Product spec

What Distribution Club is at MVP (the minimum viable product: the first version real brands and creators use with real money), who uses it, every screen and rule, how a gig moves from offer to payout, how money is handled, and what the product records. This is the most detailed page on the site; the other pages refer back to it.

Draft v0.1 · Last updated 19 September 2026

On this page

1. 1. Purpose and scope
2. 2. Users
3. 3. Surfaces
4. 4. Creator rules
5. 5. Brand rules
6. 6. The checklist
7. 7. Gig lifecycle
8. 8. Money rules
9. 9. Notifications
10. 10. Ops console
11. 11. Data model
12. 12. Trust, safety and legal
13. 13. Metrics
14. 14. Non-goals

1. Purpose and scope

Distribution Club is distribution infrastructure for brands. A brand (the paying customer: a company, an indie software product, a small SaaS business, or an agency acting for a brand) buys distribution: posts, views and clicks, from four inputs, product, budget, audience and distribution preference (section 5.3). In V1 the typical brand is an indie developer, an indie hacker or a small SaaS company; the long-term product is broader: give us your product and budget, and we will optimise its distribution. Creators, matching, dispatch, content review, verification, tracking and payouts are the infrastructure underneath; a brand never has to manage any of it. Product philosophy: simple to buy, complex to operate, transparent about results. A campaign is the brand's brief, a checklist of up to 10 items the brand writes, a fund and some settings, built from those four inputs. The system dispatches gigs to matched creators the way a ride app dispatches rides or a delivery app dispatches orders. A gig is one unit of work for one creator inside a campaign: one video, one post. A creator is the person who makes and posts the content. The creator accepts, makes a short vertical video, uploads it, AI verifies it against the checklist item by item (by hand at MVP), the creator posts the approved package to their own social account and the platform verifies the posted link, and the creator is paid into a wallet per 1,000 views the post gets, released daily as views come in. Wallet balances are paid out every 30 days.

The first release is a two-week MVP: a sprint from Monday 7 September to Sunday 20 September 2026, with the first real gig dispatched on Monday 21 September 2026. It is a web app (mobile web, installable to the home screen), not native apps, with manual checklist checks, manual link checks, daily view reads by hand, and leagues set by hand by ops rather than by platform APIs. See MVP in two weeks for the full two-week plan. The rest of this page describes the product as it is built out from there.

The MVP is the smallest version of this loop that works end to end with real money:

• Four surfaces: creator app, brand dashboard, ops console, notification layer (section 3).
• Four platforms from day one: Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok and X, with the same gig, checklist and rate card on all four.
• One content type: original short vertical video, 15 to 90 seconds, made by the creator. On X the video is posted as a video post with the caption as the text.
• Global from day one, not a single first market. A creator or brand can join from any country the payments partner can pay or collect in, and a creator connects whichever of the four platforms operates for them (for example TikTok is not available in India, so an Indian creator connects Instagram, YouTube or X instead). Product language at launch is English; prices are in US dollars everywhere, for the fund, the rate card, the wallet and the fee. A brand is charged in its own currency at the day's rate, plus GST where it applies, and a creator's payout converts to local currency at payout, by the payments partner (see Payments). The founder wants the largest possible creator pool at launch, so that brands find their slots filled. Phase 4 adds product languages Spanish, Hindi and Portuguese, and extra local payout rails, for example UPI in India.
• V1 accepts ten product categories only: AI tools; SaaS and web apps; developer tools; productivity apps; fitness apps; health apps; lifestyle apps; education apps; kids apps; and games, all using the "Software, apps and SaaS" factor of 1.6 (assumption; retune with data). The 21-category list stays as the roadmap for later.

Later: local distribution. Not part of V1. City-level targeting (the countries-and-cities filter) and local-visit campaigns, where a creator must physically visit a location and film there, move to a later local-distribution product. V1 matches on audience, not creator location: a brand describes the audience it wants (for example "US developers"), never a city.

The MVP is deliberately narrow. It is not a public gig board (creators never browse; offers come to them), not a messaging tool (no brand-creator chat; ops answers questions through support), not a long-form video tool, not a shipping service (it only shares an address and records a delivered confirmation), not a paid ads manager, not a subscription product for creators (ranking is never sold), not multi-currency pricing (the fund, rate card and fees are quoted in US dollars everywhere; a brand is charged in its own currency at the day's rate, an Indian brand in rupees, a German brand in euros, and creator payouts convert at payout), not an agency tool (no multi-brand accounts), not a checklist longer than 10 items, and not on LinkedIn or Facebook. Section 14 repeats this list; the Rollout plan says when each arrives, if it does.

1.4 V1 scope (binding)

Distribution Club starts narrow on purpose, so every campaign has enough good creators. V1 customers are indie developers, indie hackers and small SaaS companies; sales, pilot brands and dogfood campaigns target them first. V1 accepts ten product categories: AI tools; SaaS and web apps; developer tools; productivity apps; fitness apps; health apps; lifestyle apps; education apps; kids apps; and games, all using the "Software, apps and SaaS" factor of 1.6 (assumption; retune with data). All four platforms, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok and X, stay available, but because dispatch density is measured per audience segment, V1 may in practice run mostly on X, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels (assumption), since developer and founder audiences are strong there. A creator can live anywhere; matching is on the audience the brand describes, not on where the creator lives (section 5.3). Creator sign-up stays open worldwide to every category. The density rule for accepting a campaign is at least 40 eligible creators per audience segment and league (assumption).

2. Users

Three user types, each with one surface built for them. Brands and creators never contract with each other directly; both contract with the platform.

2.1 Brand

Who: a marketing person at a company that sells something. In V1 the typical brand is an indie developer, an indie hacker or a small SaaS company selling an AI tool, a SaaS or web app, a developer tool, or a productivity app. An agency acting for one brand signs up as that brand.

Job: get many small, honest posts about the product on social media, quickly, without finding, hiring and managing creators one by one.

Needs: a short campaign form; a clear total price before paying; no obligation to review content; proof that each post went live; view counts read from the platforms, not typed in by creators; a report to hand to their boss; and a way to add money, pause or stop.

2.2 Creator

Who: a person with a median of at least 5,000 views per post over the last 90 days on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or X who already makes short videos. Most are in Bronze 1 or Bronze 2 (section 4.4). Creators are independent contractors, not employees.

Job: earn steady money from short paid gigs that fit around their life, without pitching, negotiating, chasing brands or sending invoices.

Needs: offers only when they are available; the CPM, the expected earnings and the deadline before accepting; a checklist that says exactly what "done" means; fast, specific review feedback; the platform handling posting, disclosure and payment; a wallet they can trust; and a monthly payout they can plan around. Creators pay nothing to use the platform; the platform's 20% cut comes out of the brand's deposit, not out of the creator's earnings.

2.3 Ops

Who: ops is the platform's own operations function. At MVP this is the founder alone, doing everything from review to the monthly payout run on the 1st, with an ops reviewer hired only once submissions pass about 100 a day (see Rollout plan and Dogfooding).

Job: keep the marketplace honest and fast. Check every submission against the brand's checklist, watch dispatch, act on fraud flags, approve brands, run payouts, resolve disputes and support both sides. At MVP the founder checks every submission by hand, using the brand's checklist as a form, 50 to 100 a day, with a decision within 48 hours; AI verification, which checks each item the same way, is the target, added once volume passes about 100 a day (see MVP in two weeks). Once it is live, the AI result reaches the creator within 24 hours and the human confirmation follows within 48 hours.

Needs: a review queue with the AI result for each checklist item already filled in; a live view of dispatch; flagged items with the evidence attached; a one-click payout batch; and tools to look up and act on any brand, creator, campaign or gig.

3. Surfaces

There is no public marketplace or browsing of gigs at MVP. Creators only get gigs through dispatch.

3.1 Creator app

iOS and Android, mobile only, once native apps ship in the build-out. At MVP the creator app is a web app (mobile web, installable to the home screen); see MVP in two weeks. Everything a creator does happens here.

