The Creator Future is Female

The Creator Women Who Joined the Billionaire Views Club in 2021

In celebration of International Women’s Day 2022, Jellysmack took a deep dive into our data to better understand the femme force of women creators captivating the internet’s attention.

What we found was a continuation of the parabolic growth trend established by women creators in 2020. A sizable slice of the creator economy remained a steadfast queendom through 2022.

For this Jellysmack exclusive, we analyzed nearly 200 that met qualification criteria. Here’s how the women of YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat left their marks and grew their empires in 2021.

On Facebook

It just so happened that 2021 was a year of phenomenal success for Jellysmack’s Creator Partner Program. We’re lucky to have partnered with some eclectic and distinguished creators, and our Creator Partner Program grew considerably all year long.

As with any analysis worth its salt, we had to put some guardrails around which creators to include in our study. While we did not control rolling launch dates for partnerships (e.g., a creator may have started with us in January or in October), we did set a minimum view count qualifier at 100,000 during 2021. We also analyzed channels in which a woman was a sole creator as well as multi-creator channels in which a woman is a primary creator.

Altogether, creator women had a direct hand in bringing in 18.6 billion views in 2021 on Facebook alone. Overall, female creator Facebook channels averaged more than 115 million views for the year.

There were some heavy hitters. Two leading ladies earned their prestigious membership to the Facebook Views Billionaire Club: These creators racked up over a billion views on Facebook during 2021.

That included true crime storyteller and brocade-backdrop historian Bailey Sarian for her two web series Murder, Mystery and Makeup and Dark History and true crime victims’ advocate (and mom-to-be) Kendall Rae.

Culinary connoisseur Emmymade came impressively close, netting a commendable 948 million views on Facebook alone.

Additionally, channels featuring women and their romantic partners were exceptionally high performing, netting an average of just over 160 million views per channel. Creators Rissa G. of power couple and lifestyle vloggers Rissa and Quan and prankster vlogger Alyssa Hyde of Alyssa and Charles Forever crossed the coveted one billion views mark on their Facebook content in 2021.

Another notable 2021 stand out creator was Ukrainian painter and creator-to-watch Olga Soby. Soby has the unique distinction of beating 2021’s overall average views with one super viral smash upload: “3D Funnel Acrylic Pouring *STUNNING*.”

The British Columbia-based artist’s viral super smash hit video also amassed over 1.1 million engagements. That catapulted her Facebook page into Canada’s top 10 ranks for the People and Blogs category (Source: Tubular Labs). The success of the video resulted in a hearty 30% pop in Soby’s Facebook following over the last six months.

Beyond her videos, Olga is a talented painter with a signature visual aesthetic. Once you’ve seen her paintings and style, you’d be able to detect her work among many in the gallery. Her chic and contemporary paintings are somewhere between Jackson Pollack and Georgia O’Keeffe. Keep an eye on this creator who is making waves in the art world and masterpiece viral videos on the internet.

On Snapchat

In part due to launching more channels, and also in part due to the remarkable growth of our creator partners’ Snapchat shows, Jellysmack female creators were able to dial up their annual views from 1.5 billion in 2020 to over 6 billion in 2021 — an increase of 400% year over year.

Overall, creator women averaged more than 550 million views per channel for the year. That’s right — well over half a billion views.

What’s more, two creator women were officially minted as view billionaires: Snapchat edition. Incredibly, both of these powerhouse creators have endearingly — and in no way connected — been nicknamed “slime queens.”

What we can all learn from this is that there are millions of people on Snapchat who simply cannot get enough of that sticky goop, and personally need a batch in every imaginable punchy color and in every degree of stretchiness. Luckily, Karina Garcia and Talisa Tossell have them covered on that front and are taking encores.

Another creator who cannonballed into Snapchat stardom is surrealist body painter and special effects artist Jody Steel. Steel has a background in the film industry, including several special effects and set design credits on IMDB. In just over a year since its launch, Steel’s fast-growing Snapchat channel is poised to eclipse her Facebook views where she initially found her audience and has over 3.3 million page followers.

The spectacular growth of creators who have successfully scaled across social platforms, and in some cases, found even larger audiences who love their content is testament to their content’s wide-ranging appeal. It also serves as a reminder to creators who have developed an audience on one platform of the unexplored potential that may lie just beyond the horizon.

On YouTube

Alright, let’s turn the spotlight onto the women of YouTube, many who saw double-digit growth in their subscriber bases in 2021 across a variety of content categories.

From the highlight reel: Creative chef and comedian Julia Goolia’s channel HellthyJunkFood snuck in a smash hit video right before the year drew to a close. The video, entitled “McDonald’s Bucket of Fries,” is a comedic skit in which Goolia is seen eating McDonald’s french fries out of a large KFC bucket.

“If you’re not eating french fries out of a bucket, you’re not having a good time,” Goolia quips in the viral video while munching on bucket fries.

It’s this type of universal, sage wisdom that has powered HellthyJunkFood’s longevity on YouTube. Still, “McDonald’s Bucket of Fries” set engagement records for the nearly 10-year-old channel, prompting more than 880,000 people to smash that like button.

Meanwhile, creator and true crime investigative journalist Amy Townsend turbocharged the growth of her and husband Chris Nathan’s channel True Crime Recaps with her coverage of the Chris Watts case, which was released in October 2020. In it, Townsend adds supplemental details — notably, examining the role of Watts’ relationship Nichol Kessinger in the crime and subsequent investigation — not covered by Netflix’s chart-topping documentary American Murder.

Townsend’s popular upload placed True Crime Recaps on a strong hyper-growth trajectory going into 2021, and the channel saw its subscriber base grow by more than 130% by the year’s end.

Collectively, Jellsmack female creator channels averaged 23 million views on YouTube for 2021. With strong starts to 2022 and exciting new creator partnerships in the works, to say ‘we’re excited’ for the year ahead is an understatement.

A platform of one’s own

Whether they’re bringing us the scoop, making us laugh, teaching us something new, or just giving us a front-row seat to their lives, creator women are keystones in the foundation of the creator economy.

And in light of International Women’s Day, it seems as good of a time as any to appreciate that these creator women are broadcasting, presenting, and creating content on their own terms. This kind of creative freedom has been less commonplace for women historically. Creator women are pioneering a new chapter of women in media. These eclectic, self-made entrepreneurs prove that there is indeed an audience for women showcasing the multi-faceted, diverse dynamos that they are and when they are directing their own shows.