Kajabi has paid out over $8 billion to creators. Now its new brand revamp tells them: “Don’t work for an algorithm. Work for you.”

Creators deal with a lot of financial stressors. For many, their main source of income is ad revenue from platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch–and that income isn’t stable. It can vary month to month for any number of reasons. Platforms can change their policies without notice, shut down operations in entire countries (either of their own volition or due to governmental pressure), or be hit with another adpocalypse that impacts creators’ earnings and is completely out of their control.

Even without any of this happening, creators can still struggle to make a full-time income from full-time work. According to Kajabi, nearly 50% of creators make less than $10K a year–and the only way to up those earnings, as well as mitigate any potential lost revenue from platform problems, is to build and monetize your audience off-platform.

Kajabi wants to help creators do just that. The creator commerce site was founded in 2010 by Kenny Rueter, a software engineer and inventor who struggled to get a how-to video about one of his inventions monetized on YouTube. That experience led him to launch Kajabi as a way for creators to turn their knowledge and passions into digital products they can sell to their audiences without going through content platforms.

Since then, Kajabi has paid out over $8 billion in creator revenue from 85 million customers–and now it’s spinning up a reimagined brand with an advertising campaign that encourages creators: “Don’t work for an algorithm. Work for you.”

It’s also introducing new brand-building and commerce tools for creators, including a newsletter platform and Downloads, which creators can use to sell PDFs and .zips of digital products like art, ebooks, music tracks, crafting patterns, extra videos, and more.

Creators have sold physical merch since the dawn of the creator economy, but digital products are a newer and rapidly growing sector. Kajabi’s own foray into digital products started back in 2010 and most recently includes a partnership with creators Colin and Samir, who used its platform to release a biz-dev-for-creators course called Creator Startup.

Over the past six months, Kajabi (which charges a creators a flat subscription fee starting at $55/month) has also launched a gen AI production tool called Creator Studio

, which it claims will “reduce the time spent on content creation by 90 percent,” along with Creator.io, an AI chatbot for creator businesses, plus a branded mobile app builder specifically for creators.

“The ‘creator economy’ is an economy built by creators, but not for creators. Social platforms and advertisers are the main beneficiaries of the creativity, time, and cachet of these digital entrepreneurs,” Ahad Khan, Kajabi’s CEO, says. “We want to empower ambitious creators to become successful entrepreneurs. But in order to make good on this promise, we need to level the economic playing field in favor of creators. This is why we’re investing in a new way forward–creator commerce.”

Khan adds that, “This new category is where creators are treated like the entrepreneurs they are, who can grow audiences, build products, diversify revenue streams, and create successful businesses that are in their full control. True ownership ensures the people who create the value reap the rewards, which the current creator economy fails to do.”

Kajabi will advertise its rebrand—which it says includes “a new logo, vibrant colors, dynamic fonts, and a strong brand voice complemented by motion elements that embody the relentless drive and ongoing momentum of an entrepreneur’s vision, resilience, and pursuit of success”–with a splashy campaign on billboards in New York City and Los Angeles.

The campaign, called The Reality of the Creator Economy, stars Kajabi creator partners Matt Steffanina, Drew Binsky, Jenna Kutcher, Natalie Ellis, and more, with taglines encouraging creators to build a monetization foundation for themselves off major platforms. “You can make money for them. Or you can make money for you,” one billboard says.

Chiyong Jones, Kajabi’s VP of Brand, says the company is choosing to revamp with a creator-centric campaign because “up until now, our brand didn’t reflect the true essence of our creators and why Kajabi exists.”

“Today, our creators’ stories are at the forefront of our reimagined brand,” he adds. “How Kajabi shows up in the world now embodies the unique journeys of our creators while highlighting their passions, ideas, and the possibilities they unlock on their path to entrepreneurial success.”

 

Kajabi is a Tubefilter partner.