• Sign-up: Google, Apple, or a phone number with a one-time code (creator's choice).
• Profile: name, country, city, up to 3 content categories.
• Connect accounts: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X, each through that platform's official OAuth flow (the "log in and allow" screen that grants permission to publish and read statistics). Shows each account's league and eligibility status.
• Eligibility result per account, with the reason if it fails.
• Availability: weekly windows in local time, and "Pause offers" for 1 day, 3 days, 7 days or until turned back on.
• Offer: push notification and in-app card showing brand name and logo, category, the CPM, the expected earnings, whether a bonus is available, deadline, sample yes or no, platform, a countdown, and Accept and Decline. Tapping opens the full brief and checklist.
• Active gigs (up to 3): brief, the brand's checklist (up to 10 items), deadline countdown, sample status and delivery address entry, Upload button.
• Upload: depends on the campaign's format (section 5.3). For video, one video up to 500 MB, MP4 or MOV, plus caption text, with format, length and orientation checked on the device. For an image slideshow or carousel, 3 to 10 images, up to 20 MB each (assumption), plus caption text. For a text post, the post text (up to 280 characters, or 2 to 5 posts for a thread) typed in the app, with an optional image. The upload can be replaced until Submit.
• Review result: each item marked pass or fail with a one-line reason; revision upload when changes are requested.
• Approved package: once approved, the exact video file and caption to post, with the disclosure, hashtag and brand tag already in place, to post within 24 hours (or on the go-live date if set).
• Paste your post link: after posting the approved package on their own account, the creator pastes the link here so the platform can verify it.
• Post status: approved, ready to post, link submitted, posted, link to the live post. Scheduled applies only when the platform posts automatically (section 7).
• Tracking: views, refreshed once a day, earnings released so far against expected earnings, days left in the 14-day earning window.
• Wallet: Pending, Available and Paid balances, every entry, next payout date, whether the $20 minimum is met.
• Payout setup: identity verification, the tax details the payout partner asks for (PAN for Indian creators), and a bank account, UPI ID or supported payout method, through RazorpayX or Cashfree for creators in India or Payoneer for creators elsewhere, asked for before the first payout. See Payments.
• Score: the creator score and its four parts.
• Referral link and referral earnings.
• Gig history with outcome and earnings.
• Friction questions after every dogfood gig: 5 questions scored 1 to 5, plus a free-text box.
• Report a brief as misleading.
• Settings: disconnect an account (active gigs must finish first), delete account, notification preferences, "Also send me offers from lower leagues" (default off; section 4.8), and "Let Distribution Club post for me" (the platform posts automatically instead of the creator; off at MVP, available later per platform; section 7).
• Support: contact ops, who mediate any question for the brand.

3.2 Brand dashboard

Web.

• Sign-up: Google, or a work email and password, plus company name, website or social handle, billing address, tax ID (optional). Email sign-in also supports a magic link.
• Brand-safety status: pending, approved or declined, with the reason if declined.
• Campaign creation form: four inputs (product, budget, audience, distribution preference), with advanced options for everything else (section 5.3). Product is URL first: the brand enters the product URL, AI reads the site and drafts the campaign name, brief, key message and checklist, and the brand edits them. The form states plainly that 20% of the deposit is the platform's share.
• Funding: card, UPI or net banking through Razorpay, charged in the brand's own currency at the day's rate of the US-dollar price (an Indian brand in rupees, a German brand in euros). The minimum is $100 per platform the campaign runs on, picked from steps of $100, $500, $1,000, $2,500, $4,000, $6,000, $8,000 and $10,000. One screen shows the fund amount, the platform's 20% share, the expected range of posts and views, the effective cost per 1,000 views, and GST where it applies, before paying.
• Campaign list with state: draft, live or paused. "Fund not yet received", "brand check pending", "campaign complete" and "slots unfilled after 48 hours" are banners shown on the campaign page, not states.
• Campaign page: gigs by state, posts live with links, views per post and in total, Fund, Spent, Pending, Balance and Reserved for accepted gigs (section 8.11), cost per 1,000 views for the campaign, per platform and per post, cost per click, average time to post, checklist pass rate, and a by-platform panel (section 5.9).
• Controls: pause and resume dispatch, Add funds ($100 minimum; the expected range is re-quoted), change distribution preference, sort posts by lowest cost per 1,000 views, request an extra view refresh (up to 5 a day per campaign), rate each post 1 to 5, widen the audience or category when told of unfilled slots.
• Sample shipping: see the creator's delivery address and mark the sample dispatched.
• Posts and Gigs pages: every post and every gig across the brand's campaigns (section 5.9).
• Support: write to ops about any post or campaign.
• Reports: CSV download per campaign (a CSV is a spreadsheet file).
• Billing: receipts, fund balance, the platform's 20% share of each deposit stated plainly, and the unspent fund balance carried to the next campaign; deposits are not refunded.
• Team: one login per brand at MVP (assumption).

3.3 Ops console

Web, internal only. Tools: review queue, dispatch monitor, fraud flags, payout setup checks, payout batch, disputes, campaign approvals, support tools, dogfood controls. Section 10 describes each.

3.4 Notification layer

• Push notifications to the creator app. The offer is the main one and is built to look like a ride or order request.
• SMS: the one-time code for creators who sign in with a phone number, and a fallback for creators when a push is not delivered.
• An in-app notification list for brands, plus an email for every campaign event; each email type can be switched off in settings.

Section 9 lists every notification, its channel and its wording.

4. Creator rules

4.1 Eligibility

All required:

• Age 18 or over.
• A median of at least 5,000 views per post over the last 90 days on at least one connected account. On Instagram this must be a professional account of type Creator or Business. A YouTube channel, TikTok account or X account also counts. Follower count does not matter; reach does (section 4.4).
• At least 10 public posts in the last 90 days on that account.
• The account is at least 90 days old.
• A bank account, UPI ID or supported payout method in a country RazorpayX, Cashfree or Payoneer can pay, plus the tax details the payout partner asks for (PAN for Indian creators), collected during payout setup. Needed before the first payout, not before the first gig. A creator outside India can join and earn before Payoneer is confirmed; their wallet holds the balance until then. See Payments.

Eligibility is checked per account, automatically, when it is connected. A creator with two connected accounts where only one passes receives gigs for that one only.

4.2 Onboarding steps

1. Sign in with Google, Apple, or a phone number and a one-time code (creator's choice).
2. Profile: name, country, city, up to 3 content categories.
3. Connect one or more of Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X through the official OAuth flow of each.
4. Automatic eligibility check per account.
5. Availability hours. Default: available all the time.
6. Done. The creator can now receive offers.

Payout setup (identity verification, the tax details the payout partner asks for, PAN for Indian creators, and a bank account, UPI ID or supported payout method, through RazorpayX, Cashfree or Payoneer) is asked for before the first payout. The app prompts for it the first time the creator has a Pending balance.

Every new creator who passes eligibility gets a first offer within 7 days. If no brand campaign matches them in that time, a dogfood campaign gig is dispatched to them. A dogfood campaign is a campaign funded by Distribution Club itself and run through the normal product (see Dogfooding).

4.3 Categories

Creators pick up to 3 categories as interests, from a list of 21 individual categories (for example Personal finance and investing, Food and cooking, Gaming). The full list, with its rate-card factor, is on Rate cards. A campaign has exactly one category from the same list, and dispatch matches a campaign's category to creators who chose it as one of their interests.

4.4 Leagues

A creator's league is set by median views per post over the last 90 days on the connected account used for the gig, counted over at least 10 public posts, not by follower or subscriber count. A creator can be a different league on each platform. Leagues are recalculated on the 1st of every month, per platform, with the payout run, so a creator can move up or down. The app shows the creator's league, current median views, and the floor of the next league. This replaces the old follower tiers (Nano, Micro, Mid and Macro).

