Business model

This page explains how Distribution Club makes money, what brands pay, what creators earn, what one campaign costs the platform to run, and how revenue could grow along the rollout plan. Every number comes from the canonical brief or is worked out from brief numbers, with the arithmetic shown.

Draft v0.1 · Last updated 19 September 2026

On this page

1. 1. How money flows
2. 2. Pricing for brands
3. 3. Creator earnings
4. 4. Unit economics
5. 5. Revenue projection from the rollout targets
6. 6. Costs
7. 7. Why a 20% cut of every deposit, taken at deposit
8. 8. Levers that improve the model
9. 9. Risks to the model

1. How money flows

A brand is the paying customer: a company, a direct-to-consumer brand, an app, a restaurant, or an agency acting for a brand. A creator is the person who makes and posts the content. The brand pays for the work, the creator earns a fee for each post, and the platform earns 20% of every deposit at once, fixed and never refunded. Creators pay nothing.

A campaign is what a brand creates: a brief, a checklist of up to 10 items the brand writes, a fund and settings. The fund is the money the brand deposits for it. A gig is one unit of work for one creator: one video, one post. An offer is the notification inviting a creator to take a gig. A creator is paid a CPM, a rate per 1,000 real views set by their audience geography, the platform, the campaign's category and their league; the wallet is the creator's balance inside the product. A payout moves money from the wallet to the creator's bank account. Ops is the platform's own operations team, and dispatch is the sending of offers.

The money never sits in Distribution Club's own operating account. The platform's 20% cut moves to its own account as revenue the moment a deposit lands; the other 80%, the creator pool, is collected, held and paid out by a licensed payments partner (Razorpay Route for an Indian entity), and is never the platform's revenue while it sits there. This is what keeps Distribution Club a marketplace rather than the principal, which is also why GST applies only to the platform's 20% cut and not to the whole fund (Payments). The steps, in order:

1. The brand deposits the fund by card or bank transfer. The amount needed is worked out from what one gig takes from the fund, by league. There is no separate fee line on the brand side. GST on the platform's 20% cut is added where it applies.
2. As soon as the deposit lands, 20% of it moves to the platform as revenue at once, fixed and never refunded. The payments partner holds the other 80%, the creator pool.
3. Dispatch starts once the fund has arrived and the brand-safety check is done. Accepting an offer reserves that gig's expected earnings (the creator's median views times their CPM) from the creator pool. A cancelled gig's reserved amount returns to the remaining creator pool.
4. A floor of 20% of expected earnings releases into the wallet as Pending as soon as the posted link passes the platform's four checks (public, ad label, campaign hashtag and brand tag, video matches the approved submission). Views then refresh once a day for 14 days; after each refresh, earnings to date (views divided by 1,000, times the CPM, minus whatever was already released) release into the wallet as Pending too. Each release waits through a 48-hour fraud hold, then becomes Available. Pay never exceeds the maximum payout, which is expected earnings, unless the brand has switched on an optional bonus of up to 1.5 times expected.
5. Whatever a gig does not earn in the 14 days after its post goes live stays in the remaining creator pool, as does the reserved amount of a gig that fails review twice or misses its deadline.
6. The platform's 20% cut does not move with how many views a post gets: it was already taken and recognised as revenue the moment the deposit landed. What moves is only how much of the creator pool actually reaches creators.
7. When the campaign ends, unspent creator pool stays as fund balance, usable on the next campaign; deposits are not refunded.
8. On the 1st of every month, each creator with completed payout setup and an Available balance of at least $20 is paid to their bank account. Smaller balances roll over.

