Terms

For the past 20 years the pursuit of being an independently successful creator or publisher on the internet has meant being an effective systems integrator. Technologies emerged to help make publishing, creation, distribution, and even the monetization of content However, the process of combining these point solutions to form solid technology "stacks" has remained an extremely time-consuming and technical undertaking.

However, as the businesses of creators evolve and develop, the technology and tools continue to evolve with them. It's spawning the new type of creator "suite" with the goal to combine a lot of the functions they require for their companies into fully-featured tools that can eliminate the necessity to manage and maintain numerous platforms and systems.

The the next generation of creator tools promises to introduce greater simplicity and efficiency , and will assist in identifying and unlocking the growth potential more efficiently. With distribution and publishing, marketing, analytics and data and audience management features , and many more brought together within single tools and platforms, the frustrations, inefficiencies and technical difficulties of managing multiple systems are becoming a thing out of fashion.

A single software tool isn't able to meet the needs of every publisher or creator, of course. Some times, authors who have specialized requirements will be required to create their own technology features or even integrate services from third parties to get the specific functionality they're looking for.

But for many creators the prospect of more full-featured creator tools will be an appealing proposition, providing more flexibility and making day-to-day operations easier and freeing up the time and space needed to concentrate on the core element of their businesses: creating content that satisfies the needs and preferences of their audience as well as their communities.

The potential benefits include:

Simplicity and efficiency

Creators are often forced to be multi-taskers in the course of running their business and managing various platforms, technologies and tools - each with their individual philosophies, approaches and quirks, adds further layer of complexity to the mix.

As creator tools become robust they promise to simplify the lives of creators by ensuring closer integration between diverse features, streamlining more of their workflow as well as removing small nuisances such as logging into various tools and switching. Perhaps most importantly, if something goes wrong or some help or direction is required it's clear who to ask for help.

Reduced maintenance

Combining tools and technology and making sure they work together every day can quickly become a full-time job. Connectivity can fail without warning, and product updates and modifications can swiftly throw the well-oiled systems into chaos in the event that they're not controlled and kept in good order.

Perhaps the main benefit of these suites is less need for maintenance on a regular basis increasing reliability, and freeing up time due to. Creators can spend most of their time thinking of ways they can help their customers better, instead of worry about their technologies.

Lower costs

Creator suites may not be inexpensive, but they're usually cheaper than having to pay for many solutions that may not or might not be utilized fully.

Though point solutions look impressive on paper, offering advanced features and functions however, the hassle and expense of maintaining them and extracting full value from them means they don't often make enough progress to justify the additional expense.

Analytics and data that are more useful

As tools for creators become more sophisticated, the ability to gather, analyze and then act upon audience and member data will become increasingly efficient.

Creator suites will give you an improved understanding of activity among members as well as the capability to better understand the types of experiences and content customers want in addition to what drives them to become members - can help unlock the potential for growth for creative businesses.

Superior audience and member experiences

Fully-featured systems typically provide a far cleaner experience for the user since they're not moving around among various tools and systems or falling through cracks that inevitably emerge between them.

Simple email communication is far simpler if it comes from a source that is consistent, with consistent styling and branding, for example. Audiences increasingly expect a polished user experience from the companies who they are paying to support and a janky user experience is a hurdle to growth.

Creatives are now required to react and adapt to changes in consumer behavior, needs and interests on an ongoing basis. Increasingly they'll expect the tools and software they already use to help respond to these demands when they occur instead of continuously adding new software to create complicated expensive, heavy and cumbersome stacks.