Pep AI · B2C · peptide and GLP-1 tracker
Pay new creators ~$200 for a trial month; sign the winners for 3 months
Core of the creator program behind most revenue
What they did
What happened
In their words
Cedric Roberge - I speedran an ai app to $100k in 70 days.
… had a ton of downloads. And he didn't even make a single post. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So basically, they're promoting like their own paid communities because the peptide space is sort of, there's just a lot of information out there. And you don't really know who to trust. So then people are probably paying $10, $20, $50 a month to get access to like curated expert information from people that are like have experience with the peptides.
And then they're probably doing call to actions on their other videos saying, hey, go to my link in bio. And then you're getting all that residual just clicks from all the people that are following their other CTAs. That's really, that's really good. So how do you do deal structures with influencers like these? You know, it's different for everyone. A lot of times we'll start with like a trial month where we'll be like one post a week for the month, four posts in total, four story posts. And then, of course, always link in bio. And then it kind of goes off of their views and engagement. So we don't really care about how many followers they have.
It's all about engagement. If they were getting like 5,000 views per video, we'd probably give them $200 or something. You know, it's not a lot from there. It's like if they perform really well that month based off all their signups and stuff, we'll increase it. Or if it's not going as well, you know, it was okay. We'll keep it the same or decrease it. But usually we start off with a one month deal. And then after that, if it goes very well, we instantly go into like a three month deal. It really varies for everyone. But some of our like bigger creators, it can be up to $4,000 a month. We even just signed this month, which I can't say who it is yet, but we signed a really, really big fitness influencer.
I've only worked with one app before and he was their number one channel for marketing. So we just signed him and we had to pay over $20,000. So he's going to be posting starting next month, but this is going to be huge. And so it's kind of a risk we're taking, but we've been taking risks since we started. You know, first month we probably spent anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 in marketing just the first month. That was a pretty good month, …
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More from this episode
- Sign nearly every creator in your niche before running paid ads$30K then $50K revenue in months 1-2; ~$100K in 70 days
- Pay creators a one-time 20% of each sale on top of their feeCreators post more than agreed and put in more effort
- Give every creator a tracked link and discount codeShows who to keep and whose rates to cut
- Make creators keep your app link in their bio for the whole deal'A ton of downloads' in two weeks with no posts
- Send creators past winning videos as ideas, then let them make anythingFounder says creators love working with them; content performs
- Post educational slideshows that end with the app as the tracking toolBeat talking-head videos, per the guest; no numbers
- Run top creator videos as Meta ads and raise the budget every week~$2.50 per download; profitable by the guest's math
- Give creators scripts copied from competitors' ads and run them as adsLost money; replaced by organic winners
- Test a cluttered AI-made image ad listing ~8 featuresBest ad at under $2 per download, beating video
- Run peptide creator videos as TikTok adsTikTok kept rejecting them as medical advice; moved to Meta
- Give under-25s a short onboarding and older users a longer oneLonger flow works well for 25+, per founder; no numbers
- Show 'try it free' slides before a paywall with $40/year and $10/month plans
- Build the most-requested features, like a dose calculator, after legal reviewCalculator 'drove a ton of traffic'
- Remove or simplify features nobody uses
- Collect feedback everywhere, including creator calls, and ship 2-3 updates a week
- Tell creators about each new feature as a reason to postCreators all want to post about new features
- DM 1,000+ creators a week with one message, then get them on a callSigns many creators every week; delegating made it scale
- Skip creators with no real comments or few niche videos to avoid bought viewsEarly signings with bought views brought zero signups
- Review each new creator's first video before it goes liveA few redos; most videos were fine
- Give creators lifetime access and text them almost daily instead of view bonusesCreators do more than the contract, including TikTok Lives
- Repost as many creator videos as possible on the brand account
- Raise a small angel check for marketing; pay developers in equityFunded the creator program from launch
- Enter a trending niche where existing apps do no marketingFounder claims the app helped start the peptide-tracker trend
Tags: tiktok, instagram, creator-comp, retainer, trial-month, stories