The league factor is nearly flat on purpose: a brand gets about the same views per dollar in every league, and the reward for climbing leagues is larger absolute earnings per post, first-wave offers from Gold 1 upwards, and Diamond custom deals in Phase 4. A creator's full CPM is this league factor times a geography base, a platform factor and a category factor; section 8.1 states the formula and the Rate cards page has the full tables. Below 5,000 median views a creator is not eligible on that platform. Phase 4 adds custom deals above the Diamond CPM for creators with 1,000,000 or more median views (assumption). The creator score (section 4.7) is separate from the league. A campaign is only accepted once at least 40 eligible creators are found for that audience segment and league (section 7); with eight leagues, density is harder to reach, so dispatch groups Bronze 1 and Bronze 2 together for this count at MVP (assumption). V1 accepts campaigns in ten categories only (AI tools, SaaS and web apps, developer tools, productivity apps, fitness apps, health apps, lifestyle apps, education apps, kids apps, games); the 21-category list stays as the roadmap for later.

4.5 Availability hours and pause

Creators set weekly windows, for example Monday to Friday, 6 pm to 11 pm in their local time zone. Offers are only sent inside these windows. The default is "always available". "Pause offers" stops offers for 1 day, 3 days, 7 days or until turned back on. Pausing does not change the score, and accepted gigs continue as normal.

4.6 Limits

• Maximum 3 active gigs at once. "Active" means a gig the creator has accepted that has not yet been posted: any state from Accepted up to Approved or Scheduled. Posted gigs in the tracking window do not count.
• Maximum 1 gig per brand per 30 days.
• Maximum 10 completed gigs per 30 days, raised for high-score creators in Phase 3.

4.7 Creator score

The score runs from 0 to 100 and starts at 60. The first 3 gigs also get a "new creator" boost in ranking, so new creators see offers early.

The performance part is the share of expected earnings the post actually earns in its 14-day earning window (assumption). A score below 40 pauses dispatch to that creator until an ops review. Ops can restore dispatch, keep it paused, or remove the creator. Brand ratings of 1 to 5 per post are recorded at MVP. From Phase 3, they count toward the quality part: first-pass approval rate at 20% and average brand rating at 10%, so quality stays at 30% overall and the other parts keep their weights.

4.8 Offers below your league

A creator can switch on "Also send me offers from lower leagues" in settings (default off). With it on, a Gold creator can receive Silver, Bronze 2 and Bronze 1 offers, and so on down. The CPM is always the slot's league CPM: a Gold creator who takes a Bronze 2 slot is paid at the Bronze 2 CPM, not the Gold CPM, and the offer shows the slot's league and CPM before the creator accepts. Expected earnings are still the creator's own median views times the slot's CPM, so views are read and pay is judged against the creator's own account (section 8.3). These gigs count against the same limits (3 active, 10 per 30 days, 1 per brand per 30 days) and feed the same creator score. A lower-league creator never receives higher-league offers. Wave 1 for a slot goes only to creators of that slot's own league; a higher-league creator who has switched this on can only join the candidate list from wave 2 onwards (section 7). The slot still takes the same amount from the brand's fund regardless of who fills it, and the brand sees the creator's name and post on the dashboard, never their league.

5. Brand rules

5.1 Onboarding and brand-safety check

A brand signs up with Google, or with a work email and password, plus company name, website or social handle, billing address, and tax ID (optional). Ops does a brand-safety check within 2 business hours, before the first campaign goes live: the website or handle matches the company, the product is not in a prohibited category, and the brand looks real (assumption on the exact checks). A brand can build and fund a campaign while the check is pending; dispatch starts only after the check passes and the fund is received.

5.2 Prohibited categories

Declined at signup: alcohol; tobacco and vaping; gambling and real-money gaming; crypto and unregulated investment products; political and religious content; adult content; prescription drugs; weapons.

5.3 Campaign creation fields

Campaign creation asks for four inputs. Everything else is chosen by the platform with sensible defaults, changeable under "advanced options". Leagues are not a brand choice: the planner turns budget, audience and distribution preference into a league mix behind the scenes (section 5.4), and the Rate cards page stays as internal documentation (see Rate cards).

1. Product. URL first. The brand enters the product URL; AI reads the site and drafts the campaign name, a brief of up to 300 words in plain language, a one-line "key message" and the checklist (section 6), and the brand edits any of them as free text. Also: product images or other assets, the destination link, which defaults to the product URL (the web address the brand wants clicks to go to; the platform turns it into a tracked short link on its own redirect domain, for example go.distribution.club/acme, so every click is counted), and an optional promo code (a word or code creators can say or show, for platforms whose captions do not carry a clickable link).
2. Budget. The deposit, minimum $100 per platform the campaign runs on ($200 for two, $300 for three), picked from steps of $100, $500, $1,000, $2,500, $4,000, $6,000, $8,000 and $10,000. The slider does not open at the minimum: both the landing page quote and the campaign form open at $2,500, a deliberate anchor toward a higher budget. The minimum stays $100, shown as the slider's first stop and in the landing FAQ. The form states plainly that 20% of the deposit is the platform's share, taken at deposit, and the other 80% pays creators. The planner turns budget, audience and distribution preference into an expected range of posts and views (80% to 100% of the matched creators' expected views) and the effective cost per 1,000 views (section 5.4, section 8.2).
3. Audience. Where the audience should be: a short free-text description plus a country or region picker (or "anywhere"), for example "US developers," and one of the ten V1 categories from section 4.3. Matching is on the audience described, not on where the creator lives (a creator can live anywhere); a campaign is only accepted once at least 40 eligible creators are found for that audience segment and league, otherwise the brand is told to widen the audience or choose another category.
4. Distribution preference. "More posts" (many smaller creators), "fewer, bigger posts", or "auto". This is the brand's only lever on the mix of creators used; it replaces choosing leagues directly.

Advanced options, all optional, shown with the platform's default:

• Checklist. Default: the checklist AI drafted from the product URL. The brand can edit, remove or add items, up to 10 in total (section 6).
• Platforms. Default: all four, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok and X. The brand can untick any platform under advanced options. The budget splits evenly across the chosen platforms unless the brand sets its own split on the platform split step that follows the platform choice, a stack of panels, one per platform, whose dividers drag in steps of 10% so the shares always sum to the whole; the expected range is quoted from that split. A gig is for one platform; a creator with several connected accounts can receive separate gigs for each.
• Format. Set per platform, one sub-step each under Format. Default: any short vertical video. For each chosen platform the brand can narrow the format to talking head, screen demo or voiceover, several allowed, so a screen demo can run on Shorts while X gets a talking head. Each format changes the format items of the checklist (section 6.3) and has its own review path; its effect on pay is internal (section 8.1).
• Deadline per gig. Default: 72 hours from acceptance. Options: 24 hours, 48 hours, 5 days or 7 days, counted from acceptance, or from sample delivery if a sample is required.
• Sample required. Default: no, unless the brand marks "physical product", which turns it on. If on: the creator shares a delivery address on acceptance, the brand ships and marks it dispatched, the creator marks it delivered, and the deadline clock starts at delivery.
• Go-live date. Default: none, so approved posts publish as soon as approved. If set, approved posts are held and published on that date instead.
• Bonus. A bonus that pays views beyond a creator's median up to 1.5 times expected earnings (section 8.4). Off by default (section 5.7). Usage rights are included on every post at no extra cost; there is no rush option and no brand approval step.

The old fields, leagues, tiers, formats, platforms, deadline and add-ons chosen one by one, move under advanced options or disappear; a brand that changes nothing still gets a full campaign built on sensible defaults.

5.4 Paying the fund

The fund is the money a brand deposits for a campaign, held through a licensed payments partner (see Payments), never in the platform's own operating account. The minimum is $100 per platform the campaign runs on. Prices are in US dollars; the brand pays through Razorpay, in its own currency at the day's rate of the US-dollar price (an Indian brand in rupees, a German brand in euros), plus GST on the platform's 20% share where it applies. As soon as the deposit lands, 20% of it becomes the platform's revenue at once, fixed and never refunded; the other 80% becomes the brand's creator pool. The brand sees an expected range of posts and views for its budget, for example "Expected: 400,000 to 500,000 views," never a single promised number, plus the effective cost per 1,000 views (section 8.2); the platform turns the budget, audience and distribution preference into a league mix behind the scenes. The campaign form and the billing page state plainly that 20% of the deposit is the platform's share; the brand never sees the creator CPM, creator pay per post or the league mix, and section 8.1 explains the internal split. Adding funds to a running campaign has the same $100 minimum and re-quotes the expected range. Money reserved for a gig that a creator does not earn in the post's 14-day earning window stays in the creator pool for more gigs, and whatever is left when the campaign ends stays with the brand as fund balance for its next campaign (section 8.5); deposits are not refunded. Dispatch starts once the fund is received and the brand-safety check is done. See the Business model.