V1's paying customers are indie developers, indie hackers and small SaaS companies. 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, all priced at the "Software, apps and SaaS" factor of 1.6 (the 21-category list on Rate cards is the roadmap for later, not V1). The running example on this page: a brand called Acme Notes, a note-taking app for developers made by a solo indie developer in Berlin, funds $6,000, with an audience of "US developers" (a Tier 1 audience), on Instagram Reels. At deposit, 20% of that, $1,200, becomes the platform's revenue at once, fixed and never refunded; the other 80%, $4,800, becomes Acme Notes's creator pool. Acme Notes chooses Bronze (both leagues) and Silver 1 on the "auto" split, which spreads the $6,000 fund evenly across the chosen leagues by what each group takes from it: about $3,000 buys about 46 Bronze gigs (about $50.00 expected each, $65.00 taken from the fund per gig once the $2 running cost is folded in) and about $3,000 buys about 24 Silver 1 gigs ($100.00 expected each, $127.50 taken per gig), about 70 gigs in total and about 940,000 expected views, at an effective CPM of about $6.38. Suppose creators go on to earn an illustrative 70% of what was reserved on average, the way Priya earned 90% of her expected earnings and Marcus earned 50% of his (assumption).

Acme Notes paid $6,000 up front. $1,200 of that became Distribution Club's revenue at once; the other $4,800 was Acme Notes's creator pool, of which $3,290.00 reached creators, $140.00 covered running costs, and $1,370.00 stays in Acme Notes's pool, usable on more gigs or Acme Notes's next campaign; it is not refunded. Acme Notes's real cost was $4,630.00 ($1,200 plus $3,290.00 plus $140.00).

Distribution Club's long-term product statement, stated on the Overview and the Rollout plan: give us your product and budget, and we will optimise its distribution. Views come first, then clicks, then sign-ups and customers, as tracking builds out in later phases. What a brand is paying for, whatever the budget, is real distribution: a view is what the platform's official API reports for the post, and pay for it is checked against fraud before it clears (see Dependencies and Challenges). Every screen a brand sees shows a range, for example "Expected: 400,000 to 500,000 views," never a single guaranteed number: the money rules above already work this way, since a gig is only ever paid for real views actually read, up to its expected earnings. The product view of the same flow is on How it works.

2. Pricing for brands

2.1 The cut, shown as one price

The primary revenue is the platform's 20% cut of every deposit, taken once, at deposit, fixed and never refunded; the other 80% is the creator pool the brand's gigs draw from. Brands see only what one gig takes from their fund, by league, shown as "you pay per 1,000 real views, capped per post" with an effective CPM (see section 3.1); the creator's own CPM and what each creator is paid are internal and never appear on brand-facing screens, while the platform's 20% share is stated plainly on the billing page and the campaign form. GST applies to the platform's 20% cut where applicable. Collection cost on deposits, about 1.1% blended across Cashfree's published rates, is absorbed by the platform. One Silver 1 gig at expected earnings (a US developers audience, Reels, AI tools and SaaS category) takes $127.50 from the fund (expected earnings plus a $2 running cost, divided by 0.8), plus tax on the platform's cut where applicable; that $127.50 is a $100.00 creator payout and a $2.00 running cost, both paid from the pool as views come in, plus $25.50 that corresponds to the platform's cut, already taken as revenue at deposit rather than as this gig completes. The running cost is inside that $127.50 and is never itemised to the brand. A post that overshoots does not draw more from the fund unless the brand has switched on an optional bonus, since the maximum payout is the creator's own expected earnings.

2.2 Why the price is shown as one all-in number

The brand pays the whole fund up front, and the platform's 20% cut is fixed the moment it lands, so it never has to be billed again or reconciled against results. What can still change is how much of the 80% creator pool creators actually earn: expected earnings not earned in the 14 days after a post goes live stay in the creator pool rather than being paid out, for the brand to spend on more gigs or its next campaign, never refunded; a post that overshoots its expected views draws nothing extra unless the brand's optional bonus is switched on, in which case the bonus reserve comes from the pool's remaining balance. A brand is never asked to pay again mid-campaign, and dispatch never stops because money is unpaid. When a brand adds funds, the addition is split the same way: 20% platform revenue at once, 80% into the creator pool.

