There’s a counterintuitive truth about making money as an online creator that most people miss entirely. While everyone dreams of creating the next viral YouTube video or building an elaborate desktop experience, the real money for individuals is almost always in content designed for the smallest possible screen.
Think about it this way. When you create content for a phone screen, you’re working within brutal constraints. You have maybe six inches of space, someone’s thumb is hovering over the skip button, and they’re probably standing in line at the grocery store or sitting on the toilet. These limitations aren’t weaknesses though. They’re your greatest advantage as a solo creator.
The moment you move to larger screens, everything becomes exponentially more complex. A desktop website doesn’t just need more content to fill the space. It needs navigation systems, multiple columns of information, higher resolution assets, and an entirely different approach to how people consume information. Someone sitting at a desk with a large monitor has completely different expectations than someone scrolling on their phone. They expect depth, multiple features running simultaneously, and production values that match what they’d see from a professional company.
Consider what happens when you try to create for progressively larger screens. On a phone, a single compelling image with text overlay can stop someone mid-scroll. That same content on a tablet starts to feel incomplete. On a laptop, it looks amateurish. On a desktop monitor, it’s nearly invisible. Suddenly you need to think about sidebars, headers, footers, and filling negative space in ways that don’t look empty or unprofessional.
The economics tell the whole story. A successful TikTok creator, Instagram personality, or mobile-first content producer can build a six or seven-figure income working entirely alone. They shoot on their phone, edit on their phone, and publish to platforms that handle all the technical infrastructure. Compare that to someone trying to build a competitive desktop software application or even a professional-grade website. You immediately need designers, developers, copywriters, and constant maintenance to keep up with competitors who have entire teams.
Mobile content has another massive advantage that people overlook. The tolerance for rough edges is infinitely higher. A slightly shaky video on TikTok feels authentic. That same video quality in a YouTube documentary or corporate website would be unacceptable. Phone users have been trained to accept and even prefer content that feels raw and immediate. Desktop users expect polish because historically, anything appearing on their computer screen was created by professionals with resources.
The monetization mechanisms themselves favor small-screen content. Mobile apps with in-app purchases, affiliate links that people can tap immediately while the impulse is hot, and direct-to-creator payment systems all work seamlessly on phones. Desktop monetization typically requires more sophisticated systems like subscription platforms, complex sales funnels, or advertising networks that demand significant traffic before they’re worthwhile.
There’s also the simple reality of attention. People check their phones over a hundred times per day in fragmented moments. Each micro-session is an opportunity for your content to appear and convert. Desktop usage is more intentional and consolidated. Someone sits down at their computer with a purpose, whether that’s work or entertainment, and they have specific destinations in mind. Breaking into that intentional behavior is vastly harder than catching someone during a mindless scroll.
The development cycle matters too. You can test a new piece of mobile content, get feedback from thousands of people, and iterate all within a single day. Building for desktop means longer development cycles, more complex testing across browsers and screen sizes, and changes that require actual technical skills rather than just creative ones. Speed of iteration is everything when you’re trying to find what resonates with an audience.
This doesn’t mean desktop content can’t be profitable. It absolutely can be. But it requires either a team or accepting that you’ll be competing against teams. A solo creator making desktop software is fighting against venture-backed startups with dozens of employees. A solo creator making mobile content is fighting on relatively even footing against other individuals.The path to making real money online as an individual isn’t about creating the most elaborate or technically impressive content. It’s about creating content that fits naturally into the smallest, most intimate screen in someone’s life, delivered in the moments when they’re most receptive, with production values they expect from someone working alone. Everything else is swimming upstream against economics that don’t favor the solo creator.
