You don't need 10k followers to earn: what small creators sell, and to whom

What makes this useful: A sourced EarnThread field guide written for creators turning attention into an owned business.

You don't need 10k followers to make money with a small following. You need a specific problem your audience has, one thing you sell that solves it, and a few dozen people who trust you enough to buy. Kajabi's platform data found the average six-figure earner on its platform had between 1,000 and 10,000 followers and 309 paying customers. The follower thresholds you hear about, like 10,000 on TikTok or 1,000 subscribers on YouTube, are the rules for platform payouts. They aren't rules for selling.

This guide covers what small creators sell, who buys it, how many buyers you need, and why platform payouts are the wrong first target.

Key takeaways

• Follower thresholds like 10,000 on TikTok or 1,000 subscribers on YouTube are payout rules, not selling rules.
• Kajabi's data found the average six-figure earner on its platform had 1,000 to 10,000 followers and 309 paying customers.
• Small creators sell five things: their time, a shortcut, a live session, ongoing access or a done-for-you service.
• Your buyer is the follower with a specific, costly problem, not your whole audience.
• At $1,000 a month, four $300 calls or 11 $99 workshop seats is enough, which is reachable with a few hundred engaged followers.

How much small creators earn, by the numbers

Most creators earn very little. That's true across every survey that asks:

Small accounts are also the norm, not the exception. Linktree estimated 139 million creators worldwide had 1,000 to 10,000 followers, against 41 million with 10,000 to 100,000. If you're under 10,000, you're in the biggest group there is. Our guide to growing a small Instagram account under 1,000 followers covers what works at that size.

The useful finding is what separates the earners. Linktree found niche creators were more likely to sell e-courses (10% vs 3% of non-niche creators) and paid downloadable resources (10% vs 5%), and slightly more likely to earn over $100,000 a year (7% vs 5%). In Kajabi's data, reported by Net Influencer in August 2025 (opens in a new tab), the average six-figure earner had 1,000 to 10,000 followers, an email list of about 4,000 people and 309 paying customers. Kajabi sells course software, so read that as vendor data. But it points the same way: a focused audience and a product beat a big audience and nothing to sell.

Why platform payouts don't arrive at this size

Each platform's payout programme has an entry bar that most small creators haven't reached:

• TikTok: the Creator Rewards Program (opens in a new tab) needs 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in the last 30 days, and is open only in eight countries. Ireland isn't one of them.
• YouTube: the Partner Program (opens in a new tab) needs 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 qualified watch hours in 12 months, or 10 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days. From 1 February 2027, new applicants will need 8,000 watch hours or 20 million Shorts views (opens in a new tab).

Even past the bar, the pay per view is small. Business Insider found Shorts creators earning $0.04 to $0.06 per 1,000 views in 2023, as republished by Yahoo (opens in a new tab). And payouts are shrinking as a share of income. The same Kajabi report recorded a 33% decrease in platform payouts, a 36% decline in affiliate income and a 52% fall in brand-deal revenue for creators.

What about brand deals and affiliate links? They're common: in Visa's 2025 Creator Report (opens in a new tab), run with Morning Consult among more than 1,000 creators in five countries, 94% post brand partnerships and 78% do affiliate marketing. The same survey found 77% promote their own services. Brand deals can pay well, but they depend on a brand choosing you, and Influencer Marketing Hub's finding that nearly half of creators rely mostly on them is a concentration risk. If you still want to pitch, see brand deal rates and pitches under 10k followers. Your own offer is the one income stream you control.

So the through-line is simple. Platform money is a bonus once you're big. What you sell is the income while you're small.

What small creators sell

Small creators mostly sell one of five things. Each suits a different stage and a different kind of creator.

Real examples, with the caveat that these are self-reported revenue, not profit:

• Paid newsletter, US: Lenny Rachitsky, a former Airbnb product manager, priced his newsletter at $15 a month. He wrote in August 2020 (opens in a new tab) that he got about 200 paid subscribers in the first couple of days, with about 15,000 free readers. It was making him about $65,000 a year before fees.
• Paid newsletter, UK: Emma Gannon's The Hyphen had more than 1,000 paying subscribers out of over 27,000, at £6.99 a month or £65 a year, according to Press Gazette in 2023 (opens in a new tab). She earned six figures from it.
• Courses, US: Kat Norton (Miss Excel) priced individual courses from $44 to $397 and said course sales were 95% of her income, in an account published by NBC Boston (opens in a new tab).

Notice the ratio in the two newsletter examples. A small share of the free audience paid. You don't need everyone to buy.

