Why You’ll Never Be an Online Star

Online sensations like Mr. Beast—the YouTuber with nearly 500 million subscribers—have spurred countless imitators with dreams of online fame. More than 127 million people say they work as “creators,” according to the influencer marketing firm NeoReach. 

Yet a vanishing few reach the stratospheric heights of Mr. Beast, who reportedly earns $700 million a year, or historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose Substack newsletter, “Letters from an American,” is estimated to bring in $5 million in annual revenues. According to a 2025 survey by NeoReach, 70 percent of creators report earning less than $49,000 a year, and more than half earn less than $15,000 annually. (YouTube, meanwhile, reported $60 billion in revenues in 2025.)

As veteran podcaster Matt Robison argues, media has become a “superstar economy” where a small number of players dominate the market. Their incumbency is secured by platforms like YouTube and Substack, which have every incentive to promote their superstars as a way to compete against each other. Algorithms that favor popularity make things worse for smaller creators trying to break in. The result is that no one who isn’t already big can make it big because the big guys are insulated from competition.

Robison, who worked for years as a senior staffer on Capitol Hill, is the author of the Substack, “Worth Knowing,” and the host of the podcast, “Beyond Politics.” 

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available at Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes. 

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Anne Kim:  Social media platforms and platforms like Substack have really created this mythology around the unknown creator who hits it big. And you do have successes like Mr. Beast, Heather Cox Richardson, and Barry Weiss’s “Free Press,” which sold to Paramount for $150 million. Success stories like these create the perception that anyone can become a publisher, and it’s true that back in the day, not everyone could put out their own newspaper. At the same time, I think there’s a pretty strong argument that these platforms that are allegedly intended to democratize influence aren’t really fulfilling their promise. You’ve done this for years now and have quite a bit of experience on the economics of how all these platforms work. Who’s really benefiting? Is it the platforms or are they being fair to the creators?

Matt Robison: I’d say that they’re being fair within the limited economics that these platforms offer. It’s not that the promise of these platforms is hollow. It’s just highly curated. They’re businesses, and like every business, they’re selling something. 

So in the 1980s, you may remember that the slogan for the NBA was, “It’s fantastic!” You wouldn’t have said, “It’s pretty good!”

The vast majority of creators are going to end up in that middle class or lower middle class or working class of creators. That’s just the nature of the platform economics. But of course, they’re not going to sell it that way. If you’re YouTube, with Google behind it, if you’re Substack, if you’re Spotify, you’re going to have a vested interest in selling your superstars and the promise that you too could be like them. 

The reality is that it’s just very, very stacked against you. It’s very hard to make it. I’m not entirely sure that it’s the companies’ and the platforms’ fault. I think it’s the overall dynamics of how these platforms work.

Anne Kim:  It seems like what’s happening with media generally and these platforms is a microcosm of the economy at large that is very much “winner takes all.” You have the Mr. Beasts and Heather Cox Richardson together at the very top, and then Washington Monthly would be very much in the middle class, right? We’ve been at this fairly modest level for quite some time. It’s very difficult to compete with the larger platforms, and I think there are a lot of structural forces that rig the house against independent creators. What would you say are some of the challenges that independent creators have to battle when they’re up against the big guys, meaning the big creators, but also the big platforms?

Matt Robison: You could choose any niche here, writing in Substack, or video and YouTube, or audio podcasts, which are quickly becoming video podcasts, which are quickly just becoming YouTube. It’s like Derek Thompson’s thing, “Everything wants to become TV eventually.” 

Let’s go with traditional podcasts since it’s something everyone’s pretty familiar with at this point. Well, one issue with the podcast market is something that goes back to an idea from 1981, by this economist Sherwin Rosen, who wrote “Economics of Superstars.”

The podcast market is a superstar market. That’s a phenomenon where a very small number of top performers are able to capture a wildly disproportionate share of market revenue. Usually you see this in markets where there’s a mechanism called “joint consumption.” That’s where a creator can serve an unlimited audience at a near zero marginal cost. So from the standpoint of the audience, there’s no reason to settle for a knockoff. There’s no limitation on your access to that premium good. You might as well just go for the premium good, and that means that those top superstars can basically reach everyone. They compete against everyone. 

