“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A content creator.”
As early as 2019, a survey by LEGO found that 30% of children between the ages of 8 and 12 want to be content creators or YouTubers when they grow up. Despite the social media ban for children under 16, one in every three Australian children wants to be a social media influencer. In India, 83% of Gen Z (especially from Tier II and III cities) identify as content creators.
Indian taxation systems now recognize social media influencers as a tax-paying professional category, and in March 2024, PM Modi distributed the first-ever National Creators Awards to Ranveer Allahbadia and Curly Tales founder Kamiya Jani. The awards were meant to honor creators aligned with the government’s narrative of nation-building. For a social media-savvy government, this makes inordinate sense; one study found that 37% of viewers trust influencers more than actual brands, making influencer endorsements particularly powerful. In April 2026, the Indian government outlined a plan for Content Creator Labs to be opened in schools and colleges across the country. This is all part of a push to position India as a global hub of content creation as part of the ‘Create in India, Create for the World’ initiative
All this points to the idea that content creation is gaining acceptance as a ‘real job’ both in India and globally. The creator economy’s direct revenues are projected to reach $100–125 billion by the end of the decade, according to a report by India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. But how did we get here? And what does it take for a ‘passion’ (for the lack of a better word) to turn into a profession?
For one, the profession has a name: ‘content creation’. The creator economy focuses primarily on those who create for the internet, and mainly in video form; its foundations were unintentionally laid when YouTube entered the picture, and introduced the concept of monetizing content.
YouTube saw that users were using their free time to come up with creative sketches, review videos, or music covers. Within two years of its 2007 launch, YouTube decided to split ad revenue with creators, in the hopes that the monetary benefit would incentivize people to post more, and then inspire others to do the same.
It helped that YouTube’s creator base had many early adopters. Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox of Smosh first ‘broke the internet’ with their cover of the Pokemon theme. iJustine came in with tech reviews in an innovative format, and NigaHiga brought absurdist comedy and an Asian lens to American humor.
They took to YouTube because it gave them a video-first base to express themselves. Vimeo had come in before YouTube in 2004, but it was a model with limited reach, where you often had to pay to access content. YouTube capitalized on being a free-to-access resource, significantly lowering the barrier for entry.
YouTube was the earliest democratic platform for people who were aspiring entertainers. These creators likely couldn’t find a footing in the traditional media landscape of film and TV. When platforms started generating monthly earnings for creators, it brought a sense of near-instant financial gratification – up until now, the idea was that if you were an artist, you had to wait years to get your dues. Within traditional media, that is still true today. Once branded collaborations came in, they added financial viability for creators, and a new way of creating brand loyalty for companies.
It helps, then, that platforms choose to celebrate their creators, like YouTube did for almost a decade with YouTube Rewind. There’s never quite been anything like it. Until they were included (it began as US / UK-dominant), Indian creators took matters into their own hands and made a Desi Rewind in 2017. That move went a long way in showing young Indian audiences and their parents that content creation has real value as a paying profession, and is not just a tool for popularity.
Many forget that Justin Bieber was just a kid on the internet making covers before he created original music in 2009, and was discovered and turned into a global pop icon. Platforms like YouTube still serve as a showreel, in the hopes that creators will land a film or be considered for awards. For stand-up comedians, putting their bits and clips online allows them to draw more audiences in to watch live shows. Shows like Little Things by Dice Media or Kota Factory by TVF were acquired by Netflix India just after their first few seasons on the ‘Tube.
American YouTubers like Mr Beast earn as much as USD 54 million a year from the platform, and he only started creating videos on YouTube in 2012. Compare this to Rhett and Link who run Good Mythical Morning: they started in 2006, and today, GMM earns 30 million USD a year through its channel network. Clearly there are enough pieces of the pie to go around.
It can still be hard to imagine that content creation is a legitimate, standalone career, rather than a stepping stone to something bigger. And that’s where other platforms like Instagram and TikTok take the reins of reinstating legitimacy.
Earnings on Instagram and TikTok are largely limited to gifts and to branded deals. Payouts based on views are still small, if not non-existent, meaning that the value creators can generate for themselves is tied to what they can create for others. On the other hand, if used properly, this can be extraordinarily lucrative; Instagram creators such as Anaheez Patel have fattened their business from ₹40,000 per month to ₹40 lakh in less than two years.
Others have leveraged their enormous followings to switch career gears. Preeti Sarkar, a YouTuber, has now launched a fashion brand called Preetizen. Underneat, a shapewear brand, was launched by Kusha Kapila. Kabita’s Kitchen, a popular Indian cooking channel, now has a range of masalas – Kabita’s Kitchen Masala Mix.
At the end of the day, if the broadest definition of a career is simply the time you spend working, content creation has been one for over two decades — ever since the first person chose to post a video to the world instead of keeping it in a home archive. India is now racing to catch up to that reality on an institutional scale: tax categories, government awards, Creator Labs in schools, and a ministry-backed revenue projection all say the same thing — this is no longer a hobby waiting for legitimacy. This is a proper job.
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