75% of content creators are stressed out. Here's what helps
"Burning out for me was like my brain finally got drained of the last bit of creativity it had."
Burnout affects most workers -- from office to remote employees to creators. A new study conducted by video editing platform Tasty Edits shows that 79% of creators have experienced burnout -- with that figure increasing to 83% among creators who are struggling to monetize their platform.
Tasty Edits conducted an in-depth survey with follow-up interviews with 163 creators out of a pool of 29,000. The goal was to learn more about how creators dealt with mental health and burnout.
"Though the creator economy is burgeoning, creator burnout has emerged as a serious problem. For years, reports of people losing all their energy and interest in their work and giving up their creation efforts have been circulating," according to Alex Lefkowitz, founder of Tasty Edits. "However, so far there has been no systematic investigation to get an in-depth understanding of creators' own approaches to mental health and burnout. Tasty Edits' study set out to address this knowledge gap."
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Creators, including those making content for platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, can experience burnout for several reasons. Causes include the pressure of coming up with fresh content that performs well, financial stress from unpredictable work schedules, work-life imbalance, social media pressure, and high expectations from sponsors, clients, and audiences.
Of the surveyed content creators, 48% earn less than $1,000 a month from their creative work, 15% earn between $1,000 and $2,500 a month, and 37% earn a full-time income of over $2,500 a month.
Among the 37% that earn a full-time income, 57% post multiple times a week, 70% spend over four hours a day on content creation, 63% use at least four monetization strategies, and 75% have experienced burnout. That number rose to 83% among low earners.
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"Burning out for me was like my brain finally got drained of the last bit of creativity it had. I had to take a break from uploading and slow things down," according to an anonymous survey participant.
The study asked participants how they dealt with stress and burnout and found that 98% of content creators take time off to deal with burnout, 93% exercise, 63% outsource and delegate tasks, and 42% see a mental health professional.
Outsourcing and delegation proved to be productive strategies for content creators. The survey found that two out of three content creators who post multiple times a day earn a full-time income and 80% of them outsource. Out of those that outsource, 59% make over $2,500 a month and 28% make over $7,500 monthly.
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The least stressed among those surveyed are also the ones who outsource and delegate tasks to others.
"Nobody can do it all. If someone can do something just as well as I can, or better, awesome. I also love bringing on more people so that the word gets spread to their circles," said another anonymous survey participant.