GTM Sauce

Practitioner pattern · Drew Levin (SideShift)

Pay creators $800/month for 60 videos, plus view bonuses capped by views

CPMs fall from $5-8 in month 1 to ~$0.80-0.90 at $100K+/month

Workedcreator-ops

What they did

Top programs: $800/month for 60 unique videos (2/day, each cross-posted to 4 platforms = 8 posts/day) for creators with 1-2 prior campaigns; new creators $200-300 or CPM-only for the same package. View bonuses are tiered but not stacked (hit 1M -> the $1,000 tier replaces the $100 tier at 100K). Cap the last bonus at a view count (e.g. $500-800 at 1M views), not a time window, so creators feel they're winning; views after the cap are 'free views', which matter a lot above $30-50K/month spend. Don't outprice the market.

What happened

Programs spending >$100K/month reach all-in CPMs of ~$0.80-0.90; typical path $5-8 month 1, sub $2-3 by month 3, then sub $1.

In their words

Drew Levin - I Studied 1,000,000 UGC Ads, This Is What Will Grow Your App

Play from 43:23

… historically there's always smart creators but like if you had to like if there was like a bell curve it wouldn't be great they're always coming from more of like a position of like I want this as soon as possible so what are the most common retainer plus bonus structures is it like per video and then you know you mentioned like the bonus for the highest performing platform is it like if you hit 100k you get this chunk amount and if you hit like

43:23

500k you get this next level um and then retainer is like anywhere between 10 to 20 30 dollars per video is that about right it's changing people are always looking for payment for for example four months ago it was the 400 base two dollar cpm it was like the biggest alpha ever it's like this is like so amazing everyone was just ripping like creators are incentivized but the best you see programs on side shift are paying 800 a month for 60 videos plus not stacked view bonuses meaning stacked is like if a creator hits 100k and then a million you're paying out 100 plus a thousand so

43:55

like that'd be 1100 bucks but where it's like if they hit a million the 100k bonus goes away and then it's just a thousand bucks we built this feature in sideshift where like one of our like the top program on sideshift was using it you're trying to get as many free views as possible without screwing the creator so a free view is what happens after a video gets a million views call it and then their view window ends or whatever it is right and then once their view window ends any views after that point are free the more free views you get the better your program like that like we have you can see programs on side shift the biggest ones who are purely optimizing for

44:28

free views because at like at anything above 30 to 50k a month to spend you feel those free views like you feel them in a way of huge money and i'm sure for those founders it feels really good you cap it at 1 million views um for the cpm bonuses um you pay out whatever it is 500 800 for that and then you just you don't even need to time cap it right you just say like at 1 000 or at sorry out 1 million views that's when you get the last bonus and …

… for one of our customers i can't say the customer's name because the situation wasn't great but kid you not this guy got like one one account one instagram account like 180 million views in like two weeks like he had like a 45 million view video but his like monthly like thing his monthly cpm was capped and kid you not like 4k he was owned like if there was no cap he would have made like 75 000 in a month okay and he made like 4k he was so upset

45:32

he's like marching into the startup's office like the startup like didn't want to pay it but like they didn't technically have to pay it but they lost the creator there's ways where the payment structure could have saved them when you're running a big ugc program payment structure is like the alpha it is like the way you get ahead you said four months ago 800 a month for 60 videos that's two videos per day but that's just two videos per day no they're cross posted on four platforms sorry so it's so essentially it's like eight videos per day uh eight posts per day i guess and like two unique videos per day these are for creators that have done at least one to

46:04

two campaigns in the past for a new creator a lot of times we'll start with like just a cpm or like call like two to three hundred dollars for that same package and then for the cpns you're targeting like under it seems like under a dollar in most cases cpm all the top brands running ugc have a sub 90 cent cpm um if you're but i want to like really like emphasize like it takes time to get there like it it takes time it takes iteration if you …

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Tags: creator-comp, retainer, view-bonus, non-stacked-bonus, free-views, view-cap