2.3 Add-ons

There are no paid add-ons. 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 nothing is added to what a gig takes from the fund or to what the creator is paid for it (assumption that the included rights do not change the rate card). There is no rush dispatch and no brand approval step. The one optional switch, the bonus, is free to turn on but reserves an extra 0.5 times expected earnings per gig from the creator pool (section 2.2); when it is on, that reserve is included in the per-gig figure when the system works out how many gigs, and how many expected views, the fund covers (assumption). So one Silver 1 gig at expected earnings ($100.00, a US developers audience, Reels, AI tools and SaaS category) takes $127.50 from the fund with the bonus off, and reserves $50.00 more from the pool with it on: $100.00 to the creator, $2.00 running cost and $25.50 that corresponds to the platform's share taken at deposit.

2.4 Volume pricing and managed campaigns

Brands never pay a subscription to Distribution Club. There is no monthly fee of any kind on the brand side. Two things change what a brand pays or gets, and neither is a recurring charge:

1. Volume pricing. A brand that deposits $10,000 or more in a calendar month automatically gets 5% of that month's deposits added to its creator pool at month end (assumption). What one gig takes from the fund does not change; the addition lands in the creator pool, ready to spend on future gigs.
2. Managed campaigns (Phase 4, from 1 July 2027). A brand that does not want to write its own brief can have ops write the brief, set up the distribution and run the campaign. On a managed campaign the platform keeps 35% of the deposit instead of 20%, and creators get 65% (assumption). There is no monthly fee for this either (assumption).

Volume pricing applies to the deposit, not to a subscription: a brand that crosses $10,000 of deposits in a calendar month gets 5% of that month's deposits added to its creator pool at month end, with no separate fee to unlock it. So a brand depositing $10,000 in a month gets $500 added to its creator pool (assumption). On a managed campaign, what one gig takes from the fund is higher for the same expected earnings, since creators get 65% of the deposit instead of 80%: a Silver 1 gig at $100.00 expected earnings, plus the same $2 running cost, would take about $156.92 from the fund on a managed campaign instead of $127.50 pay as you go, with the platform's cut rising from about $25.50 to about $54.92 per gig-equivalent (assumption, rounded). Both cuts are taken once, at deposit, not gig by gig; this per-gig figure is just the deposit's cut divided evenly across the gigs, and expected views, it buys. There is no subscription, so a merchant of record has no role at all: every dollar a brand deposits, whether pay as you go or managed, moves through the fund flow described in section 1.

3. Creator earnings

3.1 Rate card

A creator's league is set by median views per post over the last 90 days on the connected account used for the gig, not by followers, and can differ per platform. Leagues are recalculated on the 1st of every month, per platform. A creator is eligible on a platform once their median reaches 5,000 views per post over at least 10 public posts; below that they are not eligible on that platform. Creators are paid a CPM, a rate per 1,000 real views their post gets in the 14-day performance window. Unlike the earlier flat per-league CPM, the CPM is now the creator's audience geography base, times a platform factor, times the campaign's category factor, times a league factor that is nearly flat by design: full tables are on Rate cards.

A creator can switch on "Also send me offers from lower leagues" and take slots below their own league, from wave 2 onwards. A higher-league creator who does this is paid at the slot's league CPM, not their own; because the league factor is nearly flat, the gap is small, for example a Ruby creator (league factor 1.10) taking a Bronze 1 slot (league factor 1.00) is paid Bronze 1's CPM, $5.00 for a US developers audience on Reels in the AI tools and SaaS category, rather than their own Ruby CPM of $5.50 in that same scenario. The brand's reserved amount for the slot is set from that lower league's typical expected earnings, not the creator's own higher median, so the brand's cost does not change (assumption); because pay still follows real views once the post is live, the creator may end up earning more than a typical Bronze 1 creator would, since their own median is usually well above the Bronze 1 floor.

3.2 Expected earnings, the floor and the maximum payout

Expected earnings for a gig are the creator's median views (in thousands) times their CPM (set by audience geography, platform, category and league; see Rate cards), shown in the offer before the creator accepts. A floor of 20% of expected earnings releases into the wallet as Pending as soon as the posted link passes the four checks, whatever the views turn out to be. From there, pay follows views, refreshed once a day for the 14 days the post earns, up to the maximum payout, which is expected earnings unless the brand has switched on an optional bonus of up to 1.5 times expected.

