Digital Creator: What Is It & How to Become One (2026 Guide) | Mighty Networks

Creators & Entrepreneurs

Digital Creator: What Is It & How To Become One (2026)

We introduce you to the concept of a digital creator and walk you through how to become a one yourself.

Author

Mighty Team

Last Updated

November 28, 2025

Table of Contents

In this article

Digital creators are creating the world we consume online. These are the new writers, painters, and storytellers--the renaissance of creative people who shape the digital world.

In this article, we'll share:

If you’re thinking of becoming a digital content creator, this guide is for you!

What is a digital creator?

A digital creator is a person who conceptualizes, produces, and shares original content in electronic mediums; common digital creation formats include writing, videos, text, photography, and animation.

Unlike people who make physical creations, digital creators have more flexibility with digital tools and can leverage massive distribution networks online to reach an audience, gain fans, and sell their digital goods.

There's a split with online content. Some content is created by independent creators, while other content is created by brands and organizations. These are the same idea, but often have slightly different goals:

INCREDIBLE facts about digital creators

Digital creators shape our engagement with tech. Many of our favorite apps like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn would be nothing without digital creators to populate them. And even the birth of AI is launching a new wave of human creators working alongside the new tech.

These mind-bending statistics show that digital creators aren’t going anywhere anytime soon:

These stats are both inspiring and sobering.

There are so many active and dreaming digital content creators. But most of them aren’t earning much. We’ll talk below about some of the most profitable forms of digital creation.

What does a digital creator do?

Digital content creators don’t always do it all. But if you actually look at the skillset of the average creator, it’s nothing to sneeze at. While your parents might not get it (you post pictures online? Is that hard?), being a digital creator isn’t easy.

Digital creators often…

Essential skills digital creators should have

Why become a digital creator?

Creative expression

If you thought the Italian Renaissance was the peak of human creativity, it had nothing on this. Millions of independent creators can do the work that they love, getting it in front of people with no gatekeepers.

And thanks to the internet, there's a market for pretty much anything. No matter how niche. You can find an audience.

That makes it a fantastic time to be a digital creator. Because you can pretty much express yourself any way you want.

Flexible careers

20 years ago, making it as a writer meant getting published in a big publication. Becoming a photographer probably required a dark room, a lot of expensive equipment, and a gallery show. Painters would probably need the same thing.

But now, there are so many careers for digital creators. Whether you work for yourself and build a thriving digital business, or take your skills to one of the millions of companies that needs them, you've got the makings of a flexible career.

Location independent

Digital creators made up many of the first digital nomads, taking advantage of the freedom their work offered to explore the globe.

When you're creating stuff to put online, it often doesn't matter where you live. That means that not only are there great career opportunities, but you often get location independence.

You can write blog posts from Philadelphia, Paris, or Phuket. You can take Instagram pictures on any continent–your feed would probably be better for it.

A lot of digital creators just need a laptop and they can go anywhere.

In demand

Digital content creators are in demand. With so much volume online, people who can make things that translate into views, likes, and subscribers are valued. It could be directly monetizing your digital creations; there are lots of ways to do this. But it could also mean working for a company that wants digital content–most companies are creating content to put online.

Types of digital content

Here are some examples of some types of digital content.

How to become a digital content creator

Find your niche

Content creation usually happens best in a niche. Even creators that eventually hit mass appeal usually start out with a specific topic or audience.

For example:

Niching down helps creators focus on being good at one thing and building a following around that one thing.

For digital creators with a digital business in mind, the niche also helps you be more successful than trying to appeal to everyone. When we see people launch courses and communities, they always do better with a well-defined niche.

How to BUILD A $1M COMMUNITY, COURSE, or MEMBERSHIP (In 9 STEPS) - YouTube

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How to BUILD A $1M COMMUNITY, COURSE, or MEMBERSHIP (In 9 STEPS) Mighty Networks

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How to find your niche

There’s no ONE way to find your niche as a digital creator, but here are a few tips to get you started:

Develop your craft

The word craft might not always be one that people jump to when they think about digital creators. But, just like all good art, digital creation is a craft. It takes excellence and expertise. And most creators have a craft they’ve honed that helps them stand out.