5.5 Dashboard contents

The dashboard is results-focused. Simple controls: pause and resume dispatch, add funds, and change distribution preference. Rich, exportable results alongside them: budget spent, creators used, posts live with links, views, clicks, and conversions (promo code redemptions and tracked-link conversions once the brand adds a conversion pixel or postback, Phase 3, assumption), which is the outcomes roadmap in order (posts, then views, then clicks, then sign-ups and customers as they are added), plus cost per 1,000 views for the campaign, per platform and per post (posts can be sorted by lowest cost), cost per click and a timeline. Also shown: the expected range of posts and views, views so far, Fund, Spent, Pending, Balance and Reserved (section 8.11), Add funds, gigs by state, average time to post, checklist pass rate (the share of submissions that passed every checklist item on the first check), and the by-platform panel (section 5.9). Every figure can be exported as a CSV report (section 5.6).

5.6 Brand controls

• Pause and resume dispatch. Pausing stops new offers; accepted gigs continue.
• Change distribution preference ("more posts", "fewer, bigger posts" or "auto").
• Add funds to a running campaign: $100 minimum, and the expected range is re-quoted for the new fund.
• Request an extra view refresh, up to 5 times a day per campaign (section 8.5).
• Sort posts by lowest cost per 1,000 views.
• Rate each post 1 to 5.
• Download a CSV report.
• After 48 hours with unfilled slots: widen the audience or category, or increase the fund per gig; the platform handles any change to the league mix behind the scenes.
• Write to support about any post or campaign; questions and complaints go to ops.

5.7 What is included, and the one add-on

• Usage rights, included. Every post comes with usage rights at no extra cost: the brand may use any post in paid ads and on its own channels for 12 months. There is no per-post request and no add-on price (section 8.10).
• Bonus (assumption). Free to switch on, but reserves extra money per gig. Pays views beyond the creator's median at the same CPM, up to 1.5 times expected earnings; the extra 0.5 times expected is reserved from the creator pool per gig, and any unused bonus reserve returns to the pool when the post stops earning, 14 days after it goes live (section 8.4).

There is no rush dispatch and no brand approval step: every gig uses the standard 30-minute offer expiry and the campaign's deadline, and a submission that passes the checklist goes live without a brand sign-off.

5.8 What brands see and never see

A brand buys distribution with four inputs, product, budget, audience and distribution preference, and gets posts, views and clicks (conversions from Phase 3). A brand's screens use only these words: "Product", "Budget", "Audience", "Distribution preference", "Expected posts", "Expected views" (shown as a range, never a single number), "Cost per 1,000 views", "Posts live", "Views", "Clicks", "Conversions", "Fund", "Spent", "Pending", "Balance", "Reserved" and "Add funds". A brand sees cost per 1,000 views three ways: for the whole campaign, per platform (section 5.9) and per post, and can sort posts by lowest cost. The platform's share is stated plainly: the billing page and the campaign form say that 20% of every deposit is the platform's share, taken at deposit, and that the other 80% pays creators. What stays hidden is how that 80% is split: a brand never sees "creator CPM", "creator fee", creator pay per post, "league", the league mix, "rate card", "dispatch wave" or the $2.00 running cost as a line, on any brand-facing screen, in a brand notification, or in the brand pitch; those numbers appear only in section 8 of this page, on the Business model and Rate cards pages, and in the ops console.

5.9 By-platform panel and cross-campaign pages

The campaign page has a by-platform panel: one row per platform in the campaign showing views, clicks, cost per 1,000 views and posts live, each against the expected figure for that platform, so the brand can see delivery against expected platform by platform. When one platform's cost per 1,000 views runs above 1.3 times the campaign's, the row carries a warning and the brand is told by notification (section 9.2); the brand can then untick that platform under advanced options for the rest of the campaign (assumption on the 1.3 multiple). The platform's own arithmetic behind the row, which creators were used and what each was paid, stays internal.

Two pages sit above the campaign level. The Posts page lists every post across all of the brand's campaigns, with campaign, platform, link, views, clicks, cost per 1,000 views and the brand's rating, sortable by lowest cost. The Gigs page lists every gig across all of the brand's campaigns, with campaign, platform, state, deadline and post link once live. Both export to CSV.

6. The checklist

The checklist is the list of up to 10 items every submission must satisfy. The brand writes it: AI drafts it from the product URL when the campaign is created (section 5.3) and the brand edits, removes or adds items, or writes the list from scratch. AI verifies each submission against it, item by item, pass or fail with a one-line reason, and every item must pass for approval; at MVP ops does this check by hand (see MVP in two weeks). Because the list is short and written as facts, a creator knows what "done" means before accepting, a check takes minutes, and a brand does not have to review anything. The checklist should ask for facts from the brief plus format and originality rules, never for a specific opinion, so creators can be honest; the AI draft follows this rule and flags a brand-written item it cannot verify (for example one that asks for praise) so the brand can reword it.

Disclosure is not a checklist item. The platform adds "#ad" and the paid-partnership or branded-content label to every approved package at posting, and the posted-link check enforces it (section 7, section 12.2), so no slot on the list is spent on it.

6.1 An example checklist

What the AI draft looks like for a software product, the V1 case. This is an example of a brand's list, not a preset: the brand can change every line. Nine items, leaving one slot free.

1. The app (its icon or a screen from inside it) is on screen within the first 3 seconds.
2. The app's name is spoken or shown on screen at least once.
3. The creator shows at least one thing they did inside the app and says the key message from the brief in their own words.
4. Video is vertical (9:16), between 20 and 60 seconds.
5. The call to action from the brief is included (for example "link in bio", a promo code, or "search for X").
6. The caption contains the campaign hashtag and tags the brand's handle.
7. The creator appears on camera or narrates; all footage is original (no reused clips, no stock).
8. No competitor product or brand is visible or mentioned.
9. Audio is clear and music is from the platform's licensed library only.

A physical product would get a draft that opens with the product on screen and, if a sample is required, the package opened on camera; a service would get a draft that asks how long the creator has used it and for their own honest view, which is not a positive one: a critical take that covers the key message facts still passes. Dogfood campaigns use their own "Creator story" checklist, on the Dogfooding page. Clipping (repurposing brand-provided footage) comes in Phase 3 and is not part of the MVP. Local-visit campaigns, where the creator must physically visit a location and film there, are not part of V1 and move to a later local-distribution product along with the countries-and-cities filter (section 1.4).

6.2 Rules for items

• Up to 10 items, one requirement each, in plain language.
• Each item must be checkable from the video, the caption or the transcript: a fact from the brief, a format rule or an originality rule. An item that asks for an opinion or praise is flagged by the AI draft and by ops, and the brand is asked to reword it.
• The format items (section 6.3) are written by the platform for the campaign's format; the brand can keep or tighten them (for example a shorter length) but not drop them.
• The checklist is fixed once the campaign goes live; edits apply to gigs dispatched after the edit, not to gigs already accepted (assumption).

6.3 Checklist changes by format

A campaign has one format (section 5.3), and the format sets the wording of the format, originality and audio items and the review path. The other items stay as the brand wrote them.

The review path also changes by format. A video is reviewed by transcript and key frames, as in section 7. A slideshow is reviewed by checking each image and the caption; there is no transcript. A text post is the fastest to review: read and check, since there is no video or image to inspect closely. For a text post, the brand name and call to action must be in the text itself. What one gig takes from the fund follows the same multiplier on the CPM, and the creator's expected earnings are 80% of that number for every format; the platform's 20% cut applies once, to the whole deposit, not per gig or per format (section 8.1). Views are read using the platform's own view metric for that post type; the creator's league is still set by median views across their posts on that platform, regardless of format.

7. Gig lifecycle

A gig starts as an open slot in a funded campaign and ends as Completed, Expired or Cancelled. "Filled by others" is what a creator sees on an offer, not a state of the gig itself, but creators meet it so it is listed.