And if you are a new entrant, this gets into another concept called “contestable markets,” where there are very low barriers to entry. That’s definitely the situation with podcasts. 

Everyone has an opinion, and everyone has a podcast these days. It’s very, very easy to get into it. What ends up happening is this very stratified market where you have some top superstars who through various advantages emerge and then have this phenomenon that builds on itself. 

And here’s an aspect of this that I don’t have an economic name for, although I’m sure it exists if I really searched on JSTOR long enough. But just think about your own experience: How many podcasts are you subscribed to? 

Anne Kim:  Subscribe to?  I mean quite a few. How many I actually have time to listen to? Besides yours, of course, right? That’s what you’re getting at, right? 

Matt Robison: That’s the rub. So let me guess. You’re like me. You’re probably subscribed to 15 to 20 podcasts. Might be more. But in a given week, you probably listen to maybe three, maybe four episodes. For me, it varies a great deal. For example, for a while my favorite NBA podcaster, Zach Lowe, was off the air. He got fired by ESPN. 

And so I replaced that show in my regular listening rotation with a different show from some other ESPN NBA guys. Then Zach got hired by a new company. Now he’s back. And I’m not listening to that other show anymore. I’m listening to Zach Lowe. That’s the way most people experience most of these products on these platforms. They’ve only got so many slots available to them. You lead a busy life. 

You probably only have time for three or four podcasts a week. I only have space in my email inbox for maybe five Substacks. That’s the way most people experience it. So for most of us, as entrants into these contestable markets where there are low barriers to entry, and where there are incumbent superstars, what we find is we’re not competing against that very top tier. We’re competing against that big middle class. That’s where all the churn is. And that’s essentially the problem.

 There’s no way to break into those limited number of slots. If I wanted to get to the very top of someone’s listening rotation, first I have to compete against all of that churn in the middle. And then I’ve got to convince someone to take their version of Zach Lowe out of one of their premium slots and replace it with me. That is ultra hard.

Anne Kim:  I think that there are definitely ways in which the companies are also stacking the deck against the middle class of content creators and preserving the incumbency of the people at the top. One of the ways is utter lack of transparency. They want to create this illusion that anybody can do it. And anybody can do it, but they also don’t tell you how hard it is. Substack has no information whatsoever on how many people are on their platform, what their revenues are, and what’s the expected revenue for your typical Substacker. They don’t disclose any of that information. None of the big platforms do. I think it kind of lures people in and creates a hypercompetitive market just because people don’t know what they’re up against.

Matt Robison: To me, the biggest myth that the platforms sell is that there are hacks and tricks and optimizations and best practices that get you there. If you only follow this one pathway, and there’s a million people who are kind of like derivative hangers on to these marketplaces, who are gurus that will sell you: “Here’s how you get there.” “Here are the top 10 hacks.”

If you want to pause this podcast right now – but please don’t – you can go on YouTube, search for “top creator hacks,” and you will find them. The reality is this, and I’ve been at this on YouTube, on Substack, and on Podcast for six years now. There is no way to market, promote, or hack your way to growth if you are an independent. 

Let me say this again. It is the number one myth that the platforms promote. You can’t get from here to there just because you market more, you promote on other platforms more, you go on social media. For one thing, you get very little cross-platform value. If you promote on Twitter a podcast that’s on YouTube, you get almost nothing. Now, some of that is algorithmic throttling, where Elon Musk literally will limit the reach of any tweet that has a YouTube link in it. That’s part of the problem. But part of it is people are on Twitter to do one kind of thing. They’re not necessarily there to listen to podcasts that are on another platform. And so you just get very limited value. 

You can do paid marketing. It can work a little. There’s a whole ad industry that’s built on the idea that you can persuade people to buy things by putting some money behind advertising. So I’m not saying it works zero, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as people would like to make it seem. 

