545: Expert Advice on Building a Massive Online Following With Nathan Barry

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:39 — 58.3MB)

The best way to build a massive online following in 2024 is to pick the one content platform you personally enjoy consuming, publish the same short-form format every day for 12 months straight, and route every new follower into an email list (because email is still the highest-ROI creator channel, driving 30 percent of revenue in ecommerce and up to 90 percent in publishing). In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I talk with Nathan Barry, the founder and CEO of ConvertKit (rebranding to Kit in September 2024), which now serves 50,000-plus creators and does 40 million dollars a year in ARR.

Nathan runs the largest creator conference in the industry (Craft + Commerce) and has a front-row seat to what actually drives creator revenue right now. He shared the exact numbers behind why today’s creators are making 10x what they made a decade ago, which platform pairings are working best in 2024, and the free “Creator Network” recommendation feature inside ConvertKit that has driven 5.5 million new email subscribers in the last year.

Below is the full breakdown: the two-reason case for why creator income has exploded, the platform-selection framework, the exact email-list growth playbook top creators use, and the paid-recommendation model (SparkLoop) that lets you scale email subscribers without spending a dollar on Facebook ads.

Key takeaways

• Creator incomes are up roughly 10x since 2011. Making 1 million dollars a year from an audience is now common, up from 60,000 to 100,000 dollars being the top of the game a decade ago.
• Two forces drive the shift: audience sizes are massively bigger (James Clear runs a ~3 million subscriber newsletter) and creator marketing is substantially better (design, copy, conversion, product pricing).
• Choose your platform by what you personally enjoy consuming, not by what someone else is winning on. Winning playbooks exist on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
• Cross-post in pairs: X + LinkedIn for text, Instagram Reels + TikTok for short-form video. Cross-posting is a hook and content quality test in disguise.
• Instagram Reels is the fastest way to build top-of-funnel today. Attorney Jefferson Fisher grew a 5.4M-follower Instagram and a 250K email list on the same format every video.
• YouTube is the most durable long-term platform for creators. It rewards deep, high-quality content and does not chase trends the way TikTok does.
• Email is still the highest-ROI creator channel. 30 percent of ecommerce revenue, close to 90 percent of publishing revenue.
• ConvertKit’s free Creator Network recommendations feature drove 5.5 million new subscribers to creators in its first year. For many creators it is now their #1 growth channel.
• SparkLoop turns paid Facebook-ad-style acquisition into a creator-to-creator marketplace. Some creators recoup 50 to 75 percent of their Facebook ad costs by recommending SparkLoop partners after signup.

How much are top online creators actually earning in 2024?

Top online creators are routinely earning 1 million dollars-plus per year from their audiences in 2024, and the median full-time creator is earning many multiples of what a comparable creator earned in 2011. When Nathan and I both entered the creator world around 2010 and 2011, a creator making 60,000 to 100,000 dollars a year was at the top of the game. Today that number would not raise an eyebrow.

The two forces behind 10x creator incomes

Two forces are behind the roughly 10x jump in creator incomes over the last decade. Both compound.

• Audience sizes are much bigger. Ten years ago, 10,000 newsletter subscribers was a massive list. Today James Clear is pushing 3 million subscribers, Nathan’s own personal list sits around 40,000 without hard promotion, and creators regularly scale from 20,000 to 80,000 subscribers in a single year.
• Creator marketing is much better. Copywriting, conversion optimization, design, product pricing, funnel structure. Every layer of the sales machine has improved. High-quality design used to be the exception on creator sites and is now the baseline.

Where the money is coming from by revenue type

Where creator revenue lands depends heavily on where the audience was built. The mapping is fairly predictable.

The highest-earning creators skew heavily toward digital products. Either a high-volume 30 to 200 dollar tier (ebooks, mini-courses) or a high-ticket 1,000 to 5,000 dollar tier (flagship courses, cohorts). Coaching is another lever, because a coaching business at 1,000-plus dollars per month needs only 20 to 40 clients to generate 20,000 to 40,000 dollars a month.

How to pick the right content platform for your audience-building strategy

Pick the content platform you personally enjoy consuming, not the platform someone else is winning on. Nathan’s rule is that copying a playbook from a friend who is exploding on X falls apart within a month if you personally hate X, because the daily grind of publishing is unsustainable without genuine enjoyment of the medium.

The pair-your-platforms strategy

Platforms pair naturally by content format. Publish the same content to both platforms in a pair and get twice the reach for one production effort, plus a built-in A/B test on your hooks.

• Text pair: X (Twitter) + LinkedIn. About 90 percent of the content is directly reusable.
• Short-form video pair: Instagram Reels + TikTok. Same clip, slightly different thumbnail styling to feel native to each platform.
• Long-form pair: YouTube long-form + Podcast (video-first). The same recording feeds both.