Ops can cancel an accepted gig from the console, for example when a brief is found to be misleading or a creator asks to withdraw before submitting. An ops cancellation leaves the creator score unchanged. A second review failure that cancels a gig, by contrast, lowers the quality part of the score, and a missed deadline that expires a gig lowers the reliability part.

Offer expiry. 30 minutes after the offer is sent. Declining before expiry is free. Letting offers expire repeatedly lowers the responsiveness part of the score. A creator who accepts after slots are full sees "This gig has been filled" with no score change.

Dispatch window. Offers go out in waves, every 30 minutes, up to 48 hours. Wave 1 sends offers only to creators of the slot's own league. The number of offers per open slot is 1 divided by the recent acceptance rate for that category and league, rounded up, with a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 6; until 50 offers of data exist for a category and league, the wave size is 2 (assumption). From wave 2 onwards, creators from higher leagues who have switched on "Also send me offers from lower leagues" (section 4.8) join the candidate list for that slot, ranked alongside the slot's own league. Unfilled slots go to wave 2, then wave 3 and so on. After 48 hours the brand is told and can widen the audience or category, or increase the fund per gig; the platform handles any change to the league mix behind the scenes. How it works covers matching and ranking.

Sample clock. The deadline clock does not start until the creator marks the sample delivered. If the brand has not marked it dispatched within 5 days of acceptance, ops is alerted. If it is still not dispatched at 7 days, ops cancels the gig: no score change for the creator, and the fee returns to the fund.

Deadline. 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours (default), 5 days or 7 days, from acceptance or sample delivery. Reminders go out 24 hours and 2 hours before. A missed deadline moves the gig to Expired automatically: $0 paid, reliability drops, slot re-dispatched.

Review window. At MVP ops checks every submission by hand against the brand's checklist, as a form (pass or fail per item, with a reason for each failure), 50 to 100 submissions a day, with a decision within 48 hours of submission. AI verification is the target: it checks each item the same way and is added once volume passes about 100 a day, roughly 3,000 a month, more than one person can check by hand inside 48 hours; see MVP in two weeks. Once it is live, the AI result reaches the creator within 24 hours, and a human confirms within 48 hours of submission. Beta target: 90% of submissions get an AI result within 24 hours and a decision within 48 hours. There is no brand approval step: a submission that passes goes to the creator to post without a brand sign-off.

Review rules. Four rules sit on the lifecycle. One revision round, within 48 hours of the changes-requested notice. A second fail cancels the gig at $0 and returns its reserve to the creator pool. An approved creator must post within 24 hours (or on the go-live date if set). A fraud flag on a release settles within 3 business days.

Go-live hold. If a go-live date is set, approved posts are held until that date. Otherwise they publish as soon as approved.

Posting failure. If posting through the platform's official API fails, the platform retries every 15 minutes for up to 6 hours. If it still has not posted, ops and the creator are both alerted. The deadline is not affected and the creator is not penalised.

Posting modes. At MVP the creator posts the approved package themselves and the platform verifies it; this is creator-posted mode, the default and a permanent fallback. Once approved, the app gives the creator the approved package: the exact video file and caption, with the "#ad" disclosure, the paid-partnership or branded-content label instruction, the campaign hashtag and the brand tag already in place. The creator posts it, unchanged, on their own account within 24 hours of approval, or on the go-live date if the brand set one (assumption on the 24 hours), with a reminder at 12 hours. Missing the posting deadline moves the gig to Expired, with the same consequences as a missed content deadline. Platform-posted mode (automatic) is switched on per platform once that platform approves the publishing permission, target Phase 3; a creator then turns on "Let Distribution Club post for me" in settings (section 3.1), default on once it is available for their platform, and the gig moves from Approved straight to Scheduled, skipping Ready to post and Link submitted. The creator sees the exact caption before submitting either way, and keeps control of posting at MVP, since creator-posted mode is the only mode available.

Verification: the four checks. The creator pastes the post link into the app. The platform runs four checks, in order: the post is public; it carries the ad label ("#ad" plus the platform's paid-partnership or branded-content label); it carries the campaign hashtag and the brand tag; and the video matches the approved submission, checked first by matching frame perceptual hashes (a fingerprint of the video that matches near-copies), then by matching the transcript if a frame match is not possible, then by an ops manual check if neither is possible. By hand at MVP, automated later. Passing all four is what "verified" means: the floor (20% of expected earnings) is released and the 14-day earning window starts from the post's own publish time. View reads use the platform's API through the creator's connected account where a read permission exists, or the platform's public data where that is enough (YouTube and X give public view counts; Instagram and TikTok need the creator's connected account).

Earning window and refreshes. 14 days from posting. Views refresh once a day automatically for every live post on every platform (by hand at MVP, by API later); the Refresh views button fetches fresh figures on demand. A brand can request an extra refresh up to 5 times a day per campaign. After each refresh, earnings to date, minus whatever was already released, is released to the wallet as Pending, up to the cap of expected earnings, or 1.5 times expected earnings if the brand's optional bonus is switched on. The post stops earning 14 days after it went live; whatever is unearned then stays in the creator pool as fund balance.

Fraud hold. Each amount released after a refresh sits as Pending for 48 hours while automated checks run. Clean amounts become Available; flagged ones are reviewed by ops within 3 business days.

Stay-live rule. The post must stay live for at least 90 days (section 8.9).

8. Money rules

The creator CPM numbers in this section are internal. They appear in this document, on the Business model page and in the ops console, and on no brand screen.

8.1 Rate card

Two words matter here, and only one is ever shown to a brand. The creator CPM is what the creator earns per 1,000 views the post gets; it is internal vocabulary, used on this page and in the ops console, never on brand-facing screens. The creator CPM is a geography base, times a platform factor, times a category factor, times the league factor from section 4.4: geography base by the tier of the audience the brand described (Tier 1 $2.50 down to Tier 4 $0.35, read from the platform's audience insights, by hand from a screenshot at MVP), platform factor (Instagram Reels 1.25 down to X 0.60), and category factor, set by the campaign's category. In V1 the category factor is 1.6 for all ten accepted categories (AI tools, SaaS and web apps, developer tools, productivity apps, fitness apps, health apps, lifestyle apps, education apps, kids apps, games); the full 21-category factor table (Personal finance and investing 1.7 down to Entertainment and comedy 0.6) stays as the roadmap on Rate cards. The full factor tables and worked examples are on Rate cards; this page states the formula only. Expected earnings for a gig are the creator's median views (in thousands) times this CPM. The platform's 20% cut is not a per-gig number: it is taken once, from the whole deposit, the moment the brand funds a campaign, fixed and never refunded (section 8.2). What a gig takes from the fund is not simply expected earnings divided by 0.8. A flat running cost of $2.00 per gig (review, payout transfer, storage and the card fee's share; assumption) is folded in first: what one gig takes from the fund equals expected earnings plus $2.00, divided by 0.8. The effective cost per 1,000 views for a given league is that take-from-fund amount divided by the creator's median views, in thousands; blended across the league mix the planner builds for a brand's budget, audience and distribution preference, this becomes the campaign-level number the brand sees at planning time; once posts are live the brand also sees the same measure per platform and per post, worked out from what was actually spent and the views actually read. The running cost is inside that one number and is never itemised. The platform's 20% cut of the deposit is unaffected by it and stays net margin, since the running cost is paid from the 80% creator-pool side before creators, not from the platform's cut; creators still receive exactly their own expected earnings. Brands never see the creator CPM, creator pay per post or the league mix; the platform's 20% share is stated plainly on the billing page and the campaign form (section 5.8). A creator who has switched on offers from lower leagues and takes a lower-league slot is paid that slot's CPM, not their own league's CPM (section 4.8).

