“As views and sponsors get bigger, you’ll have more income — but then that also opens up more possibilities,” said YouTuber Isaiah “Wendigoon” Nichols. “Maybe you’ll buy some studio lights; maybe you’ll buy a high-tech camera. If you’re like me, maybe you get some editors, or start a side channel. As long as you scale it properly, there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do.”

In 2025, content creation is a growing sector of entertainment, with a range of unique costs — some obvious, but some not-so-obvious. These are the hidden costs of the creator business.

Hiring a team

These days, creators are often more than just individuals — they are the front-facing side of full-fledged media businesses with teams of employees. For example, podcaster Kate Mackz employs a team of eight, while YouTuber Tyler “Jimmy Here” Collins said his six-person team accounts for a monthly payroll of roughly $15,000.

“I have two main editors and a videographer that I work with on a regular basis; I also have a guy that was working with me on some side projects, and is also a stand-in PA for me,” Collins said. “I’ve got my creative director, as well, and one more guy that lives with me and helps me with any other projects that I need, but he’s also a creator.”

Renting studio space

As creators staff up, they are moving their operations out of their homes and into commercial spaces built specifically for content production. Mackz, whose running podcast Post Run High is one of iHeart’s most popular shows, pays “around $3,500” per month for a production studio space in New York City.

“It’s really our office; we’ve had it for about two years now, and it’s been great,” Mackz said. “Working out of a small apartment in New York City is never ideal, so as soon as we were able to get an office space here in Brooklyn, it’s been really good for productivity.”

Thumbnail fees

In addition to video editing, one production fee that can be surprisingly expensive for YouTubers is the creation of thumbnail images to accompany videos. Thumbnails are a unique art, with many thumbnail creators specifically dedicating themselves to the craft, and YouTubers who employ in-house editors or do their own video editing will often work with third-party thumbnail makers on a per-video basis. Nichols said that he started to pay thumbnail artists rather than making his own thumbnails when his channel reached 2 million subscribers, and that he typically pays $200 per thumbnail image, with some videos using multiple thumbnails.

“YouTube is testing a feature now where you can put up to three thumbnails at one time, and it will see which one gets the most clicks,” he said. “So, I’ll typically pay the thumbnail designer for two to three thumbnails per video.”

Another potentially unexpected fee for some creators is the cost of subscriptions for premium software and platform tools. LinkedIn creator Kamya Marwah, for example, said that paying for LinkedIn Premium was crucial for her to be able to use the platform to its fullest potential — but that she had to pay full price for the service, since she is not a member of LinkedIn’s creator accelerator program. Currently, LinkedIn Premium costs $29.99 per month, or roughly $240 per year.

TikTok creator Millie Ford said that her individual monthly fees for creator tools and services were low, but that the multitude of smaller subscriptions she pays for services like video editing, link-in-bio tools and payroll management still amount to a significant overall expense.

“Often there’ll be subscriptions to editing software, or even little things like having a link in your bio. To get access to all of the premium features, you often have to pay,” she said. “It could be the smallest fee — like $4.99 [per month] — but all those little things are adding up.”

Lighting and tech

One of the steepest start-up costs for creators is the technology required to build out a studio space, including cameras, lighting and computers. Mackz estimated that her studio setup, which includes six cameras and four aperture lights, cost about $50,000 to build; Nichols and Collins said that they had spent thousands of dollars on high-end computers, although they did not specify exact costs. 

“I can’t believe how expensive SD cards are,” said creator and creator talent manager Claudia Bish, who is launching a podcast about the creator economy later this year. “I had to order the SD cards for the podcast today, and it was £600.”

Taxes

Ford and Collins cited taxes as a surprise fee, with both creators saying they had hired accountants or financial advisors due to being shocked by their tax bills after going full-time. Ford’s advisor helped her shift her approach from filing taxes as an individual freelancer to filing as the owner of her own business, which she said helped cut her annual tax bill from 40 percent to 25 percent of her overall revenue.

“There’s different tax deductions and laws that apply if you’re a sole trader, versus for companies, and I honestly don’t even know half of them,” she said. “I just trust my accountant to work that out.”

Time

Perhaps the costliest investment required to become a successful creator doesn’t come in the form of cash. Time is money, and being a content creator is an extremely time-intensive job, requiring creators to burn away hours of their lives, often without guaranteed returns. 

“Sometimes, when you prepare for a successful video, you budget maybe five hours to create something from scratch; by the end, you’ve spent 30 hours. That’s a huge cost for you, and it’s not measurable,” said AI video creator Tianyu Xu. “If you compare the hours you spent with your hourly rate, then it’s a huge cost — much higher than the actual money you spend on tools.”