Creator niche: history

History continues to be massively popular, and there are a myriad of ways to build an audience online.

This week, I thought I’d explore a couple of direct to consumer history businesses that are both hugely successful, and at first glance might look like they are in direct competition with each other. Yet when you dig a little deeper it becomes clear that they are actually quite different, thus demonstrating the breadth and diversity of models available within the creator market, even in hotly contested niches like history.

Included this week:

• A deeper look at the worlds of The Rest is History and History Hit

• Five other history creator channels, each targeting slightly different sub-niches with their own storytelling styles and revenue models.

Before jumping in, it is worth noting that one of the purposes of this Substack is to explore both the juggernaut creator empires - the DudePerfects and the MrBeasts - as well as the many many more small to medium sized direct to consumer businesses that provide a good living for independent creatives (with a self-selected benchmark of success being earning the same as these people would make as freelancers in the TV industry).

So in this post while I’ve looked at two of the big successful history brands, I’ve also included some other creator channels that might not be at the dizzying heights of the blockbusters but are still generating income and hopefully will be sustainable into the future.