The CPM above assumes a US developers audience (Tier 1), Instagram Reels and the AI tools and SaaS category; see Rate cards for the full geography, platform, category and league factor tables. A Bronze 1 creator who publishes and gets no views still earns the floor, $7.50 (20% of $37.50). A post that reaches its full expected views earns its full expected earnings: $37.50 for Bronze 1, $62.50 for Bronze 2, $100.00 for Silver 1, $187.50 for Silver 2, $393.75 for Gold 1, $656.25 for Gold 2, $1,787.50 for Ruby, $4,125.00 for Diamond, at the typical medians above. The effective CPM is what the brand dashboard shows, "you pay per 1,000 real views, capped per post"; it is expected earnings plus a $2.00 running cost, divided by 0.8, per 1,000 median views. The running cost is the same in dollars at every league, so it moves the effective CPM more at the smaller leagues.

3.3 Monthly earning scenarios

Creators are limited to 3 active gigs at once, 1 gig per brand per 30 days, and 10 completed gigs per 30 days (raised for high-score creators in Phase 3). These scenarios use the typical-median expected earnings from section 3.2 and an assumed share of expected earnings actually earned (assumption).

The sums: $150.00 is 4 times $37.50; $3,150.00 is 80% of $3,937.50; $22,275.00 is 90% of $24,750.00. A Gold 1 creator at the limit every month, reaching 80%, would earn $37,800.00 in a year (12 times $3,150.00).

3.4 What creators do not pay

There is no fee on creator earnings at MVP, and ranking is never sold. Payouts go out on the 1st to every creator with an Available balance of at least $20; smaller balances roll over. Phase 4 adds an instant payout option at a 2% fee, paid by the creator who chooses it: on the $3,150.00 Gold 1 month above, that is $63.00, leaving $3,087.00. Waiting for the 1st costs nothing. Two other amounts can land in a wallet: a $5 referral reward when a creator you referred publishes and gets the floor released on their first gig, and a $10 bonus for each confirmed bug reported. Neither is a "credit": the site does not use that word for money at all (Payments); a creator's referral reward and bug bonus are amounts owed to them, paid on the normal cycle.

3.5 Expected earnings by league and format

A campaign has one format: short vertical video, image slideshow or carousel, or a text post. The format sets a multiplier on the CPM: video 100%, slideshow 60%, text 30%. Expected earnings, and what one gig takes from the fund, follow the same multiplier. The table below uses the same US developers audience, Instagram Reels, AI tools and SaaS category scenario as section 3.2, at the typical medians.

The scenarios in section 3.3 assume the video format; a creator doing the same gigs as a slideshow or a text post would earn 60% or 30% of the amounts shown there.

4. Unit economics

Unit economics means what one unit of the business, here one campaign, earns and costs. The brief works it out for the campaign from section 1: a $6,000 deposit that gives the platform $1,200 of revenue at once, 70 gigs, Bronze and Silver 1, an illustrative 70% of expected earnings earned, $3,290.00 paid to creators from the $4,800 creator pool. The platform's revenue is $1,200 whatever share of expected earnings creators go on to earn; that share changes only what creators are paid, not what the platform earns. Review, collection, payout transfer and video storage are no longer separate costs charged against that revenue: since 5 September 2026, they are folded into a flat $2.00 running cost per gig (review $1.00, payout share $0.15, storage $0.15, the card fee's share about $0.70; assumption), which is added inside what each gig takes from the fund and paid from the 80% creator-pool side, before creators, never from the platform's revenue.

