Evan Shapiro— an independent media analyst who built his following across LinkedIn, Substack, and his own podcast after getting let go from a media-exec job with Seeso, an early NBCUniversal-backed streaming service — previewed his new Creator Ecosystem Map.
At the center of his thinking is the fifty-person “Indie Creators” block in his map, people with a fraction of the big names’ followers who still out-earn plenty of them because their audience responds when asked. ESHAP’s own numbers back it up: three platforms, under 200,000 people combined, and a business he says now pays better than the corporate job he lost nine years ago.