‘The n8n Creator Economy’ - from the Amsterdam Meetup (April 2025)

Hey everyone, how's it going? Um, I'm Max and I think this week, I haven't checked. It's either in a couple days or it just happened, it's going to be 5 years at Nitn. So, seeing like all these faces here right now is it's fantastic in so many ways. I remember when I joined Nitn, it was co I actually never met Yan, a CEO. My laptop came uh through the mail and I open it. First day of work. I open it. It's broken. I'm like, they're never going to believe me that I can just sell the laptop. And um and it was four people in a room and now I think we're are we 80 90 something like that. Um we we've really grown, but I think the thing that's grown the most is the community. And I mean my LinkedIn inbox is kind of is hell right now, but in the best way. It's a chalk block full of people um getting into nitn asking really thoughtful questions and like having like the use cases that they're coming uh to us with and the ask usually is hey Max can I do this with Naden and the answer very often is yes most likely yes and that's it's a very I think uh it's something I really appreciate about the job but today I was going to talk to you about MCP actually but I was talking with JP and he also planned to talk to about MCP. The thing about JP is he built the feature at least half of it. So we figured it's fair that he does that. So I had to rustle this talk up to be honest, but it's something I've been talking a lot about. So I don't have any slides or anything. But what I wanted to talk to you today about is the NN creator economy I guess as we're seeing it. And I guess what is an economy, right? You got different participants in an ecosystem and someone's making money, right? Um and that's why I would say today it's fair to say that there is an NN economy in place. Just the other week, I got an email from someone who said, "Hey, Max, thanks so much. Like, because of Nedn, I'm like gonna be buying my mom a house. " I was like, "Well, look, I'm sure there was a lot of effort involved in what you did there, but they attributed that to the NAND ecosystem. " And so, what I wanted to talk today about is a loop that I'm seeing a lot of people start in that economy. Now, there's a lot of different ways that you could contribute in that economy. You could be a part-time participant, full-time. I know a lot of people that do it as a side hustle as well and they have their career, they're a doctor or whatever and they do this for kicks. Um, but it's a specific flywheel that we've noticed. Uh, and I think it's really powerful because um, well, let me explain the fly flywheel and then I'll kind of go into uh, why I think it's so powerful. So the biggest persona I'm seeing in this internet economy is it starts off as an automation consultant, right? So they say, "Hey, look, I like flowm. I like building uh workflows. I think a lot of us who have done it, there's that feedback loop, right? You get stuck a little bit, you figure it out, you see the green ticks, you keep going, you see a bunch of stuff automated. It's addictive, right? It's there's a there's probably a dopamine hit if we had the uh the time to study that, right? Um and so they start off as an automation consultant. Um and for a lot of these folks, getting the first gig or two can be a little challenging, right? That happens I think a lot of times when you're freelance you're going to companies like hey um but the really exciting thing because I was a freelancer for a lot of my life so I've done that loop a lot right you're starting a new thing like hey I make websites now you're trying to convince people like I'll do a website for free basically I just want to build I want the experience the really exciting thing I'm seeing from a lot of these guys I'm talking to and what I'm about to tell you is based on probably about 20 conversations or more from the last 60 days so it's a pretty recent is after about two plus references two plus gigs that question goes away now specifically when they're working on AI related stuff especially because a lot of the clients that I'm talking to as well so I have conversations with them they acknowledge that everyone wants this right now I mean who isn't in a boardroom or you know talking with their manager and saying how do we use AI now very often what they need is probably automation maybe some AI um and it's the automation consultant that can come in and explain that to But a lot of them are very quickly starting to get paid work from that and then um once they've done that I think this is the real key here they start making content right you're seeing that in the end community today a lot of folks they say hey when I go on YouTube it's just all nent probably so the algorithms I'm guessing there's non-n related content on there as well but I think the big difference um when if you close your eyes and think of a content creator probably a lot of us I know I do I sometimes kind of think of also like bullshitty content, right? Or there's hyperboles. They're saying this does anything. This does everything. It's actually why I kind of moved into that cuz I was like, look, this technology is so fantastic already. We don't need to add hyperbole on top. And so what these guys are doing, what's very different from their content to the other kinds of content that creators make is it's based

