? I’ve worked with lots of creators who are not the best in the world at what they do. But that doesn’t matter because people trust them. The reason people buy from them is because they’ve built a relationship over years of consuming their content.
Scoring Exercise
Use the five criteria above to figure out where you fall on the spectrum. Simply, read the descriptions above and give yourself a gut-check score on a scale of 1–5. 1 being low, 5 being high. Add your scores, divide by 5 to get your average monetizability score.
- 1–2: Harder to Monetize
- 3: Somewhere in the Middle
- 4–5: Easier to Monetize
Conclusion: What If You’re in a Hard-to-Monetize Niche?
If you’ve read this far and you’ve realized you’re on the hard to monetize end of the spectrum, you really have two options.
Option 1: Keep creating for the love of it.
If you genuinely enjoy what you’re making, and you’re not in a rush to turn it into a business, you might choose to stay the course. Maybe you don’t care about monetizing — totally valid. It may be harder to monetize but it’s probably not impossible. Maybe it leads to opportunities down the line like a job or a collaboration. Maybe it just remains a hobby. It’s totally up to you.
Option 2: Pivot with monetization in mind.
If your goal is to make a living as a creator, it might be worth considering a shift. You don’t necessarily need to nuke your account. Maybe it’s more of a pivot than starting over.
Maybe that means narrowing your focus, identifying a specific problem your audience faces, or slowly steering your content toward more value-driven work.
In either case, I think it makes sense to put a little thought into what you want to get out of creating, instead of blindly building an audience, in the hopes that you’ll get rich selling a shitload of T-shirts, because, as we’ve seen, that’s not a guarantee.
