Alasdair Mann, founder of London-based Alementary Media, knows firsthand the struggles creators face when trying to monetize their content. After leaving his engineering job to pursue content creation full-time, Mann spent nearly a year posting daily videos before his emerging tech content exploded from thousands to millions of views in May 2022.

“The biggest lesson that has helped me go from 100,000 views a month to 100 million views in a month was taking responsibility,” Alasdair states. Instead of blaming the algorithm, he analyzed every aspect with data science rigor, discovering that just a 5% improvement in retention could mean the difference between 1 million and 10 million views. This insight led him to increase production time from two hours to eventually 16 hours per video with hired editors.

Now, as founder of Alementary Media (established August 2021), Alasdair has built a company that operates as a hybrid in the creator economy. For tech brands, his channel delivers sponsored content with some videos hitting 40 million views.

For creators, Alementary provides business education and support systems, helping them avoid the pitfalls Alasdair experienced firsthand. “That was the case for me when I trusted my finances to an agency. They lost a lot of money, and I did not win in the end,” Alasdair reveals. 

Teaching Creators Business Basics

Alementary Media’s creator services aim to solve a crucial problem: many creators struggle to monetize effectively because they lack basic business knowledge, leading them to undercharge, accept delayed payments, and fall victim to agencies that don’t have their best interests at heart.

The company’s approach begins with foundational education. “We pull together the key resources we’ve prepared for foundational knowledge and tell creators what order to go through,” Alasdair describes. The process prioritizes fixing existing problems before scaling. “They should create their sales funnel first because their sales and negotiation strategy is generally bad.”

One of Alementary’s most immediate impacts is creator cash flow. The industry standard sees creators waiting 30 to 60 days after posting to receive payment. “Everyone who signs up with us immediately starts getting paid up front. Their cash flow is a lot better,” Alasdair states. “The secret is communication. A lot of it is asking for it and explaining why you need the money up front.”

Alementary also teaches creators about campaign structures. Alasdair discovered that most creators agree to single-video deals without understanding viral content mathematics. “With short-form content especially, you don’t know which video will take off. But once you do three videos, one of them will likely take off and pay for everything else.”

The outreach component addresses another glaring gap. “A lot of creators talk about doing outreach, but they don’t realize how much outreach you have to do,” Alasdair explains. “When you reach out to say 10 people, you shouldn’t expect to get a response. You should only start to expect responses if you email a hundred people.”

The Dual Model: Brands and Creators

While Alementary’s creator services address one side of the market, Alasdair’s content creation serves tech brands seeking genuine engagement. “For brands, we don’t negotiate on behalf of any of the creators that we help because it’s our belief that they should take control of their own destiny,” he clarifies.

When brands work directly with Alementary, they’re buying Alasdair’s proven ability to make sponsored content perform like organic content. “Usually, they’ll get a spot on our channel, we’ll make a whole dedicated video, and a few dedicated videos about them. One or two out of three or five will take off and get millions or tens of millions of views,” Alasdair explains. 

The key difference, Alasdair notes, is engagement depth. “People watch 5 seconds on average in a Facebook ad, but with our videos, especially on YouTube, they’ll watch 45 seconds of an ad on average.”

Alasdair attributes this to his focus on metrics, adding that YouTube’s analytics were crucial to his growth. “You can look at how long people watch your video. You can see when people drop off, and you can also filter that by where they’re from,” he points out.

The platform advantage extends beyond analytics. “I know other creators with like millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram who don’t have a human they can speak to if something goes wrong with their account,” Alasdair shares. “But with YouTube, I had a human I could speak to from less than 100,000 subscribers. I got my account hacked and banned before, and it was solved within like a couple of hours.”

The Future of Creator Business

Alasdair sees major shifts coming to the creator economy. “There will be more and more creators and a kind of positive feedback loop. One reason is that the barrier to entry is reducing with each year. With all these AI tools and stuff, it gets easier and easier to produce content,” he predicts.

Rather than seeing AI as a threat, Alasdair envisions a new category of content creators. “People seem to think that there’ll be a clear line between human content and AI-generated content, but I think there will be many people in the middle.”

Alasdair is interested in emerging monetization models. “There are platforms now that enable you to negotiate this directly with editors where you’ll pay them not per video but per view basically,” he describes. “If you make a video about a certain brand or get views by clipping my podcast, you’ll get paid a dollar or two per thousand views, for example.”

As for Alementary Media, Alasdair emphasizes patience and commitment. “We can’t guarantee views, but the likelihood of a viral video increases the longer you work with someone and the more videos you make together.”

When it comes to essential ingredients for creator success, Alasdair returns to core principles. Humility tops the list — taking responsibility when content underperforms rather than blaming external factors. Curiosity follows, particularly analyzing successful content outside one’s niche. “Many of our most viewed videos come from looking at successful videos outside of our niche. We don’t copy what other people do. We try to see something that’s working somewhere else and implement it for us,” Alasdair explains.

The third element is taste, which develops through strategic content consumption. “When I watch too little content, I can see the quality of my ideas go down as well. You do have to consume some content, just not too much.”

Alasdair’s vision for Alementary Media extends beyond individual success stories. “The future of creators is people who take charge of their own destiny, business, and stop outsourcing all their finances and revenue to an external party. Alementary is helping to support that,” Alasdair concludes.