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Paid creators $100 for friends' numbers
Paying for referrals
Each month, the team messaged its creators to ask whether any friends were looking for brand deals. When a friend signed, the creator who referred them got paid around $100. An extra $100 or $200 for sending a friend's number was great for some smaller creators.
Skipping the agent
The numbers were personal, so Cal AI could call the influencer directly. Even when a creator had management, the team sometimes got around the manager and made the deal with the creator.
Why agents matter
Agents made that worth doing. An agent sees many offers from other companies paying more and can reject a deal as terrible before the creator ever sees it. At the start, a lot of creators had no agent. Now creators getting 5,000 or 10,000 views on every video already have one, and signing them costs far more.
Why do referral bonuses work?
A referral lets a company reach people through someone they already trust, at a cost paid only when it succeeds. PayPal's early growth leaned on that idea, paying new users and referrers cash bonuses around 2000. Dropbox later offered extra storage in place of cash in its referral program. Both tied the reward to a completed sign-up.
How do talent agents get paid?
In the entertainment business, agents traditionally take a percentage of the deals they negotiate. Their income therefore rises with the size of the offers they accept. That gives them a reason to reject low offers before the client sees them. Ten percent has been the long-standing rate for many Hollywood agents.
Why do friends' recommendations beat ads?
A friend has no obvious sales motive, so the message is weighed differently from an ad. It also arrives with context about the person giving it, which makes it easier to judge. Nielsen's Global Trust in Advertising surveys have repeatedly found that people trust recommendations from people they know above other forms of advertising.
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