There are three guaranteed ways to have a hit podcast that I’ve found, and these are stone cold locks that can definitely get you to be at least a moderately successful podcast. Number one, you can be a current celebrity. So if you’re Amy Poehlar, whom I adore, you can start a podcast, Good Hang with Amy Poehler, and become a top podcast in a week. Number two, you can have a giant company behind you that will put a lot of dollars behind it. So if you work for the New York Times, you can have a successful podcast. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s a lot more likely. The third thing you can do is to invent a time machine and go back 10 years and get in on the ground floor of any of these platforms. 

That first mover advantage has launched a number of successful creators to upper middle-class status. Good on them. It’s just not accessible to the rest of us who are trying to get in on Substack now.

Anne Kim:  And I would add one more way in which you can get to the top. And that is to be in that inner circle because the platforms are choosing winners and losers. Back in 2021, TechCrunch reported that Substack was getting a lot of backlash over its “Substack Pro,” program, where they recruited these writers and gave them like advances, like a quarter million dollars, and then spent a huge amount of resources to elevate their platform publications on that platform to give Substack a start.

But it created an incumbent advantage that’s really, really difficult for other independent creators to overcome. Meta is doing the same thing. Meta is paying top creators paying top creators on TikTok and YouTube to come onto Facebook, you know? So the house always wins, meaning the platforms. 

And of course, there are the algorithms too, right? Algorithms are self-reinforcing feedback loops that favors the big players again. They can also be gamed in lots of ways. Fake accounts, bots, ads. Again, those big companies you talked about are the ones that win. It also favors bad content. As you and I know, we have tried so hard to put quality content out there, but it’s really hard to beat the algorithms when you have substantive, serious, factual content.

Matt Robison: Yeah, it’s very hard. I’ve likened it to trying to operate a Michelin one-star restaurant next to a McDonald’s. You clearly are winning on quality. The problem is people really like fries. They really like McNuggets. And again, I I’m not here to fault anyone’s taste. people’s taste is people’s taste. But it’s very, very hard to compete on quality, and trying to differentiate on quality is not a winning strategy. I’ve employed it for years now. It doesn’t it doesn’t get you very far. 

But that is again where the combination of superstar economics and contestable markets and limited audience slots really come to play because you do have a sea of competitors out there and new entrants all the time. And you are dealing with that churn. 

So if you’re in the middle as an independent, you’re a little bit like Han Solo and Princess Leia in the trash compactor. You’ve got this compression happening all around you, and you’re trying to keep your head above it. You’re not only competing against existing market players, substitutes that are doing the same thing you’re doing, you’re also dealing with

new people showing up. It’s like you’re on the Roman frontier and here come the Visigoths, and you’re constantly dealing with that. So it’s an unenviable position. You’re getting compacted the entire time. 

[You can think,] “I don’t want to compete against all these guys in the middle. I want to compete against the upper tier.”  But they’re insulated. They’re floating like the cream above all this churn below them because of superstar economics. They’re insulated by two tiers of competition and a limited number of slots. For someone to take the New York Times out of their rotation and say, “Instead of that, I’m going to the Washington Monthly.”  That’s a much bigger leap, and that’s awfully hard.

Anne Kim:  I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about the importance of having quality independent creators, especially when we’re looking at what’s happening on a larger scale inside media. The Roosevelt Institute reports that just six major companies control the vast majority of American media, and that is down from fifty companies in 1983. 

And this kind of consolidation reinforces the superstar economics you’re talking about, but it’s actually really bad for democracy because you have fewer voices that are monopolizing the airwaves, and there’s a lot of news that’s just not getting covered. I want to ask you to make the case for independent creators. What are the big outlets failing to cover that you try to cover in your work? Why is it so important for people like you to be doing what you’re doing?

Matt Robison: You can read about what just happened in a key Senate race last week in the New York Times, or you can read it on “Worth Knowing with Matt Robison.” I’m not going to pretend to do the exact same thing that the New York Times is doing. And in fact, that would be a horrible strategy. That would be a Goliath strategy, not a David strategy. and I’m not going to pretend that I do that. 