The cross-posting bonus is signal quality. If a video crushes on Instagram and also crushes on TikTok, the hook and content are strong. If it wins on one platform and dies on the other, you had a lucky algorithmic bounce, not a true winner.

Which platform is fastest for top-of-funnel growth in 2024?

Instagram Reels is currently the fastest platform to grow top-of-funnel followers. Attorney Jefferson Fisher (@jefferson_fisher) grew his Instagram following to 5.4 million by publishing the same-format video every day: himself in his car, seatbelt across, teaching one specific communication tactic. His email list is 250,000 subscribers built entirely from Instagram and TikTok.

The recipe is the same across creators winning on Reels right now.

• Same visual format every video (setting, framing, opening frame).
• Same duration (about 60 seconds).
• Same posting cadence (once per day, same time).
• Narrow topic focus so the algorithm can classify you cleanly.

Why YouTube is still the most durable creator platform long-term

YouTube is the most durable long-term platform for creators because YouTube consistently rewards deep, high-quality content and does not shift its algorithm on trends the way TikTok does. Creators who invest in YouTube build compounding libraries that continue to earn views and revenue for years.

The tradeoff YouTube requires is public identifiability. Casey Neistat was mobbed at the Boise airport before he made it to a car when he came to speak at Craft + Commerce, because millions of YouTube subscribers recognize his face. Mark Manson, who has sold tens of millions of books, attended the same conference and 80 percent of attendees did not know who he was until he took the stage, because his growth was in print and podcast rather than YouTube.

The “how famous do you want to be” question

Nathan’s framing is that platform selection determines your daily life. If you do not want to be recognized when you go out to dinner with your family, you should probably not build a large YouTube channel with your face on every thumbnail. If you want to be famous enough that anyone you want to talk to will take your call but not so famous that you cannot walk down the street, target podcast, newsletter, and text-first platforms instead.

Why podcasts are the highest-quality-listener channel for creators

Podcasts consistently produce the highest average listener income and the deepest audience relationships, even though they are the hardest platform to grow. Nathan chose to invest in his Nathan Barry Show podcast despite modest reach (around 5,000 downloads per episode) because the listeners are top professional creators, bestselling authors, and multi-million-subscriber YouTubers.

The tradeoff is real. Podcast audiences grow slowly, but they build the strongest trust of any platform.

Podcasts are also increasingly video-first, with a significant share of many podcast audiences now consuming episodes on YouTube. Nathan estimates 80 percent of his podcast growth effort now goes into YouTube distribution.

How to build an email list from any social platform in 2024

The email-list playbook that works in 2024 is essentially the same one that worked in 2012: put something genuinely valuable behind an email opt-in, then promote it consistently across whichever platform is your primary channel. What has changed is the audience sizes and the tools, not the mechanics.

The core lead-magnet playbook

The lead-magnet playbook still delivers, and Jefferson Fisher’s 250,000-subscriber email list is the current-day proof. The steps.

1. Pick a topic you cover regularly and identify a specific tactical asset (checklist, template, guide, framework) that solves a real, narrow problem.
2. Put it behind an email opt-in. Give it a memorable name.
3. Promote it in Instagram Stories, Reel captions, X threads, podcast episodes, or YouTube video end-cards, depending on your primary platform.
4. Customize the lead magnet to the content category. Different reels can point to different lead magnets by topic.
5. Use a warm-up sequence to convert the new subscriber into a fan, not just a subscriber count.

Clickbait is only clickbait if you do not deliver. A catchy hook plus a deep payoff is good marketing, not manipulation.

Why the “post-subscribe” moment is the biggest untapped growth lever

The single most underused growth lever in email marketing is the post-subscribe confirmation moment. Most creators send a thank-you page and a welcome email, and stop there. ConvertKit’s Creator Network feature turns the post-subscribe moment into a recommendation surface for other newsletters your subscribers will love.

Since ConvertKit launched Creator Network in 2023, it has driven 5.5 million new subscribers to creators. For many ConvertKit customers, Creator Network is now their single largest source of new email subscribers, because compound growth on peer-to-peer recommendations beats any single ad channel.

How SparkLoop’s paid-recommendation model changes email list growth economics

SparkLoop is a paid creator-to-creator recommendation network that turns list growth into a marketplace where creators pay each other per verified engaged subscriber. Nathan’s team acquired SparkLoop in 2023 and it now powers many of the biggest newsletter growth strategies in the industry.

How the SparkLoop math works

The math is straightforward. A creator like Sahil Bloom (750,000-plus subscribers) sets a pay-per-verified-subscriber rate, say 2 dollars, and defines what “verified” means (opens 2 emails within 14 days, or clicks a link within 14 days). Other creators browse the SparkLoop directory, pick partners they genuinely read and respect, and recommend those partners in their own signup flow or email content.