Revenue is the platform's 20% cut of the $6,000 deposit, taken at deposit and fixed whatever share of the campaign's expected earnings creators go on to earn. Because running costs come out of the 80% pool rather than out of this 20%, revenue is now the platform's net margin. Running cost covers what used to be four separate lines: collection (what Cashfree charges to collect the deposit, blending UPI, cards and net banking to about 1.1% of the deposit), review (fixed at $1.00 per gig by founder decision, covering the automated checklist check, the spot check and one revision on a third of gigs), payout transfer (about $0.15 per gig, blended Cashfree Payouts and Payoneer Mass Payouts rates) and video storage and processing (about $0.15 per gig). These are still real costs and still paid, but they are recovered inside the one price a brand sees per gig, not billed separately and not subtracted from the platform's 20% cut. Contribution margin is what is left to pay for the founder's time and everything that does not scale with campaigns: with running costs moved to the pool side, it equals revenue exactly, $1,200, on this campaign.

4.1 Costs do not change by phase

Earlier drafts of this page modelled review cost falling in Phase 4, as auto-approval took over from a human reviewer, with a separate illustrative column for that phase. That is no longer the model. On 4 September 2026 the founder set review at a flat $1.00 per gig in every phase, covering the automated checklist check, the spot check and one revision on a third of gigs; it stays $1.00 whether the founder does the reviewing, a hired reviewer does, or more of it is automated, because the founder's decision fixes the price of review rather than letting it fall with the method. Collection cost (about 1.1% of the deposit, blended Cashfree rates) and payout transfer cost (about $0.15 per gig, blended Cashfree Payouts and Payoneer Mass Payouts rates) are set from the payments partners' own published rates, not from a phase-based estimate, so they also hold steady from MVP through Phase 4. Video storage and processing stays at about $0.15 per gig throughout, unchanged. Since 5 September 2026, all four are folded into the flat $2.00 running cost per gig, paid from the creator pool inside the price rather than charged against revenue, so the review-cost sensitivity this page used to model is withdrawn: there is no longer a separate review-cost line that could hold or fail to hold against revenue. What can move is the running cost itself; at $1.00 or $3.00 instead of $2.00, the take from the fund per gig, and so revenue per gig on the Scenarios page, moves by about $0.25 either way (assumption; see Scenarios). So the $6,000 Acme Notes campaign's $1,200 contribution margin, 100% of revenue, is the figure for every phase, not a Phase 4 target still to be reached.

5. Revenue projection from the rollout targets

The rollout plan sets these targets. End of June 2027 (end of Phase 3): $200,000 of monthly fund deposits, 100 paying brands, 2,000 completed gigs per month. End of December 2027 (end of Phase 4): 10,000 completed gigs per month and 400 paying brands. Revenue is 20% of deposits, taken at deposit, so it no longer moves with how much of expected earnings creators go on to earn; that share only changes how much of the creator pool creators are paid. The brief gives no fund figure for December, so this projection uses the Scenarios model's V1 mix (brief section 50 item 11): audiences 70% Tier 1, 15% Tier 2, 10% Tier 3, 5% Tier 4 (average base $2.06); platforms 25% each (average factor 0.925); category factor 1.6, fixed, since all ten V1 categories use it; leagues 60% Bronze at a typical 10,000-view median, 25% Silver at 28,750, 15% Gold at 100,000, to work out an average of $112.83 taken from the fund per gig (assumption; expected pay per gig averages $88.26, the creator fee including the $2.00 running cost is $90.26, and $90.26 divided by 0.8 is $112.83). The platform's cut is taken at 20% throughout and is net margin, since the running cost is paid from the pool. Full targets are on Rollout plan.

Revenue here is 20% of deposits only: there is no subscription of any kind, so nothing is added to or subtracted from the $40,000 and $225,700 figures on this basis, and how much of expected earnings creators go on to earn does not move them either, since the platform's cut is taken at deposit either way. Some brands crossing $10,000 of deposits in a month get 5% of that month's deposits added to their creator pool; that changes the creator pool, not this revenue basis (assumption). Some deposits may belong to managed campaigns at the 35% platform cut instead of 20%; the brief gives no split between pay-as-you-go and managed-campaign gigs for these two dates, so this projection keeps the cut at a flat 20% throughout rather than inventing that split (assumption).