But I’m able to say things that they won’t say. I try to maintain the same level of scrupulous sourcing, being fact-based and not just offering hopium to readers, but that kind of voice where you’re not subject to the editorial room distortion that comes up. This isn’t a criticism of the New York Times. I could choose any outlet. You’ve got the whole Washington Post“Democracy dies in darkness” fiasco. There are all kinds of things that they no longer say on the opinion page that they used to be able to say. I can bring a certain amount of honesty that you really don’t get anywhere else. That’s the value of independent media.

Anne Kim:  The large media companies that are now controlling more and more of the media ecosystem are also decidedly conservative. We saw an example of that with the firing of Scott Pelley at “60 Minutes” at CBS News after the Bari Weiss takeover. But when you look at Paramount, Sinclair Broadcasting, News Corp, you know, those are three of the big six. And they’re not exactly centrist at this point. So that I think is another argument for contrary voices to be out there. 

So what ideas do you have for empowering more independent creators?

Matt Robison: We now have really strong evidence that it’s the basic dynamics of the way these markets and platforms operate that are accounting for most of the effects we’re seeing. Not all. As you laid out, I think you make a very compelling case that the platforms are incentivized to elevate superstars. Of course they are. I’ve been talking about the NBA. How did the NBA sell itself? Well, it wasn’t the guy on the end of the bench. They sold Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. 

Every business sells its stars, and I don’t fault Substack or YouTube for doing the same thing. And the fact that we’ve seen the same effect happen with podcasts, with YouTube, with Substack—the same stratification, the same superstar economics—suggests strongly to me that this is as inherent in the basic economics of the platforms as a natural monopoly would be in the utility space.

I do think, though, that there’s an opening for innovation. There is a ton of change going on all the time. The way to make it on YouTube is not the same in 2026 as it was in 2023 when I was breaking on there with my YouTube. The way to make it on Substack is not the same as it was even two years ago. Now, I’m not suggesting that there’s a secret way to make it, like on Substack, that would vault someone from the middle class to the upper tier. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that there is change going on and there’s an opportunity. I think there’s a potential for innovation. I don’t know what form it’s going to take.

I would just urge people to experiment wildly because something is going to catch on. You can’t go back to 2016 and start a podcast. But what you can do is think very hard about what you can do that’s radically different on Substack in podcasting and maybe fail at it. That’s something I’m thinking a lot about. How do you do something innovative and different that might give you the same opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new model.

Anne Kim:  Well one idea that I have, which I think applies to the economy at large and in politics too, for that matter, is an old idea. And that’s collective action. Any one of us as individuals or as smaller entities can’t go up against either the big platforms or the big players, but together, there’s a possibility. I would like to see more co-ops between independent creators banding together in some way to aggregate audience, aggregate influence, the same way that, you know, one voter can’t change the law, but you know, 80 million voters can change a president or change control of the House, or a hundred million shoppers can decide whether to boycott a business or not. 

Maybe there’s a collective action piece where creators can figure out how to take more control and elevate those of us who are not Zach Lowe or Ezra Klein or name your favorite superstar influencer. But there has to be room for more voices. 

Matt Robison: I’ll build on your idea with two of what we used to call on Capitol Hill “friendly amendments.”  One thing that I think independents can demand of their platforms collectively is AI labeling. This is something I’m writing up for Substack right now. This exists. It’s a requirement. If you’re going to put up billboard in an EU country, you have to label any AI content. If you’re putting up a YouTube video, you have to label AI content, and it’s not eligible for monetization. No such requirement exists on Substack. This is something that Substack writers should demand—that there should be AI labeling. It’s bad enough that you’re in the middle of the trash compactor and you’re trying to deal with the thousands of other people and potential entrants in your space. You don’t have to also compete against the robots. 

Number two, I think independent writers can do what you’re suggesting and demand of their platform that it create tools to make it easier for us to innovate, for us to aggregate, for us to try to pool our resources. It should be easier for you and me. 

You’re already attached to a magazine, but independents should be able to try and experiment creating a Substack magazine. Some people are doing this, essentially. They’re trying, but the platform’s not making it super easy. I’m speaking specifically of Substack here, but the same thing could apply to other platforms. They should be making it really technologically easy to encourage innovation and to let other models try themselves out and potentially thrive. It’s good for them, and it’s good for the smaller independents.

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