For example, musician JVKE exploded to TikTok stardom during the pandemic. For each of his early videos, he would pretend he was getting his mom to create a song for him. Then he’d build amazing song mashups that “his mom” had created. One of his first hits was the song “Upside Down”--which included samples of the song Hood Baby, by KBFR.

The song exploded in popularity (With a lot of commenters expressing outrage that JVKE was getting famous when it was really his talented mom “creating it all.”)

The thing is, JVKE didn’t get lucky. He was an incredibly talented musician before he started. But instead of just releasing the songs on TikTok, he created a fun hook format that always featured him asking his mom to play songs (with clips of her making music). By combining instrumentation, vocals, music production, and fun videos, JVKE went viral and is now producing Billboard hits like Golden Hour.

Whatever your content creation will be, there will be craft involved. Whether you’re writing, making videos, singing, acting, or teaching people how to use Excel, honing your craft is what will get you to content that’s good enough to get seen.

NOW, you can develop your craft sitting by yourself somewhere. But one fantastic way to develop your craft is really just to start creating stuff. If you look back in the archives of most YouTubers, you’ll see that over time they’ve improved in production, presentation, and video concepts.

So you don’t need to wait until you’re a pro. You can use content creation to experiment and learn as you go.

Learn the right skills

Every type of digital creator needs a certain type of skill set.

When we see people launch thriving online communities, they often have leadership skills to bring people together, plus the skill to create and share a vision that others catch. They have the skills to make members feel like they belong, plus the organizational skills to chart a course for the community to move forward.

Now, you don’t necessarily need all these skills right now. Learning by doing is a legitimate way of getting them.

But whether through hands-on learning or dedicated learning, most digital creators learn some skills.

There are different, valuable skills for each type of digital creator, and learning them will help you put your best stuff forward.

Choose your outlet

At some point, you’ll choose an outlet for your content creation. The list of “types of digital content” above gives you some examples of what kind of content to create, but each of these fits somewhere.

Find the content outlet that’s going to fit what you want to create.

Build a content strategy

Your content isn’t just a flash in the pan. Digital creators who post for a week and then stop will experience… nothing. Nothing will happen.

It takes consistency, and you need to stick with it, whether you’re building a community of members, subscribers to a mailing list, or a following on social media.

And the people who stick to it are the ones who see the growth with time.

Whether you’re an individual digital creator OR you work for an organization, sometimes it helps to have a content strategy! For example, when we create content for the Mighty blog, we usually have big-picture content goals for a quarter. Then, we’ll do our keyword research to see what we need from an SEO perspective, and we plan out the upcoming content on a Monday board.

This helps us keep track of what content we have on the go and keeps us accountable for building it!

Whatever type of content you’re building, a content strategy can really help. But do be realistic about your content strategy. For most new creators, it’s probably not realistic to say: “I’m going to create 10 YouTube videos a week.” Plus, you’re more likely to get discouraged with such high goals.

Instead of volume, make it a priority to stick to a content strategy over a long period of time–even just one video, post, etc. a week can add up. And building consistency is the thing that most would-be creators don’t get to.

What metrics should I track each week to know my content strategy is working?

Grow your community

“Community” is a word that gets thrown around a lot with digital content. And we’re a little biased here–as a community platform–but not every engagement on the internet is community. If you’ve got a Twitter troll adding snark under your posts, is that your community? If you’ve got the same three people liking all your Facebook posts, is that community?

HECK no!

Anyway, here’s what passes for community on many corners of the internet.

What they mean when they say community

For many online brands and creators, community is:

It’s weak, but many creators are searching for this. More subscribers. More followers. The desire to watch a vanity metric climb, without ever necessarily building real human connection.