on the work that they're doing. So they solve a real client problem and then they either document the problem that they solved or the content that they make is inspired by that real problem. So it's validated because someone paid them an invoice to solve that problem. So if they're going to go document that problem, um it's far more likely to be real. Um and then they have a reputation with clients, so they're less likely to use titles like how I built a $3 billion company in seven minutes and never worked again. Right? We're seeing a lot of that and a lot of that's kind of BS, right? Um, and so they start creating content. There's a few different ways you can do that. There's video content, and I think there's written content, and the I think that that's not as critical. It's just that it's formed on real insights. Um, and then they're starting to create workflow templates. So, if you're not aware, you can uh any workflow that you build, you can upload to nen. io uh and have a creator profile on there. And what we're actually doing already is collecting affiliate revenue every time that someone signs up for edit and cloud from your template. So by uploading a really cool workflow that you probably maybe have on your internet instance already today, you can start collecting that money without actually having to sign up for the affiliates program and do all that kind of stuff. Um, and a good case in point I think is there was a guy from the notion community in his first day. He made a,000 bucks um from uploading a few templates from that. So that flywheel that's kind of where it starts to spin. Um and then their templates and their content is getting uh all the all these views and engagement because again it's validated by those clients and then they're getting more leads and that's at a very high level the flywheel. Now a lot of these people they have their own nuances and niche on that but at a high level they're doing client work and getting billables for that. They're turning that into insightful content that is based on real problems. And again there's the internet templates library there. um community nodes will soon be on nitin cloud as well. So if that's something that you want to get into, there's going to be more propensity for distribution there as well. Um and then because there's this nen community flywheel as well, there's a lot of inbound traffic right now. So today for n YouTube is our biggest acquisition channel. It took over Google actually. And even though some of Google or some of YouTube will always be attributed to Google, that's actually quite a big feat. So then you have the power of that flywheel working behind it as well. Um and I say this as well because um I'm even in discussion with Naden of like hey I would love to get into this flywheel more. This looks fantastic. I talk with community creators all the time and that's exactly what they're doing. The reason I mention this today I think for a lot of different roles to jump into or whatnot you might have to make the jump but I'm talking with a lot of different folks and I've seen the path. So this isn't just me telling you this. I've seen it where they're starting part-time. So, they still got their day job. Maybe they like their day job, maybe not, but they're doing this part-time and then they get to rather easily choose to go into that when there's revenue coming in, etc. So, again, I love all of our community members. You don't have to be a creator. And if anyone watches my show, you see I got, you know, the likes of Nate Herk on the show and then someone who just joined and it's the passion in the eyes that I care about. But if you're getting deeper into this space and like the conversations having with so many people, they're getting excited about it and they're going, I love this. Can I do this for a job? like, can someone pay me to do this? Yes, they could pay you quite a bit for that. The numbers in Western Europe that I'm seeing, this is probably after 9 months plus of high quality experience and references, but we're talking north of €150 an hour. Um, I've heard north of 200 as well. At that point, depends how you position yourself and whatnot. But I'm not here to say, hey, you should go be an automation consultant. I just want to let you know of this really cool loop that I'm seeing that I've seen validated for over a year now. So this isn't uh flash in the pan. I've seen folks go through this and grow and sort of continue to grow through that. Um and also with just all the attention and growth, I don't know if you saw n it's like took over Zapia and make in terms of Google trends and whatnot. So there's a lot of attention on this right now. And if you start today, probably 12 months from now, you're going to be in a lot better position as that economy, as everything builds uh builds out. So I'm happy to answer any questions that because I talk with a lot of people about this every day. Um, but what I will say, even if money is not your motivator, which like I said, I think seeing all these faces in here, I'm sure not all of you are professional work for automation consultants. Most of you are trying to solve a problem at your work or maybe at home. And honestly, I love those use cases and those workflows as well. But it's a hell of a feeling when you get an email that 10,000 people activated your template. And the first time I got the email was actually, I think, two days ago. I got that email and I was telling the product manager who built it because we kind of hacked that together and got it out. What an email to get 10,000 people set up a template that I made in about an afternoon and uploaded. I was like, "Hey, it's a cool little flux image generator or something. " 10,000 people