The June basis is deposits and the December basis is completed gigs, and they do not line up exactly: $200,000 of deposits at $112.83 per gig would fund about 1,773 gigs ($200,000 divided by $112.83), below the 2,000 completed gigs targeted for the same month. With V1's narrow category mix, all ten V1 categories priced at the 1.6 software factor rather than the broader, lower average used before V1 was decided, the take from the fund per gig is higher, so the same $200,000 buys fewer gigs than the June target calls for. This more likely reflects the same 100 paying brands depositing a little more than $200,000 that month, or fewer optional add-ons and bonuses drawn per gig than assumed, rather than a real shortfall in what the fund can buy (assumption). Dogfood campaigns are excluded throughout, because the platform takes its own 20% cut on them.

6. Costs

The largest cost is not on this page's cash lines at all: it is the founder's own time. Distribution Club is one person through 2027 (brief section 9), doing product, engineering, review, ops and sales without pay. A chartered accountant and a lawyer are paid per job, not on payroll. There is no team and there are no salaries in this model. Other fixed costs run about $2,500 a month (tools, paid APIs, accounting, app stores) (assumption). The Scenarios page uses this cost base for its projections: a solo founder, $2,500 a month of fixed costs, and no dogfood spend budgeted in (the dogfood programme on the Dogfooding page is not part of this cost base; if the founder runs it, it is funded from profit). The shape is what matters: fixed costs are the same each month whatever the volume, while review, processing, payouts and storage grow with volume. Since 5 September 2026, review, collection, payout transfer and storage are recovered inside the flat $2.00 running cost folded into what each gig takes from the fund, paid from the creator pool rather than charged against the platform's 20% cut; they are listed below as real cost drivers even though none of them is subtracted from revenue any more. Contribution margin from campaigns has to grow past the fixed costs below, and past what the founder's time is worth, for the business to be worth running full time.

Tax on the cut: Distribution Club is an Indian entity, so GST at 18% applies to the platform's fee only, its own 20% cut taken at deposit, and not to the creator's fee or the whole fund, shown on the invoice as the law requires. Margin charged to brands outside India is an export of services and can be zero-rated under a Letter of Undertaking, to be confirmed by the chartered accountant. As the platform's own e-commerce operator duty, TCS (tax collected at source) at 1% is collected on the net value of creators' supplies made through the platform, filed monthly, and passed on; this is a collection on the creator's supply, not a further tax on the platform's 20% cut. This whole shape, GST on the platform's 20% cut only, depends on the marketplace model described on Payments: Distribution Club is never the seller of the underlying gig, so it is never taxed as if it were. There is no US sales tax; that would only apply if a US entity were created later.

The dogfood budget is not part of the Scenarios cost base (brief section 35): running it is a choice the founder makes from profit, not a fixed cost. A dogfood campaign is a campaign funded by Distribution Club itself, run through the normal product, used to test the product and recruit creators. Most of the budget goes to creators as gig fees. The table below shows what running it in full would cost, if the founder chooses to.

As monthly figures: $2,000 per week is $8,667 per month ($2,000 times 52 weeks divided by 12), about $8,700; $5,000 per week is $21,667, about $21,700. The brief sets no dogfood budget for Phase 4. The target is under $15 per eligible creator sign-up from dogfood by the end of Phase 2; see Dogfooding. The per-unit costs above are the brief's estimates and should be verified against the current price list of each service chosen. None of this dogfood spend is included in the Scenarios page's cost base; if the founder runs the programme as described, it comes out of profit, not fixed costs.

7. Why a 20% cut of every deposit, taken at deposit

The two closest alternatives are on Competitors; only brief facts are used here.

The pay-per-view bounty model (Content Rewards, a Whop product). A brand posts a bounty with a budget and a rate per 1,000 views. Anyone can join with no application. Creators post to their own accounts and submit the link, the brand approves each post, and the creator is paid per 1,000 views, commonly about $1. The brand does all the reviewing, there is no commitment or deadline from the creator, and posting is not verified at the moment of posting.