Worked example, for a Tier 1 audience (for example "US developers"), Instagram Reels and the Developer tools category, one of the ten V1 categories, factor 1.6 (creator CPM $5.00 for Bronze 1 through Silver 2, $5.25 for Gold 1 and 2, $5.50 for Ruby and Diamond, because of the nearly flat league factor). The $2.00 running cost is the same in dollars at every league, so it moves the effective cost per 1,000 views more at the smaller leagues, where it is a bigger share of a smaller gig. This per-league breakdown is internal planning arithmetic; a brand only ever sees the expected range and the single blended cost figure for its whole budget:

Two named examples show the running cost at work. Priya, a Bronze 1 creator who makes developer-productivity content, with a median of 10,000 views on Instagram Reels ($2.50 Tier 1 base times 1.25 Reels times 1.6 Developer tools times 1.00 Bronze 1, a $5.00 CPM) and $50.00 expected earnings, has a gig that takes ($50.00 + $2.00) / 0.8 = $65.00 from the fund, an effective cost of $6.50 per 1,000 views. Marcus, a Bronze 1 creator with $30.00 expected earnings (a 6,000-view median, same category and platform), has a gig that takes ($30.00 + $2.00) / 0.8 = $40.00 from the fund. Both still receive exactly their own expected earnings; the extra $2.00 is paid from the creator pool's 80% side, not from either creator's earnings or from the platform's cut.

A floor of 20% of expected earnings is released to the creator once the posted link passes the four checks (section 7), drawn from the brand's creator pool (section 8.4); the platform's 20% cut was already taken at deposit and does not move with this release. Maximum payout for a post is expected earnings, unless the brand has switched on the optional bonus (section 5.7), which allows up to 1.5 times expected earnings. Phase 4 adds custom deals above the Diamond CPM for creators with 1,000,000 or more median views (assumption).

The rate card above is for the video format, which pays 100% of the CPM. A campaign's format (section 5.3) sets a multiplier on the CPM: video 100%, image slideshow or carousel 60% (assumption), text post 30% (assumption). The creator's expected earnings are that multiplier applied to the video figure; the $2.00 running cost is then added once, flat, before dividing by 0.8, the same as for video (assumption). So a Bronze 2 slot at a 12,500-view median (Tier 1 audience, Reels, Developer tools) has expected earnings of $62.50 for video, $37.50 for a slideshow and $18.75 for a text post, and takes $80.63 from the fund for video, $49.38 for a slideshow and $25.94 for a text post. Section 6.7 lists the checklist and review changes for each format.

8.2 How gigs are planned from a fund

Example: a brand funds $6,000 for a "US developers" (Tier 1) audience, Instagram Reels, Developer tools campaign, and the planner mixes Bronze (both Bronze 1 and Bronze 2) and Silver 1 on "auto" split. At deposit, 20% of the fund, $1,200, becomes the platform's revenue at once, fixed and never refunded; the other 80%, $4,800, becomes the brand's creator pool. The system plans about $3,000 of Bronze gigs, taking about $65.00 from the fund each for $50.00 average expected earnings (about 46 gigs), and about $3,000 of Silver 1 gigs, taking $127.50 each for $100.00 expected (about 24 gigs): about 70 gigs in total, about 940,000 expected views. The brand's screen shows this as a range, not a point estimate: "Expected: 752,000 to 940,000 views" (80% to 100% of the matched creators' expected views), and an effective cost per 1,000 views of about $6.38. Creators are paid up to about $4,700 of the $4,800 pool; the remainder covers the running cost of the roughly 70 gigs. Internally each gig reserves its own expected earnings plus its running cost from the $4,800 creator pool, but the brand only ever sees the $6,000 fund and the expected range of posts and views. The brand pays the $6,000 fund at deposit, through Razorpay, in its own currency at the day's rate of the US-dollar price (an Indian brand in rupees, a German brand in euros), plus GST on the platform's 20% share where it applies (18% for an Indian brand; zero-rated for a brand outside India, see Payments). The campaign form and the billing page state plainly that $1,200 of the $6,000 is the platform's share; there is no separate fee on top of that number.

Return estimate. The Revenue step before Budget takes the price the site draft read, whether it is monthly or a one-time purchase, how many months a customer keeps paying (prefilled with what is typical for the category) and the share of clicks that buy; price times months, or the price alone for a one-time purchase, is lifetime value. The budget step then shows the expected ROAS beside the range: expected clicks are the expected views times the click rate live campaigns run at (0.2%, an assumption retuned with data), expected customers are clicks times the brand's rate, expected revenue is customers times lifetime value, and ROAS is revenue over the fund. On a live campaign the same arithmetic runs on the clicks actually counted against what has actually left the fund, in a Return panel on the overview. Every figure is labelled as an estimate; conversions themselves are not yet measured (section 5.9).

Fund is committed to a gig only when a creator accepts, reserving that gig's expected earnings (plus a bonus reserve of 0.5 times expected earnings, if the brand has switched the bonus on) from the pool; the brand sees the sum of these reservations as Reserved (section 8.11). Views beyond the creator's median do not earn more on that post unless the bonus is on, in which case the extra views earn up to 1.5 times expected earnings from the reserved bonus amount; either way the post is never paid beyond what was reserved for it, so an empty pool cannot happen mid-gig. If a gig is cancelled or expires, its reserved amount returns to the remaining creator pool and the slot is re-dispatched. A brand-chosen split runs the same arithmetic per league.

8.3 Expected earnings

Expected earnings for a gig are the creator's median views per post over the last 90 days on that platform (read from the platform's official API), divided by 1,000 and multiplied by the CPM (the geography base, platform factor, category factor and league factor from section 8.1). There is no separate, smaller target for views: expected views for the gig are simply the creator's own median, and views beyond it raise the creator's median, and so their CPM earnings, for future gigs, rather than paying more on the current post. Expected earnings are calculated at dispatch time and shown inside the offer, along with the CPM and whether a bonus is available, so the creator knows them before accepting. "Views" means each platform's own view metric: Instagram views, YouTube views, TikTok video views, X video views. Impressions are not used. Worked example: Priya, a Bronze 1 creator with a median of 10,000 views, a "US developers" (Tier 1) audience, on Instagram Reels, in the Developer tools category (CPM $5.00) has expected earnings of $50.00.

8.4 Floor, daily releases and the cap

A floor of 20% of expected earnings is released to the wallet as Pending the moment the posted link passes the four checks (section 7). After that, views refresh once a day, and after each refresh the creator's earnings to date (views divided by 1,000, times the CPM, up to the cap of expected earnings, or 1.5 times expected earnings if the brand's optional bonus is switched on) minus whatever was already released is released as Pending. So pay releases daily as views come in. A post stops earning 14 days after it goes live. Views beyond the creator's median earn nothing extra on this post unless the bonus is on, but they raise the creator's median for future gigs. The example uses Priya from section 8.3: a Bronze 1 gig, $50.00 expected earnings, $5.00 CPM, "US developers" (Tier 1) audience, Instagram Reels, Developer tools. The table shows five of the fourteen daily refreshes; "released to date" is the floor or earnings to date, whichever is larger.

So a creator earns 20% of expected earnings for posting and the rest day by day as the post gets views, up to the cap of expected earnings, unless the brand's optional bonus is switched on, which allows up to 1.5 times expected earnings paid from a reserved bonus amount. Each release draws from the brand's creator pool. Whatever of a gig's reserved amount is not released when the post stops earning stays in the creator pool as fund balance, for more gigs or the brand's next campaign (section 8.5); deposits are not refunded, and the platform's 20% share was already taken at deposit and is not part of what returns.

8.5 Earning window and view refreshes

14 days from posting. Views refresh once a day automatically for every live post (by hand at MVP, by the platform's API later), and earnings release automatically after each refresh. A brand can request an extra refresh up to 5 times a day per campaign; at MVP the request reaches ops as a task. Views are read from the platform's official API on each refresh and shown to both sides as a single figure; it is the pay released on each refresh that sits Pending for the same 48-hour hold as the money (section 8.6), until it clears to Spent. Money reserved for a gig but not released by the end of the window stays in the campaign's creator pool automatically, where the brand can use it for more gigs or its next campaign; deposits are not refunded. The platform's 20% share was already taken at deposit.

8.6 The 48-hour hold

Each amount released after a refresh sits as Pending for 48 hours while automated checks run: view velocity (views arriving faster than a real audience would produce), the ratio of followers to views, geography spread where the API gives it, and duplicate content. If clean it becomes Available. If flagged, ops reviews within 3 business days and releases or reverses it.