got value from that. I think that's pretty cool. That made my week. So, if it's not about the money, do it for the sharing because it's one hell of a feeling when whatever you built that baby you're proud of, you get a bunch of people around the world installing it and downloading it. So, but I don't know how we're doing on my slot time and whatnot because again, like I said, I just winged this whole stick, but um so yeah, questions. All right, questions. Any questions? Yeah. If you uh upload something to Gumroad, does this also work with this uh something else? Uh so, can you repeat the question for the Yes. So, the question was if you upload it to Gum Loop, right? You said Gumroad. Oh, to Gumroad, right? Sorry. Gum Loop is a competitor, I think. if you upload it to um a third party paid site, does affiliate still work? Um yes and no. So the functionality that I discussed about how we're capturing your affiliates revenue, that's off the official NE. io page. Um and that's without having to sign up to be an affiliate. So like we're collecting that in your name and then when you choose to create an affiliate program in the future, you can do that. Uh for what you're doing, I would say create an affiliate account and then use your links and whatnot. So then when people go to there then it would still attribute that way. But the thing that I mentioned was basically auto attribution. Um and why that's important and I'm glad you brought up this question. This means that if someone finds Nad through your template, you're getting paid without an affiliate link. So if you have some niche vertical for ISPs, you know, you probably know ISPs way better than NN. Your template has a lot more propensity to rank with ISPs or take any vertical. There's always these jargon and pain points that you're much more likely to understand than even a PM at NN studying that because that's literally your role the last 10 years. I hope did I answer your question? Great. Any others? Yes. Yeah. Is there a sort of topics inside the community because everybody's generating some sort of like generation thing but everybody certain topic orertise. So in a sense if you spread it out then you can already Yeah. So the question was around and let me know if I got this right. Is it is the advice to niche down or to go wide or to understand what those buckets are? Is it the second one to understand what the buckets are or the people that be using the templates they have like a bucket can pick from the best? Yeah. Certain. Yeah. So if you go to I think it's nen. ioworkflows that's our public template repo. On there you can see those various buckets that we've created the categories. Um, I would say that's a pretty good guide of what people want as well because we reverse engineered that list from that. Um, now this wasn't your specific question, but I would say from the folks that I'm seeing, generally you should probably specialize. If you're just like a I automate anything guy, it's not really specific. And again, if you're in a role where automation at all could help that role and you're trying to move into this, I highly encourage that you consider at least specializing a little bit in that role because if you have years of experience in some profession, you can relever that but in a fresh new role. Um, and again, product managers like this is a high paid role at tech companies. Their whole job is to then go reverse engineer that person, figure them out. If you're really that person, you're light years ahead of even like, you know, a hot shot uh PM working at uh at a great company. Sorry, I think I kind of half answered your question. I'm not sure if I did. If I didn't, happy to afterwards as well. More than Great. Awesome. Last question. All right. Yes. Um could you summarize like top three uh challenges that people tell you? Mhm. I think the first challenge is just cold start. This is often from more younger folks. Um and I think I mean I remember when I first started on Upwork when I was like 17, no reviews, whatever. I think I had like my dad probably hired me for 20 bucks. So I got one five star, right? And then sorry, not very ethical, but then after that it was all good ethic. That's an issue. It's cold start. And I think AI is not going to solve that or fix that, right? if you got no experience to show. Top three challenges. I think the other one that we're getting is creators are asking, hey, you guys must have so much data, so many insights. Can you share more of that? Like, can you help me? And so, I think there's some MVP scrappy ways we're trying to do that. Like, hey, let's build a workflow, Vibe Code, a front end on that and just share that with them. And there's some stuff

we actually did around that we'll be releasing. Um, but it's getting basically the information that we have that they need so that they can grow more because obviously incentive for that. It's making that happen. I would say that's another challenge that they're having, but we're working on it. And then I would say the third challenge is probably thinking about supporting your workflows. Um, so some people tried I think like naively use AI but like great I got a like a workflow generator that half works. Let's go generate a thousand workflows and they made AI slop and then how to manage them. I would not recommend that especially in the trajectory of how so much of the world will be AI slop. I recommend to all of you continue to understand how to create that high quality humanmade output that itself can then go you know generate AI slot for your customers. Thanks everyone. Thanks man. Thank you sir. Enjoy.