Who buys from a small creator

The buyer isn't "your followers". It's the subset of followers with a specific problem you've shown you can solve. That's why niche matters more than size.

Three questions find your buyer:

1. 01
   What do people ask you in DMs and comments?

   Repeated questions are demand.

2. 02
   What did you learn the hard way?

   The shortcut you wish you'd had is a product.

3. 03
   Who would pay to save time on it?

   Businesses and professionals usually pay faster than hobbyists, because the problem costs them money.

A hypothetical example: a physiotherapist with 800 Instagram followers posts about desk-related back pain. Her followers are mostly office workers. The buyer isn't all 800. It's the people who've messaged her about their own back, and maybe the office manager who asked whether she runs workplace sessions. That's two offers: a $49 video assessment for individuals and a paid lunchtime workshop for teams.

Then sell to the people closest to you first. Your email list will buy before cold followers do. If you don't have a list yet, start with a lead magnet that builds an owned audience.

How many buyers you actually need

Here's a hypothetical: say you want $1,000 a month from your first offer. Before any fees, that's:

Four calls a month is reachable with a few hundred engaged followers. That's why services are often the fastest first offer, and products come later once you know what people pay for.

When you set the price, start from what the result is worth to the buyer, not from what feels polite to charge followers. A freelancer who wins one extra client from your proposal template gets far more than $29 of value. A team that avoids a week of sick leave gets more than a workshop fee. Write that value down in one sentence and put it at the top of your sales page. If the sentence sounds weak, the offer probably is too, and that's worth knowing before launch day rather than after it.

Kajabi's data also suggests not stopping at one offer. It found 75% of six-figure earners run multiple revenue streams, and creators who bundle offers earn 4.5 times more than those with single offerings. A simple creator offer ladder is the usual way to grow from one to several.

Mistakes that stall a first offer

Most first offers fail for the same few reasons, and none of them is follower count:

• Building before asking. Spending two months on a course nobody asked for. Pre-sell or run a waitlist first; our guide to testing demand before you build shows how.
• Selling to everyone. "A course for anyone who wants to be more productive" is hard to buy. "A Notion setup for freelance designers juggling five clients" is easy.
• Pricing for followers, not buyers. Free followers set the price low. Buyers with a costly problem will pay more for a clear result.
• Mentioning it once. One post about a new offer reaches a fraction of your audience. Mention it in posts, stories, your bio and your emails for weeks.
• Too many links. A bio page with ten options sends people nowhere. Put your free resource and one paid offer at the top.

Keep more of each sale

At small volume, platform fees matter. EarnThread has three plans:

Growth works out cheaper than Launch once you sell over $475 a month, and Scale beats Growth over $3,000 a month. At the $1,000-a-month example above, Launch would cost $50 in platform fees and Growth $29. Payment processing is on top, and payments go straight into your own Stripe account.

You also get the parts a small creator needs to sell: a mobile storefront for your bio link, digital downloads, bookings, memberships, lead magnets with consent records, and attribution that shows which post led to each sale. Compare plans on the EarnThread pricing page.

Your first offer this month

The numbers say the same thing from every angle: platform payouts arrive late and pay little, and the creators who earn at small sizes sell something specific to people they already serve. Pick the question you're asked most often, turn the answer into a call, template or workshop, and offer it to your audience this month. Start free on EarnThread and publish it today.

Frequently asked questions

How many followers do you need to make money?

None, for selling your own products or services. Follower thresholds apply to platform payouts: TikTok's Creator Rewards needs 10,000 followers and YouTube's Partner Program needs 1,000 subscribers. Selling a call, template or workshop needs buyers, not a follower count. Kajabi's 2025 data found its average six-figure earner had 1,000 to 10,000 followers.

How do you make money on Instagram with a small following?

Sell something specific to the followers who have the problem you solve: a paid call, a template, a workshop or a membership. Put a free resource in your bio to build an email list, then offer your paid product to that list first. Brand deals are possible at small sizes but depend on a brand choosing you; your own offer doesn't.

What can small creators sell?

The five most common offers are your time (calls, audits), a shortcut (templates, checklists, guides), a live session (workshops), ongoing access (memberships or paid newsletters) and done-for-you services. Experts usually start with calls or services because they need few buyers; creators who teach a process often start with templates or workshops.

How much do small creators earn?

Most earn little. Linktree's 2021 survey found 68% of part-time creators earned under $1,000 a year, and MBO Partners found 34% of US independent creators earned under $5,000 in the year before July 2023. Influencer Marketing Hub's 2025 report found more than half earn under $15,000. The creators who earn more tend to sell their own offers.