The monthly subscription model (SideShift). Brands pay $299, $499 or $999 per month for job listings, invites and a cap on creators hired; the creator budget is separate. Creators are paid within 3 business days after the brand approves the work. The brand does the hiring and coordination.

Distribution Club charges no monthly fee, at MVP or ever, and no per-view rate: brands see expected posts and expected views for their budget (the league mix is internal), with the platform's 20% cut already taken from the deposit that funds it. Why that shape:

• Creators are paid only for performance, and the platform's cut is fixed and known upfront. The platform takes its 20% cut once, when the fund lands, so a brand always knows exactly what the platform charges before a single gig runs. What varies is how much of the 80% creator pool creators go on to earn: if a post never goes live, its expected earnings never leave the pool; only the floor, 20% of expected earnings, is guaranteed once the posted link is verified, and the rest follows views, so it stays in the pool for more gigs if a post underperforms. A subscription charges whether or not a campaign runs; a bounty charges per view but leaves the brand to police every post.
• Creators pay nothing. A creator's CPM is fully theirs and ranking is never sold, the same promise a ride or delivery app makes to the person doing the work. It keeps the rate card honest: a Bronze 1 creator's $5.00 CPM, or a Diamond creator's $5.50 CPM in the same US developers, Reels, AI tools and SaaS conditions, is fully theirs, with nothing skimmed off before it reaches the wallet.
• The platform's incentive shifts from per-gig revenue to repeat deposits. Since the platform's 20% cut is earned the moment a brand funds a campaign, one gig's outcome does not change that campaign's revenue. What it changes is whether the brand's creator pool is spent well: filling slots fast, reviewing fairly and matching creators whose real views land near their expected earnings are what let a brand see gigs completed and views delivered, so it funds another campaign. Growth in revenue comes from more deposits, not from squeezing more revenue out of one campaign's views.

The trade in this shape is that the platform earns the same $1,200 on the example campaign whether creators earn 50% or 95% of expected earnings; what that share changes is how many creators get paid close to what they expected and how much of the creator pool stays unspent as the brand's fund balance, which is why section 9 looks at that share and at unspent pool.

8. Levers that improve the model

Each lever raises revenue per campaign or lowers cost per campaign. All are already in the product plan.

• Auto-approval (Phase 3). Review cost is fixed at $1.00 per gig by founder decision, bundled inside the $2.00 running cost folded into what each gig takes from the fund, so auto-approval does not lower this cost; what it changes is the founder's own time, since a submission that passes the automated check and the spot check needs no manual read.
• Volume pricing (Phase 3). A brand that deposits $10,000 or more in a calendar month gets 5% of that month's deposits added to its creator pool automatically, with no fee to unlock it. This adds to the creator pool rather than cutting the platform's 20% cut on those deposits, in exchange for a bigger, more predictable deposit (assumption).
• Managed campaigns (Phase 4). The platform keeps 35% of the deposit instead of 20%, with no monthly fee: ops writes the brief, picks the leagues and runs the campaign. Unlike volume pricing, this raises the platform's revenue per deposit, because ops time is being sold along with the gig (assumption).
• Instant payout fee (Phase 4). 2% paid by creators who choose it. On $3,290.00 paid out instantly that is $65.80, part of which covers the payments partner's own instant payout charge (assumption).
• Higher earn-rate through better league matching. How much of expected earnings creators actually earn no longer changes the platform's revenue, which is fixed at $1,200 on the $6,000 campaign regardless. What it changes is how much of the $4,800 creator pool reaches creators rather than sitting as fund balance, after the $140.00 running cost of the 70 gigs is paid from the same pool: earning 60% of expected earnings pays creators $2,820.00 and leaves $1,840.00 in the pool; earning 85% pays creators $3,995.00 and leaves $665.00. Better matching between a creator's league and their real audience means more creators paid close to what they expected and brands seeing fuller campaigns, which is what brings brands back to deposit again, even though it does not change this campaign's revenue.
• Diamond custom deals (Phase 4). Custom rates, above the standard Diamond CPM, for creators with 1,000,000 or more median views (assumption): larger expected earnings per gig for roughly the same review cost.
• Agencies (Phase 4). Agency accounts and an API bring many brands through one relationship, lowering sales cost per brand.