8.7 Wallet states

• Pending: released after a refresh but inside the 48-hour hold.
• Available: cleared; can be paid out.
• Paid: sent to the creator's bank account.

8.8 Payout cycle and minimum

A payout is money moved from the wallet to the creator's bank account. The 30-day cycle is implemented as an automatic payout on the 1st of every month. The full Available balance of every creator with completed payout setup and at least $20 is paid automatically to their verified payout method (a bank account, or a supported wallet in countries where that is the practical rail), converted to local currency by the payments partner. Below $20 rolls over. A creator without completed payout setup keeps the balance as Available until setup is done. Tax forms and year-end statements are handled through the payments partner (see Payments). There is no fee on creator earnings at MVP; Phase 4 adds an "instant payout" option at a 2% fee.

8.9 Rejected, cancelled and deleted

• A submission that fails review gets one revision round with a 48-hour deadline.
• A second failure cancels the gig with $0 paid; the reserved amount returns to the creator pool.
• Ops can grant a goodwill payment of up to 20% of the gig's expected earnings, funded from the platform's own revenue, if the brief was unclear.
• A missed deadline moves the gig to Expired automatically: $0 paid, reliability drops, gig re-dispatched.
• The post must stay live for at least 90 days. If the creator deletes or hides it earlier, the post stops earning at once and the score drops. Money already paid out is not clawed back unless fraud is proven.

8.10 Usage rights

Usage rights are included at no extra cost on every post: the brand may use any post in paid ads and on its own channels for 12 months, and the creator grants this by accepting the gig. Nothing is added to what a gig takes from the fund and nothing extra is released to the creator; a creator's pay is expected earnings as in section 8.4 (assumption that the included rights do not change the rate card; the founder can retune the CPM if creators push back). There is no rush dispatch and no brand approval step, so a gig has no paid add-ons at all. The one optional switch is the bonus (section 5.7). This is the same whether the brand pays the pay-as-you-go price or a managed-campaign price, and whether or not the brand qualifies for the volume rebate; see Business model.

8.11 The money tiles a brand sees

Five tiles on the campaign page, all in US dollars, with the brand's own-currency charge shown on the billing page.

• Fund: everything the brand has deposited for the campaign, including added funds.
• Spent: the platform's 20% share, taken at deposit, plus creator pay that has cleared the 48-hour hold.
• Pending: creator pay released on a refresh but still inside the 48-hour hold. After the hold it moves to Spent.
• Balance: Fund minus Spent minus Pending. This is the fund balance the brand can spend on more gigs or its next campaign; it is not refunded.
• Reserved: expected earnings (plus any bonus reserve) of accepted gigs not yet released. Shown alongside Balance and not subtracted from it: it is the part of Balance already promised to gigs in progress.

Priya's gig on the $6,000 example: at deposit, Fund $6,000, Spent $1,200, Pending $0, Balance $4,800, Reserved $0. When Priya accepts, Reserved rises by $50.00. When her link passes the four checks, $10.00 moves to Pending and Reserved falls to $40.00; two days later that $10.00 moves to Spent. Views are shown as a single number, read from the platform's official API on each refresh; only the pay moves through Pending to Spent, as above.

9. Notifications

Creator notifications are push notifications first. For the offer, if it is not opened within 10 minutes, an SMS follows, and an "offer expiring" reminder is sent 5 minutes before expiry. For other events marked "SMS fallback" below, the same push-then-SMS pattern applies (assumption on the exact timing for those). Brand notifications appear in an in-app list on the dashboard and go by email; each email type can be switched off in settings. Square brackets are placeholders.

9.1 Creator

9.2 Brand

10. Ops console

The internal web tool. At MVP its only user is the founder, who does every ops job described below until the hire triggers on the Rollout plan are crossed.

Review queue

Every submission, ordered by time left in the 48-hour review window. At MVP the founder checks each one by hand against the brand's checklist, as a form: pass or fail per item, with a reason for each failure, 50 to 100 submissions a day, with a decision within 48 hours of submission. AI verification is the target, added once volume passes about 100 a day (see MVP in two weeks). Once it is live, the reviewer sees the video, transcript, described key frames, caption, and the AI result for each item (pass, fail or unsure, with a one-line reason), confirms or changes each item, and marks the submission Approved or Changes requested with the reason the creator will see. From Phase 3, submissions with every item "pass" from creators scoring 80 or above are auto-approved with a 10% random spot check.

Used by: the founder.

Dispatch monitor

Every live campaign with open slots: open slots, current wave, offers sent, accepted, declined and expired, time since dispatch started, and the ranked candidate list. Ops can pause or restart a campaign's dispatch or move a slot to the next wave early.

Used by: the founder.

Fraud flags

Every amount flagged during the 48-hour hold, with the evidence: view velocity, follower and view ratio, geography spread, duplicate matches from perceptual hashing (a fingerprint of the video that matches near-copies), and device and account fingerprints. Ops releases or reverses the amount within 3 business days and can pause dispatch to the creator. Also lists brands flagged as possibly fake.

Used by: the founder.

Payout setup checks

Creators whose identity verification, tax details (PAN for Indian creators) or bank, UPI or Payoneer account is missing, pending or failed at RazorpayX, Cashfree or Payoneer (see Payments). Enforces one payout account per person. Ops can nudge a creator or pass a case to the accountant.

Used by: the founder, with the accountant paid per job.

Payout batch

On the 1st of every month, builds the list of creators with completed payout setup and at least $20 Available, shows the total, and sends the batch to the payments partner with one confirmation. Shows each transfer's status and any failures to retry.

Used by: the founder, using the console, not scripts.

Disputes

A case list for anything contested: a brief reported as misleading, a post a brand has written to support about, a rejection the creator disagrees with, a sample that never arrived, a deleted post. Ops can grant a goodwill payment of up to 20% of the gig's expected earnings from the platform's own revenue, cancel a gig, or reverse a release.

Used by: the founder.

Campaign approvals

The brand-safety check. New brands and their first campaigns, with website, handle, category and brief. Ops approves or declines within 2 business hours; declined brands see the reason.

Used by: the founder, who onboards brands by hand during the beta.

Support tools

Look up any creator, brand, campaign, gig or post by name, handle, email, phone or ID, and see its full timeline, every notification sent, wallet entries and payouts. Actions: resend a notification, extend a deadline, re-run the four link checks on a post, run an extra view refresh, restore dispatch to a creator below 40, disconnect an account, delete an account.

Used by: the founder.

Dogfood controls

Create and fund dogfood campaigns from the Distribution Club brand account with the "Creator story" checklist, dispatch the weekly "Creator story" and monthly "Payout day" campaigns, watch the 30% dogfood cap per creator, read the friction answers and bug reports, and pay the $10 bug bonus for a confirmed bug or the $5 referral reward when it is not paid automatically. Dogfood campaigns are labelled "Distribution Club campaign" everywhere and excluded from brand-funded volume in reports.

Used by: the founder. See Dogfooding.

11. Data model

The main entities. Every entity also has an ID and timestamps, left out below. "Key fields" lists the fields that carry a rule from this page.

The wallet is a double-entry ledger: every movement of money is a pair of entries, one debit and one credit, so the sum across all accounts is always zero and any balance can be rebuilt from the entries (assumption). A deposit is split the moment it lands: 20% is booked to the platform's revenue account and the other 80% to the brand's creator pool. A gig reserves its expected earnings from that pool when a creator accepts. For example, the floor on a $62.50-expected gig writes a $12.50 debit against the campaign's creator pool and a $12.50 credit to the creator's Pending account; each later refresh writes the same kind of pair for the amount released; the hold clearing moves the amount from Pending to Available; the payout moves it from Available to Paid. Reserved money not released when the post stops earning is written back to the creator pool, and nothing is ever written back out to the brand: unspent creator pool stays as fund balance, and the platform's 20% never moves again.

12. Trust, safety and legal

These rules are built into the product rather than left in a policy document. The Challenges page covers the risks behind them.