The recommender earns per verified referred subscriber. The paying creator gets high-intent, pre-warmed subscribers who came from a source that already vets them. Both sides win, and no ad platform takes a cut.

How to use SparkLoop to offset Facebook ad costs

The clever move is stacking SparkLoop on top of your existing paid subscriber acquisition. If you already spend on Meta ads to grow your list, the post-subscribe form is prime real estate for SparkLoop recommendations.

Recommending 3 to 5 SparkLoop-paying partners at the moment of signup can recoup 50 to 75 percent of your Facebook ad cost per subscriber, so your net acquisition cost drops sharply.

The recommended subscribers do engage somewhat lower than direct organic subscribers, but not substantially lower if you pick partners carefully and warm them up. The rule is only recommend creators whose newsletters you would send to your best friend.

What ConvertKit changed by rebranding to Kit and going free to 10,000 subscribers

ConvertKit is rebranding to Kit in September 2024 and just increased its free tier from 1,000 subscribers to 10,000 subscribers, a 10x jump that makes it a no-brainer for any creator starting from scratch. The free plan includes broadcasts, a basic autoresponder sequence, and access to the Creator Network recommendation feature.

Nathan also launched a Kit App Store modeled on Shopify and WordPress, where third-party developers build apps that extend Kit for niche use cases (SMS, CRM boards, specialty automations). This lets Kit stay focused on its core feature set while opening the door to specialized functionality the core team does not have capacity to build.

How creators are combining physical ecommerce with digital products

The most powerful creator business model right now is combining a physical ecommerce brand with a digital-product content arm that cross-promotes both directions. Nathan shared an anonymized case study of a portfolio company doing 2 million dollars a year in physical ecommerce that scaled its digital product line from about 20,000 dollars a month to 120,000 to 200,000 dollars a month in the last year.

The lift came from three changes: professional-grade digital content, better product-market fit on the digital SKUs, and Facebook ads driving cold traffic into the digital funnel. Each side lends credibility to the other, and once the combination clicks, launching a new product to a warmed-up audience becomes almost automatic.

Frequently asked questions

How much can a creator realistically earn from a newsletter in 2024?

A creator with a well-monetized newsletter of 30,000 to 50,000 engaged subscribers can realistically earn 200,000 to 500,000 dollars a year in 2024, and top-tier newsletter creators like James Clear earn multiples of that. Revenue comes from digital products (30 to 200 dollar range at volume or 1,000 to 5,000 dollar high-ticket), coaching, sponsorships, and affiliate revenue. The exact number depends heavily on product mix and audience quality.

Which social platform is best for growing an email list?

Instagram Reels is currently the fastest platform to build a large email list, because Reels drive massive top-of-funnel exposure and a single lead magnet promoted across Reels and Stories can add hundreds of subscribers per day for a creator with strong content. X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok all also work well. Pick the platform you personally enjoy publishing on, and pair it with a natural sibling (Reels with TikTok, X with LinkedIn).

What is a Creator Network in ConvertKit / Kit?

Creator Network is a free ConvertKit (soon Kit) feature that lets you recommend other creators’ newsletters in your post-signup flow, and lets other creators recommend yours. Subscribers can join recommended newsletters with a single click without re-entering their email. In its first year, Creator Network drove 5.5 million new subscribers to creators using it, and for many creators it is now their single largest source of new email signups.

What is SparkLoop and how does it work?

SparkLoop is a paid creator-to-creator recommendation network that lets newsletter creators pay each other for verified engaged subscribers, where a creator sets a per-subscriber payout (often 1 to 5 dollars) and defines what counts as engaged (opens, clicks). Other creators browse the directory and recommend those newsletters in their signup flows or emails, earning per verified referral. SparkLoop supports about 19 email service providers.

How much is ConvertKit / Kit free?

ConvertKit’s free plan (soon rebranded as Kit) supports up to 10,000 subscribers, an increase from 1,000 subscribers as of the 2024 update. The free plan includes unlimited broadcasts, a basic autoresponder sequence, landing pages, and access to Creator Network recommendations. Paid tiers add automation flows, advanced segmentation, and more advanced features.

Should I focus on TikTok or Instagram Reels for creator growth?

Instagram Reels currently produces more durable follower relationships than TikTok, because TikTok’s algorithm skews harder toward pure discovery and behavior-based recommendations, which makes it easy to gain followers who never see your later content. TikTok is still excellent for testing hooks and for TikTok Shop ecommerce. The best strategy is to cross-post the same content to both, then invest more heavily wherever you get the deeper follower engagement.

Is blogging still a viable creator platform in 2024?

Blogging as a standalone strategy has weakened significantly in 2024, with Google’s core updates and AI Overviews cutting organic traffic to many food, lifestyle, and general-interest blogs. Blogs still work as part of a multi-platform hub-and-spoke strategy, especially when paired with YouTube, a newsletter, and a podcast. Almost no successful creator is a pure blogger today.