9. Risks to the model

These are the risks that hit revenue or cost directly. The full list, with mitigations, is on Challenges.

9.1 Expected earnings earned below 60%

The beta criterion is that gigs earn 60% of expected earnings on average inside 14 days (assumption: the CPM equivalent of the old fixed-release criterion). Revenue no longer depends on the share of expected earnings earned: the platform's 20% cut is taken once, at deposit, so it does not move with how much creators earn. What that share changes is how much of the $4,800 creator pool creators are paid, and how much stays in the brand's pool as fund balance, once the $237.50 running cost of the 109 gigs is paid from the same pool:

Because the platform's cut is fixed at deposit and running costs come out of the pool, not out of revenue, this campaign's contribution margin does not move with how much of expected earnings creators go on to earn: it stays $1,200, 100% of revenue, whether that share is 50% or 85%. A low share still hurts the business: only the floor, 20% of expected earnings, is guaranteed once the posted link is verified, so if a league's CPM is mismatched to what creators there actually get in views, creators stop accepting, slots go unfilled, brands see fewer posts and views for their money, ask for more of their pool back, and are less likely to fund another campaign, which is what actually drives future revenue. The defence is the floor itself (a guaranteed 20% for the work of posting) and refreshing views once a day, so pay tracks views closely and a creator sees money arrive as the post performs.

9.2 Other risks

• Running cost of $2.00 per gig not holding. Review, inside that $2.00 at a flat $1.00 per gig by founder decision, assumes the automated check and a spot check carry most submissions. If automated checks cannot be trusted and every submission needs a full human read again, it is the founder's own time that runs short, not the $2.00 running cost itself. Humans on every submission also cannot hold the 24-hour review SLA past a few thousand gigs a month. A running-cost sensitivity replaces the old review-cost one: at $1.00 or $3.00 running cost instead of $2.00, the take from the fund per gig, and revenue per gig on the Scenarios page, moves by about $0.25 either way (assumption).
• No refunds. Unspent creator pool stays with the brand as fund balance for its next campaign; deposits are never returned (founder decision, 19 September 2026). Since the card fee's share of the running cost is only charged on a gig that actually happens, money that was never allocated to a gig carries no such cost and is spent in full on later gigs (assumption). Until it is spent it is a liability to the brand, never revenue.
• Fraud losses. The beta target is under 2% of released money reversed or flagged. On $3,995.00 released (the 85% scenario above), 2% is $79.90, which is about 7% of the $1,200 revenue.
• Platform API pricing changes. X already charges monthly. If Meta, Google or TikTok start charging for publishing or reading views, or cut free quotas, a per-gig cost appears that the brief does not budget for.
• Brands preferring pay-per-view. A bounty at about $1 per 1,000 views is cheaper to start. A Bronze 1 gig's effective CPM to the brand depends on the creator's own median views, since the $2.00 running cost is flat per gig: at the 5,000-view eligibility floor it is $6.75 per 1,000 views for a US developers audience on Reels in the AI tools and SaaS category ($5.00 of that is the creator's own CPM from the pool, $0.40 is the running cost's share, and $1.35 corresponds to the platform's cut, already taken at deposit, shown to the brand as one number); that gig's expected earnings are $25.00, taking $33.75 from the fund, and since the maximum payout is expected earnings, that is also the most the gig can ever take from the fund, unless the brand has switched on the optional bonus, which raises the ceiling to $49.38. What the brand gets for the difference is a committed post with a deadline, platform review against the checklist, a checked live post, and the same gig on four platforms. If brands do not value those, they will choose the bounty.
• Dogfood distortion. If dogfood spend runs past the 30% guardrail on any creator's gigs, or is counted in brand-funded volume, the numbers on this page look better than the business is.