People Are Not Paying For My Content Anymore - Now What? [3 Strategies To Bet On in 2026]

The power of Group Chats, Direct Access and Personalization

Is the content creator economy dead with AI?

Are we witnessing another victim decimated by the same tools we create?

Technology has a nasty way of disrupting entire industries overnight without a warning. iTunes and Spotify shifted the music model from ownership to streaming, where artists now earn pennies per play but reach billions.

Netflix evicted the giant Blockbuster, forcing Hollywood to rethink distribution. Fun fact: its business model started as a DVD-by-mail service back in 1998, delivering movies in red envelopes before it started streaming. So vintage!

3D printing has revolutionized the supply chain, robots are transforming production lines… The list goes on and no one has a free pass.

Now, it’s our turn. Claude and company are disrupting the content industry, generating articles, scripts, and newsletters in seconds. Everything is available with one click.

Platforms are changing. Fast. This was my most popular Post in 2025. The title explains why:

What you are reading might be Veronica - or a bot that sounds just like her. Scary.

In 2023, Amazon set a limit of 3 books per author to prevent abuse of AI-generated content. 3 books per day. Nuts.

As a result, people aren’t paying just for words anymore. So, now what?

How can we future-proof our work?

Today’s Post shows you how you can think bigger and monetize beyond “content” with 3 practical strategies (with examples) you can apply today to future-proof your creative business:

1. Group Chats for community-building

2. Premium services: webinars and lives

3. Personalization: options

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The Great Content Disruption

AI has democratized content creation to an extreme. The floodgates are open, and content is everywhere: free, fast, and good enough (sort of). And when something is everywhere, it loses its value.

This abundance isn’t new; we’ve seen it before with the rise of blogging, vlogging, social media, influencers and UGC. But AI accelerates it exponentially. Search engines are clogged with AI regurgitated junk, social feeds with bots talking to bots pretending to be human, and our inboxes are flooded with automated newsletters. The result is an attention scarcity. Readers skim, skip, or use AI summaries to digest your work without ever subscribing. If your value proposition is “great content,” it’s no longer a differentiator. It’s table stakes.

From content creators to value architects

The writing is on the wall: Content alone won’t cut it.

Your newsletter might be brilliant, but if an AI can replicate 80% of its value for free, why pay $10/month? We’re seeing devaluation across the board: ebooks under a dollar, freelance rates compressing, and subscription churn spiking as readers question the ROI.

But disruption means cracks and cracks lead to new opportunities.

We can evolve our mindset from content creator to value architect. Yes, AI can handle the commoditized parts (research, trends, drafting…) but you can focus on what’s irreplaceable: human connection, collaboration, expertise, and transformation.

It’s our opportunity to evolve from content creator to value architect.

The upside is higher margins and loyalty. When you build beyond content, you create emotional bonds, exclusivity, community and personalization - something AI can’t touch (at least not yet).

Below are 3 strategies you can implement to add real value to your community and monetize beyond content.

1. Create your own forum

Content is passive; community is active.

People crave belonging, especially in areas like writing or solopreneurship, where we tend to be lone wolves.

Masterminds

Last year, my premium members told me they wanted a “sounding board.” The result was a closed Mastermind to connect, brainstorm, and collaborate with peer authors, writers, and solopreneurs. Real people with real problems bouncing ideas in a safe space.

If you don’t know how to launch a Mastermind, after this 18-minute video you will.

Group Chats

Chats are a wonderful tool to turn an audience into a people-first community, and you can use them in many different ways.

Full disclosure: Substack Chat is pretty terrible when it comes to functionalities and user experience. Notifications are shocking, and you can’t filter chats based on a topic, for instance. I personally use it because 99% of my paid members are on Substack and it’s bloody hard to take people across platforms.

Have you ever tried mobilizing your friends to a different bar when everyone is having fun?

Good luck.

Below are some popular options among creators for you to do your own market research.

Be careful though; people often get stuck choosing a platform, and the result is analysis paralysis. I suggest you take action because technology alone is never the answer. It’s how you use it and why you use it. In this case, the answer is human connection.

