Hey Creator,

Let’s talk analytics.

There are a few through-lines in this newsletter that I’ve been emphasizing and unpacking since edition #1, which I feel are foundational to building a resilient creator business: platform risk, revenue architecture, ownership of rights/IP, and performance analytics. No matter where you are in your monetization journey, today is the day to tackle these pillars to strengthen and protect your growth. Don’t start from 0; I’ve made frameworks, templates and tools to facilitate all of it (most available here or here).

This week’s newsletter takes a recurring headline from the creator economy and points directly to why one of these pillars is no longer up for debate for creators who take their businesses seriously.

Brands are moving away (and fast) from flat-fee sponsorship and toward performance-tied compensation (53% of brand partnership in 2026 vs 23% two years ago). Here we go…

The flat-fee sponsorship is going away. Why? Brands are increasingly paying for outcomes instead of exposure, and this move is repricing the entire creator-brand relationship at a scale that is easy to misunderstand (or get ahead of) if you’re only looking at your last brand partnership. This is only a problem if you don’t know and/or understand your own analytics and are unable to clearly communicate them to brands as part of your overall positioning.

Most creators enter into sponsorship conversations with their follower count and not much else in the way of data 🦗(←that’s a cricket btw). The brand team across the table have a dashboard, a media buyer, channel metrics, ROI expectations, and a track record of what similar deals with similar creators produced elsewhere.

From the start, this conversation isn’t going to go well for that creator. The information asymmetry is wild (even before we get into disclosure scrutiny*). Brands have their own metrics they have studied and are under pressure to prove both that a deal performed and that it was disclosed properly. Creators who show up without their own numbers are at risk of 1. wasting a brand’s time, and 2. getting taken for a ride.

*Gymshark is facing a class action over years of undisclosed influencer relationships. The complaint alleges that disclosures are buried in captions, hidden below the fold or the “see more” click or completely undisclosed altogether. I did a short video on disclosure obligations → worth a watch because the FTC is not messing around.

Always come with your own numbers. Following every campaign, run your own performance analytics in order to demonstrate to brands that you know your stuff, you know how to make their lives easier, you can demonstrate the value of your partnership, and (in the worst case) you can counter their figures if they are incorrect. And this way you have a starting point for your next sponsorship discussion. This signals that the industry is growing up and professionalizing. Producing your own performance report goes a long way in securing long-term partnership opportunities, which is, of course, great for the creator looking to smooth out income volatility.

Creators who are “winning” in this new performance-based compensation world aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest audiences, but rather the ones who are equipped with their performance numbers, can effectively put them on the table, and then negotiate a contract around them.

This is a two-step play that consists of a vitamin (an action to integrate into every day that makes you stronger and healthier over time) and a pain killer (a one-shot remedy to an identifiable ailment).

The first part is getting into the habit of always running a campaign report on every sponsored deal the moment it concludes (not just when a brand happens to ask you for one). Capture the KPIs you agreed to, the actual result against it, the measurement source it came from, and the disclosure you used. Do the same way every time (here, I made a campaign report template for you as a starter). This becomes even more interesting for deals that no one is watching but over-performed in the dark! This step is the vitamin because you just gotta do it - it’s paperwork, yes, but it helps build your provable and justifiable portfolio deal by deal whether or not you ever need it for a specific negotiation.

Now onto part two… at some point, you will need that stack of campaign reports for a specific negotiation! When you come to the proverbial negotiating table, ask for three things in writing (before you sign anything with a performance component): 1. the exact KPIs, defined as a specific countable number or ratio, conversions, sales app installs, not a vague word like “engagement” or “impact” or “visibility”. 2. The measurement source of truth, meaning whose dashboard counts and whether you get to see the raw data or just a summary afterwards. We all know that different tool dashboards and counters rarely match up exactly. Account for that upfront. And 3. payment tiers with clear earning for each tier, not just a single number that only pays out if you clear the top tier.

This is when having that stack of campaign reports makes those three asks completely reasonable rather than adversarial, because you have a track record and pattern of working in a professional and well-tracked way with other brands. You’re showing results that have already happened.

Go pull your last three sponsored deals and run the campaign report (even the campaigns that nobody asked about). Then you immediately have a file to bring with you to your next brand conversation (in addition to your rate card!).

Forward this to a creator who's about to go into a brand negotiation with nothing but a follower count.

Amber
CreatorOps Weekly. Systems, not willpower.

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