How Creators Drive $260k/Month In Revenue For Our Brand

Getting deep into the weeds on this one. Like I promised, I’m doing an intense deep dive in every newsletter from here on out. No holds barred. Exactly what’s going on in the (now $280k/month) DTC business, and how you can apply it in yours.

Here’s what we’re getting into:

• Update on the DTC brand

• How to find insanely inexpensive creators

• How to structure creator deals to get results

• The step-by-step training system that led to $280k/month in sales

Strap in and let’s go.

What’s Working?

We’ve expanded and diversified our traffic sources a bit, and it’s going beautifully.

Quick recap: I helped scale the brand, HolyCow Tallow, from $20k/month to $240k/month in about 2.5 months, with 90% of revenue coming through organic content from an army of creators I hired.

Update: It’s still crushing. Here are a couple quick wins we’ve gotten.

These videos combined resulted in over $320k in sales. The total amount we paid out to the creators… $4800. In view bonuses at least.

Retainers were an additional $900 total. So all in, $5700. Insanely cheap.

So, I’m gonna teach you how I vetted, hired, and trained these creators to cook for us.

But, as a quick update, we’ve diversified our traffic sources and started running Meta ads. Pretty crazy to think we got to $280k/month without running Meta Ads. We’ve also got the core Klaviyo flows ripping, and some Amazon ads as well.

Now to the important part.

How To Find Great Creators (Insanely Cheap)

Most brand owners know there is some value in the creator economy, they hear people talk about it all the time. Seems like it’s what everyone is talking about. Yet, everyone gets the idea of the creator economy so brutally wrong that it kills a piece of my soul each time I hear the two words in the same sentence.

Part of the creator economy is paying influencers for posts. Which is fine, if you’ve got a huge budget and are willing to bet on the “brand awareness” paying off in the long term (because you’re probably not gonna get a positive direct ROI until you’ve tested a ton of expensive ones). Direct ROI means something like giving them a link and then expecting profit on sales from the link.

Long, tedious, and boring. Especially when you get into the weeds with management companies (who suck to negotiate with when you need to be executing with speed).

Skip that step if you’re in the early stages or have a tight budget. I’ll come back to that.

The real reason why people misunderstand the creator economy is because…

Everyone in America wants to be a creator for a living.

Not really kidding at all about that. Check this out.

It’s not even limited to kids AT ALL. In fact, we got two out of the three creators from those images above, by DMing them and saying we wanted to partner with them. They weren’t “professional” creators at all. Less than 1k followers each.

Here’s how I found them, and how you can replicate it:

I searched the product on TikTok. Not the brand name, just “beef tallow”. A lot of videos were from competitors, but there were also others just from everyday people, sharing their success with using beef tallow. Priscilla (3rd picture), had a slideshow of her skin before and after using beef tallow. It got like 5k likes. I clicked on her page, saw she had some videos where she talked to the camera, and she seemed relatively comfortable.

That was all I needed to see. I sent her a DM, got her email, and offered her a $300/month retainer + view bonuses. Then I started training her.

That $300/month? Includes 30 posts! An insane steal when you consider the fact that most UGC creators charge $150 for a single video. Those are the ones with no following too, that’s just for a video, not a post.

As long as you offer a performance incentive (view bonuses), you can get creators for insanely cheap, and they only get paid big money when they make you big money.

But, here’s the kicker. How do you know if they’re gonna be any good?

The training.

How To Train Creators To Crush For Your Brand (The Simplest Way I Know How)

Couple of key points:

1. Take inspo from content in the same category that worked (in our case, skincare, and more specifically, natural skincare).

2. Build a knowledge base.

The first point is pretty simple and obvious. Gather the video links and put them in a Google doc.

The second point is the key part. For all of the videos you gathered, you’re going to do a written script breakdown of each one. Download the script of the video using https://script.tokaudit.io/

Get the general outline down. It should look something like this:

Remember: Some of these creators know NOTHING about copywriting because, well, they’re not really “creators” yet. So you need to be precise and clear with your instructions.

I then go even further to break down the script. In the document below, I break down a script and outline the exact sections they need. I hold creators to this format pretty tightly, so that it’s easy to replicate and see repeated success. This document will be the most valuable info you’ll get from today’s newsletter: Click here to get it.

Alright, the Celtics are about to play the Nuggets and I gotta tune in. But, next month is going to be an INSANE one for the newsletter. I’m going to dive deep into the content format, why it works, why it’s so easy to replicate, and how you can tweak it to fit your product exactly.

Oh, and I almost forgot. We’re rolling out a TikTok shop strategy that will print, and the best part? We don’t have to pay a single retainer.

If you liked this newsletter, and have any specific questions you need answered, hit the reply button and I’ll happily answer.