About
Something strange is happening right now in the content creation industry.
Nobody in it wants to create anymore.
At least, that’s how it looks.
Creation companies and freelancers who once battled for the title of best content provider are now positioning themselves as distributors, strategists, and consultants. They're focusing on peripheral services while downplaying or even ditching creation itself.
Why are these businesses suddenly backing away from creation?
Content is the backbone of the internet. It’s the substance of the web, the reason people open a browser or pick up their phone in the first place. Creating it is meaningful.
But the landscape has changed.
AI has massively increased the supply of content. At the same time, Google isn’t rewarding content the way it used to.
The result? Fewer customers looking to pay less.
These struggles are real.
Even inside my own company, I’ve heard the same argument over the past few years: that the future is distribution, strategy, consulting. Anything but creation.
Having said that, walking away from creation just doesn’t feel right.
Is it harder now? Without a doubt.
But content is still the heartbeat of the internet, and creating it still matters. That hasn’t changed.
What has changed is how content gets created. The toolset is different now, and the process is evolving with it.
But here’s the key: even though the toolset has changed, humans are still part of it. A huge part. Just differently than before.
I agree that AI is here to stay, but I also believe human creators aren’t going anywhere.
And if that’s the case, if the future of content is humans and AI working together, then you can’t tell me its current state is as good as it gets. You can’t tell me the methods we have in place right now are fully optimized.
More likely, we’re at ground zero, with substantial room for gains in efficiency and quality over the years ahead.
Which means the real challenge now is figuring out how humans and AI work best together.
And that’s exciting.
So instead of stepping away from creation, I’m going all in on it.
I see this as a reset, not an end. And I still see creation as the biggest opportunity in the content space.
We just need to start from the ground up.
I’ve been in this industry a long time. In 2010 I started Crowd Content and spent the next decade building it into one of the largest writing platforms online. Eventually I sold the company and stepped away for a few years.
Now I’m back. I just reacquired my old business (now operating as Stellar), and I’m putting everything we’ve got into the next evolution of human-driven content creation.
I’m vowing to build a platform that fits the new landscape and plays by the new rules, but is still rooted in human creators.
Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t.
But if the internet continues to run on things humans create, and I suspect it will, then the opportunity isn’t leaving creation behind.
It’s building better engines for it.
This site is where I write about those ideas as they evolve.
Clayton Lainsbury
Victoria, BC
Founder @ Stellar (previously Crowd Content)
Founder @ Show Builder