This is how I leverage my Group Chat at The Lemon Tree Mindset:

• Introduction of members

• Debates and topic discussions

• Celebrations and wins

• Open days for collaboration

• AMA (Ask Me Anything) Paid Subscribers

• Personalized feedback: Paid subscribers

• Exclusive tips: Paid Subscribers

💡Tip: Add a CTA to subscribe to the Chat in your welcome email.

The Lemon Tree Mindset Group Chat

Comments as a forum

If you don’t want to invest in maintaining a Group Chat (it is extra work and requires dedication), the best option is to use the Comments sections of your Posts as a forum. I don’t mean replying with a “Thanks for commenting, Luc, I appreciate it,” but proactively creating a conversation, asking questions, sharing additional resources and encouraging a real debate.

My Founding Member Charlie Garcia does a fabulous job at this. His comments section is an elevated and personalized version of Quora for everything finance, geopolitics and money. He takes the time to turn subscribers into people and make them feel heard. The result is that many come back.

→ Shift your newsletter from a broadcast to a gateway for community-building.

2. Offer Direct Access

In a world of infinite content, scarcity wins.

Direct access to you (the host) becomes premium because it can’t be replicated. Find ways to give your members real-time advice/ education tailored to their challenges in the moment. Live events always have a premium (think Olympics).

Here are some ways to offer access to your community:

Live sessions

My live sessions are a popular channel for gaining new subscribers, as people get to know you in a more intimate way and they might click with your style.

People are always shocked when I tell them that you can actually gain paid subscribers from doing a 20-minute live session. This is how.

New subscribers after a Substack Live

In February, I noticed a huge boost in Live views across the board:

From my observation, live sessions on Substack usually have an attendance rate of 0.5%-1% (viewers-to-subscribers ratio). In February, it went up to 5% or so, which might be a glitch or an indication of where the platform is going.

In any case, I think it’s smart to incorporate video into your strategy because it just gives your members one more option.

Webinars

A great benefit for your paid subscribers is access to webinars where they can spend quality time with you or watch the replay later. These have an elevated perceived value because they are exclusive and participants can have direct access to you in the moment in a more intimate setting.

💡 Tip: Turn the recording into an engaging video-Post with the takeaways, leaving a free preview as a teaser. Surprisingly, my webinars have better conversion after they happen because people know exactly what they missed.

This is an example of a webinar video-Post that generated 586 US$ after the session because people wanted to watch the replay after the video preview.

→ Explore launching a direct access service to complement your content

3. Personalization

The ultimate differentiator is customization.

One-to-one calls

One-to-one support is not scalable but it’s a great way to start and get traction and a great tool to use tactically depending on your business needs.

If you are having a quieter period, you can open more individual sessions (strategy, coaching, etc.).

If you don’t want to avoid burnout while still providing 1:1 options, you can increase your fees, as I did for my Founding Members (99US$ → 238 US$). The result was a slower intake of new Founding Members, but the same level of revenue.

Async support

If you don’t want to fill your calendar with calls, you can opt for asynchronous support and offer a monthly package or 10-question coaching via DM. Great option to support a global community across multiple time zones.

Ad hoc support

If you prefer to have a lower level of commitment, you can offer ad hoc services such as a website or social media auditing, a copy-editing job or the design of a landing page or a speaker kit.

The beauty about personalization is that it has a degree of scale and flexibility: cohorts allow you to customize at scale (to a certain degree) and increasing your prices once you establish credibility helps you scale profit without working harder.

Your Next Steps

AI isn’t killing creativity; it’s redefining it. The shift means content is abundant, but connection, transformation, and humanity are scarce. By focusing on communities, direct access, and personalization, you’re not just adapting - you’re evolving and redefining value. You go from creator to value architect.

Action items:

1. Audit your newsletter: What’s missing to turn it into a real community?

2. Ask your stakeholdders (chat, Posts, survey): What do they love? What’s missing?

3. Experiment: Launch one adaptation (e.g., a free webinar) this month.

If you want more strategies to grow your writing-speaking business, check out my section Digital Strategies.

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