What we mean when we say community

When we think about community, we think about REAL human connections. Not the surface comments, but the chance to go deep and really build meaningful engagement with people.

When we think of community, we think of:

True community isn’t the one-way relationships of fans or subscribers to a creator. True community requires connection and belonging between members.

And that’s what we’re looking for.

If you’re a digital creator, you might be looking for the first kind of community. When you’re starting, it’s exciting to get subscribers and comments. But eventually, the dopamine hits from the likes wear off. Or, you say the wrong thing and your subscribers turn on you–because they never really knew you to begin with.

Building a community of engaged members lets you do less. You still get to be a digital creator, but you’re now hosting conversations instead of performing. And your members find something better than a dopamine hit; they find belonging.

That’s what communities do. And that’s why we love them. And–as we talk about monetization–a community can become a thriving digital business without millions and millions of followers. In fact, we’ve often seen 6- and 7- figure businesses grow out of a handful of engaged members.

How to BUILD A $1M COMMUNITY, COURSE, or MEMBERSHIP (In 9 STEPS) - YouTube

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Mighty Networks20.4K subscribers

Figure out how to monetize

Most–not all–creators want to monetize at some point. If that’s you, you’ll need to figure out a monetization strategy that works for you and your brand. Obviously there are a lot of different ways to do this, from advertising to selling digital products.

You’ll need to find the right thing that works for your brand.

Do check out the creator calculator, that can help you figure out how much you’ll earn monetizing on different platforms.

How to use AI to streamline your workflow

Digital creator vs. influencer

We’re using the word digital content creator in this article, but what’s the difference between a digital content creator and an influencer?

If you want to know a really simple way to think about digital creator vs influencer, it’s this: digital creator is a description of input for digital content, while influencer is a description of someone’s output. In other words, a digital creator is anyone who creates digital content. An influencer is someone who’s content gets a lot of attention and followers, building enough social capital that their opinions and creations can influence the thoughts and behaviors of others. This is why influencers can earn money from their brands; while many digital creators might not yet have monetized.

To keep it really simple, you could say this: Every influencer is a digital creator, but not every digital creator is an influencer–because influencers are measured by their following.

Digital creator vs. content creator

Examples of successful digital creators

There are so many amazing examples of digital creators, let’s look at some of our favorite digital creators who have built communities on Mighty!

Martinus Evans: Grew his Instagram following of “back-of-the-pack runners” to 95,000 people, and launched this into a community of 20,000+ people.

Ashley Fox: Left her six-figure Wall Street job to teach financial literacy to the 99% of people big finance doesn’t help. She launched a movement called Empify that reached thousands around the world and taught financial literacy in over 50 different schools, and The Wealth Builders Community.

Sadie Robertson Huff: A best-selling author, speaker, TV star, and one of the world's most influential voices for young Christian women today, with over 4.6 million Instagram followers, national speaking tours, and a top-ranking podcast called, WHOA, That’s Good. She runs the community LO sister.

Drew Binsky: A travel YouTuber with over 5 billion views, launched a branded app– Just Go–to help people fall in love with travel.

Ready to become a digital creator?

As we’ve said in this article, it’s easy to overthink becoming a digital creator. Often the best way to do it is just to get started.

If you’re looking for a platform to build on, come build with Mighty! We bring together content, courses, community, and commerce. Mighty is G2’s top-rated community platform, and it’s the perfect place to launch your digital content and grow a business around it.

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FAQs

1. How much money can digital creators realistically make?

The sobering statistic is that 46% earn less than $1,000/year. That’s rough.

There are differences, obviously. Some of these things can affect how much you make:

Do you keep going? You’ll hear a lot of successful creators say it. “Don’t quit! You’re only one video away! Don’t quit, it takes time!” The story of social media monetization is always, “If you work harder, it will come.” But it doesn’t always. MOST creators will never earn enough to live off of. You probably need a better strategy than riding the social media cycle until you burn out. Check out this masterclass. It will help you think differently about creating.