Why the platform never touches customer money directly: holding a brand's money and later paying part of it to a creator is, in most countries, regulated money transmission. That means state money transmitter licences in the United States, e-money or payment institution licences in the EU and UK, payment aggregator authorisation in India, and similar approvals elsewhere. Getting them takes months, capital and audits, so a regulated payments partner holds the money in its own licensed accounts instead, while the platform controls every movement (fund, view-read release, payout) and can see every balance, which is all the product needs. See Payments.

This is also the product's legal shape: Distribution Club runs as a marketplace, not as the seller of the gig. The creator supplies the content to the brand; the platform only supplies facilitation, dispatch, review and posting, and charges its own fee for that. The platform's 20% cut becomes its own revenue the moment a deposit lands, but the other 80%, the creator pool, is never the platform's revenue, so that portion must be held by the licensed partner, Razorpay Route for an Indian entity, rather than by Distribution Club itself; this is also why GST applies only to the platform's 20% cut, not to the whole fund (Payments). The word "credit" is not used on this site for money at all: the brand dashboard figure for an unspent fund balance is called the fund balance, never a payment to a creator, who is instead paid a fee owed to them.

12.1 Payout setup

Distribution Club is an Indian entity, which sets the payout rails. Stripe Connect, the common marketplace payments product, is not available to new businesses in India today, so it is not the MVP path. An Indian creator completes identity verification, PAN details and a bank account or UPI ID before the first payout, and is paid by UPI or bank transfer through RazorpayX or Cashfree Payouts, with TDS deducted as the chartered accountant confirms. A creator outside India is paid through Payoneer once the platform's eligibility as a payer with Payoneer is confirmed; until then, their wallet holds the balance and they are told when payouts open. Brands pay through Razorpay, charged in their own currency at the day's rate of the US-dollar price (an Indian brand in rupees, a German brand in euros); the fund, rate card and wallet stay in US dollars throughout (see Payments). One payout account per person is enforced. The accepted offer plus the brief acts as the written statement of work and, with the platform terms, is designed to satisfy independent-contractor and written-contract rules that differ by country, to be confirmed by the lawyer.

12.2 Disclosure automation

One automatic disclosure standard runs everywhere. The platform adds "#ad" and the platform's paid-partnership or branded-content label to every post at posting time, with the campaign hashtag and brand tag. This is built to satisfy the main regimes, for example the US FTC Endorsement Guides, the UK ASA rules and India's ASCI guidelines, and similar rules elsewhere; the lawyer keeps a per-country wording checklist. The creator does not have to remember it and must not remove it; it is not a checklist item, and the posted-link check enforces it (section 7). The checklist asks for facts from the brief, never for a specific opinion.

12.3 Prohibited content

The prohibited categories in section 5.2 are declined at brand signup. Ops reviews every submission at MVP, so no post goes live unseen. Creators can report a brief as misleading, and a brand can write to support about any post; both land in the disputes tool.

12.4 Fraud controls

• Eligibility rules: a median of 5,000 views per post, 10 posts in 90 days, 90-day account age, 18 or over.
• The 48-hour hold on every release, with view velocity, follower and view ratio, and geography checks.
• Duplicate video detection using perceptual hashing.
• Device and account fingerprinting to catch one person running several creator accounts.
• One payout account per person.
• Manual review by ops of anything flagged, within 3 business days.
• Checked post: the platform runs the four link checks on every live post (public, ad label, hashtag and tag, video match), and posts automatically where the platform allows it; views are read from the source, so nothing is self-reported.

12.5 Data and privacy

The app asks only for the API scopes it needs (publish, read statistics). Tokens are encrypted. Uploaded video originals are kept for 180 days after the gig completes, then deleted. The post ID, URL and view snapshots are kept. GDPR (EU and UK) and CCPA/CPRA (California) rights are supported: creators and brands can ask what is held about them and ask for it to be deleted.

12.6 Account disconnect and deletion

A creator can disconnect a social account at any time; active gigs on that account must finish first, and disconnecting removes the tokens at once. On account deletion, any Available balance is paid at the next payout run. Records the law requires, such as tax and payment records, are kept; everything else, including personal data, is removed within 30 days.

12.7 Fraud and pay integrity

Pay integrity is a first-class system, not an afterthought. A view is what the platform's official API reports for the post, and nothing else is counted. Before pay is released, checks run: velocity within the creator's normal range (views arriving at a pace real audiences would produce), audience geography consistent with the creator's own insights, engagement ratio within band, no duplicate or recycled content (a perceptual hash, a fingerprint of the video that matches near-copies, checked against the platform's library and the wider web), and no account or device fingerprint shared with another creator, on top of the 48-hour hold (section 8.6). Pay for suspicious views is withheld or clawed back, and a brand's reports exclude it too; repeat offenders are removed from the platform. At MVP these checks run by hand on samples: every post with a velocity or geography anomaly, plus 10% at random; they are automated in the build-out. Only views reported by the platform's official API are ever paid for or reported, to either side. Bot traffic runs an estimated 20% to 30% of views in Tier 3 and Tier 4 markets, so the sampling rate is higher there (assumption). Section 13 has the outcomes roadmap this system supports.

13. Metrics

MVP success test (assumption). Prove the core loop first: a brand deposits $1,000 and, within 14 days, has at least ten posts live and 200,000 to 250,000 views for a US developer audience, with clicks reported. Manual operation is fine until this is proven; automation follows the proof. Before the ledger is built, the payment flow is validated end to end with a real, small transfer: the brand pays through Cashfree or Razorpay, funds are held (Route or the dated fallback), one creator is paid through RazorpayX, and one creator abroad is paid through Payoneer if available. See MVP in two weeks.

Outcomes roadmap. Posts, then views, then clicks, then sign-ups, then customers. MVP reports posts, views and clicks (tracked link, promo code). Phase 3 adds conversion tracking (a pixel or postback from the brand's site or app) and cost per conversion. Phase 4 adds budget optimisation toward the brand's chosen outcome (views, clicks or conversions): the planner shifts the remaining budget toward the creators, platforms and categories that produced the best cost per outcome (assumption).

Beta success criteria (Phase 2), from the Rollout plan:

• Fill rate: 70% of slots filled within 2 hours of dispatch.
• On-time submission: 80% of accepted gigs submitted before the deadline.
• First-pass approval: 70% of submissions approved without a revision.
• Time to first post: median under 72 hours from fund received to first post live.
• Earnings completion: 60% of posted gigs earn their full expected earnings inside the 14-day window.
• Brand repeat: 40% of pilot brands fund a second campaign within 60 days.
• Creator retention: 50% of creators who complete one gig complete another within 60 days.
• Fraud: less than 2% of released money later reversed or flagged.
• Review SLA: 90% of submissions get an AI result within 24 hours and a decision within 48 hours.
• Approved package posted: 90% of approved packages posted and verified within 24 hours (assumption).
• Dogfood: 30% of new creator sign-ups from dogfood posts and referral links; 60% of new creators complete a first gig within 14 days.

Product health metrics, recorded per campaign, platform and league:

• Fill rate: share of slots filled and time to fill, by wave.
• Time to accept: offer sent to Accept, and the share of offers accepted, declined and expired.
• Time to post: acceptance to post live, and fund received to first post live.
• Review time: Submit to AI result (24 hours) and Submit to human decision (48 hours), and the share meeting each.
• Earnings rate: share of posted gigs still earning at the end of their 14-day window, share of expected earnings earned, and share of fund released.
• Payout success: share of payouts that settle on the first attempt, and creators below the $20 minimum.
• Score distribution: creators below 40 and above 80.
• Dogfood share: dogfood gigs as a share of each creator's completed gigs in 30 days, against the 30% cap.

14. Non-goals

• No public gig board or browsing.
• No brand-creator chat.
• No long-form video.
• No shipping logistics beyond address sharing and delivered confirmation.
• No paid ads management.
• No creator subscriptions or paid ranking.
• No local-currency pricing: prices are in US dollars everywhere, and a brand is charged in its own currency at the day's rate (section 8.2).
• No agency multi-brand accounts.
• No checklists longer than 10 items.
• No LinkedIn or Facebook.