How to BUILD A $1M COMMUNITY, COURSE, or MEMBERSHIP (In 9 STEPS) - YouTube

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Mighty Networks20.4K subscribers

2. Do I need expensive equipment to start as a digital creator?

Not necessarily. Especially since you can sink a lot of money into gear and not see the payout. Most creators are better off working with a phone or laptop until they can prove the concept. Here are a few low-cost things you could consider getting to up your game (again, if you can afford it).

But you can find free video editors, photo editing, post makers (e.g. Canva), and lots of other fantastic tools!

3. How long does it take to build a following as a digital creator?

Let’s set some realistic timelines for this. A creator’s journey to success can take anywhere from a few months to many years. And as we said above, some people will never arrive.

That’s tough.

If your goal is to build a following, consistency helps. But it’s not the only thing. You’ll need great content that serves a need, either entertainment, teaching, or interest. It needs to be well-executed in a way that gets people to not only watch, but to click “follow.”

Your platform matters too. TikTok’s algorithm is notorious for helping people grow quickly, and it has a bit of a search function so people can keep finding you. YouTube is strong in both discoverability AND SEO traffic.

All that to say, even with the variables, it takes months and years for most creators to build a following.

4. What's the difference between creating content and building a community?

If you scrolled social media today, how many of those creators do you remember? How many would you trust to tell you something? How many would you buy from?

Not many!

A community isn’t built on flash and attention. It’s built on deep trust and real relationships.

Social media can be a good start for building this kind of trust. We see communities developing in comments sometimes, when content is authentic and real and people want to connect more to it.

But the ultimate win is bringing those people into a space where they can build real relationships. Have real conversations. That’s the benefit of community.

5. How do I choose the right platform for my content?

There are a few questions you should ask:

That said, choosing one platform to start on can be a good strategy. Trying to be everywhere at once is a recipe for burn-out, and very few creators get here (usually it’s with a team).

6. What should I do if I'm not getting views or engagement?

The answer you usually hear is “keep going.” And sometimes that’s right. But if you’re not getting ANY engagement at all, there’s a bigger chance it's your content. A lot of creators look for algorithm or AI hacks.

But the real truth is, your content probably just isn’t good enough… yet.

After you’ve done this, keep going (for a while). But not forever. Don’t forget, you can also adapt your model. While views and engagement are great business metrics, they aren’t a real measure of success. And they certainly aren’t money in your pocket.

What about thinking differently? If you have 100 followers, how could you get more value out of those followers–instead of believing that you need 10,000 to be successful?

7. Can I be a digital creator while working a full-time job?

Of course you can! Since 66% of creators consider themselves part-time, many probably have day jobs. The great thing about being a creator is that you can do it in your hours off.

But a couple things to consider:

Here’s a thought. For some people, the content they create aligns perfectly with a day job. For example, the YouTuber Rene Ritchie is YouTube’s creator liaison! That’s a cool job for a content creator. If you share expertise in a way that makes your company look good, your boss will probably love it (check first). Or maybe you become your company’s social media manager.

Ultimately, digital creation is a skill that many brands need too. If you can find a way to use your talents for good, it can really complement your day job!

8. How do I deal with negative comments or online criticism?

There isn’t one successful creator who hasn’t dealt with negative comments and criticism. It’s hard to deal with. And–for every creator–it can hurt your mental health and the joy of creating.

Here are a few strategies to help deal with it:

9. Is it better to focus on one platform until I master it or diversify from day one? Or build a multi-platform presence?

For most people, focus is key. There are just way too many platforms and only so many hours in the day. And each platform has its own logic. Even platforms that seem similar aren’t necessarily–TikTok and YouTube Shorts feel the same, but they work differently.

It’s probably best to focus on winning one platform. There might be a few ways to cross-pollenate (e.g. a livestream on Streamyard that goes to multiple platforms), but win one first.

10. How do I prevent burnout & stay motivated as a digital creator?

You can’t do everything. Here are a few ways to keep moving without burnout:

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