Creator operations

The step-by-step playbook for running the creator program: how we source creators, pitch them, agree and sign terms, set up tracking, go live, pay, measure, and renew. influencers is the strategy and the rules (who the audience should be, what a placement says, the three earning paths). This page sequences that into an operating routine with owners, tools, and timing. Where the two disagree, the influencers page and the live terms win.

Where this model comes from

PostHog runs a creator program that works, and we are standing ours up by learning from it. Their public model, as we understand it:

• No affiliate program. They pay creators a flat, negotiated sponsorship fee per placement.
• Fees are benchmarked against CPM using an internal pricing sheet.
• They negotiate hard. Opening asks often run 2 to 3 times higher than where a deal lands.
• They line up placements about a month before a launch, in a dedicated channel.
• They give creators a kit: product context, messaging, demo access, visuals, timelines, and someone technical who can answer questions.
• They ask the audience to "mention us on signup" as a backstop to link tracking.
• They measure CPM, unique sessions from the link, and signups, and pay invoices net 30.

We copy the operating habits (the lead time, the kit, the negotiation posture, the measurement, net 30). We differ in one structural way: PostHog has no affiliate rail, and we have one already (the Intempt Collective), so a creator can earn on revenue and recipes as well as on a placement fee. We are early. PostHog has years of placements behind its pricing sheet; we have none yet, and this playbook is how we start building ours.

Who does what

The three earning paths, and which paper covers each

A creator can be on all three at once. Taking a placement fee does not waive revenue share or recipe royalty. Agencies are a separate contract (Agency Terms, Run track) and are not covered here.

Step 1: Source and qualify

Work the list warmest first. Stop at the first tier that gives you enough candidates for the launch you are planning.

We run no paid influencer-discovery tool. Sourcing is the applicant pool plus manual search.

Qualify every candidate against the bar in influencers:

• Audience fit first: founders and heads of growth doing GTM themselves, operators in the outbound, lifecycle, performance, analytics, and data seats, and technical builders at small teams. Reject audiences in the anti-persona list in who-we-build-for (pure low-level coding, career prep, business-guru content).
• Engaged audience over raw size: real comments from named operators at ICP-fit companies, and the creator replying in their own threads.
• Growing channel. For YouTube, check the trend on Social Blade.
• A rough floor of about 5k views per YouTube video. No ceiling.
• Prefer creators who are users first.

Record each candidate in the marketing spend sheet with the channel, the audience evidence, the date you checked it, and a yes or no. Every number in that sheet carries its source and date.

Step 2: First contact and pitch

Timing: tie the pitch to a launch, product push, or pricing change roughly a month out. Tell the team as soon as dates exist so creator slots can be lined up against them. A placement that rides something in flight converts better and is easier to measure.

The first message is short and specific:

1. Why this creator: one sentence naming something they made and why their audience matches ours.
2. What we are asking: a placement tied to a named launch and date, or a standing relationship if they are a Collective applicant.
3. What they get: the earning paths that apply (see Step 3), the free plan with no time limit to record against, a seeded demo project, and a person who answers technical questions fast.
4. The next step: a short call, or a reply with their rates and examples of past sponsored reads.

Ask for examples of other paid reads so you can judge how a sponsor lands in their voice.

Send the kit with the pitch or immediately after a yes. Today the kit is:

• Product context: what shipped and why it matters to their audience.
• Messaging from our positioning and the launch brief: Agentic GTM, you set the strategy and agents run the plays, and the proof pillars that fit this creator.
• Demo access: the free plan and a seeded demo project.
• The launch timeline and any embargo.
• A named technical contact (product, or the founder).

Give creators the frame, not a script. The nomenclature is Intempt and Blu Agent, never "GrowthOS" or "Intempt AI", and nothing handed to a creator contains an em-dash. A branded visuals and clip library does not exist yet (see the gaps table).

Step 3: Agree terms and sign

Decide which paths apply to this creator, then use the matching signing route. Do not offer a flat fee by default. The standing program is the Share track, so the default ask is that the creator carries a ?via link and earns on who they bring. Use a sponsorship order when the rev-share clearly will not fit, for example a creator who will not take a deal that pays only on conversions.

Collective Terms route: the creator joins, accepts the terms, and picks a payout method in their Intempt profile. There is nothing for Intempt to counter-sign. Link them to /affiliate-terms in the pitch so they read the same text that governs them.

Sponsorship order route: each placement gets an order, a short written brief or statement of work both parties accept, under the Creator Sponsorship Agreement. The order states:

• Slot: pre-roll, mid-roll, end-roll, or full integration. An integration where the creator uses Intempt on screen is priced above a read.
• Deliverable: format, channel, length, and go-live date.
• Fee: a flat fee or a CPM. Unset today. There is no price list or approved band. Set it per placement from comparable reads and the value of the slot.
• Link and code assigned, and the first-three-lines placement rule.
• Feedback window for Intempt's factual and brand-safety review.
• Usage license term and kill fee. These are open items in the draft, so fill them from whatever legal has settled at the time.
• Payment: net 30 from the creator's invoice.

Negotiation posture, borrowed from PostHog: expect the first number to be high, do not treat it as fixed, and price off CPM and comparable reads. Record what you paid and what it returned so a pricing reference can be built from real placements. Confirm payment terms with payments before any order goes out.

Gate: no sponsorship order is signed until legal has reviewed the Sponsorship Agreement. It is a draft today.

Step 4: Set up tracking

Do this before the creator records, not after.

1. Assign or confirm the creator's ?via=<handle> link. Reuse one handle for all of a creator's content so attribution stays in one place.
2. Build the placement link: intempt.com/?via=<handle> with utm_source set to the creator and utm_campaign set to the campaign. Vary utm_campaign per video or post so they can be told apart. Add &code=LAUNCH100 only if the creator should hand their audience the public Launch offer, and only codes listed on /offers work.
3. Attribution rules to give the creator: 90-day first-click cookie when the visitor accepts marketing cookies, one creator per referred customer, self-referrals excluded.
4. Ask the creator to tell their audience to mention them at signup, as a backstop when the link is not clicked.
5. Disclosure: the creator must show an FTC disclosure next to the link. For a Collective-only creator: "I get a commission for purchases made through this link." For a paid placement: "#ad" or "#sponsored", or an equivalent spoken disclosure.
6. Per-creator codes: do not issue one by default. A vanity code leaks to deal sites and pays commission on sales the creator did not drive. Issue one only to a vetted creator, prefer a low-value or single-use code, and only after creator attribution ships (see the gaps table). Until then a code credits no one. Only ?via attributes to a creator.

Step 5: Go-live and QA

The marketing owner checks each placement on the day it goes live:

If a check fails, ask the creator to fix it the same day and note the date. Click the live link once and confirm the visit is attributed before you leave it.

Ask the creator for the placement's own metrics (views, and clicks where the platform shows them) within 7 days of go-live. The draft agreement puts this in the order.

Step 6: Invoice and pay

There are two separate money flows. Do not mix them.

Affiliate steps: the creator picks a payout method in their Intempt profile. Marketing does nothing per payout except answer questions. The payout job is not fully automated, so early payouts may be run by hand. Confirm with payments before telling a creator a date.

Sponsorship steps:

1. Marketing owner confirms the placement passed QA and the creator sent metrics.
2. The creator sends an invoice that references the order.
3. Marketing owner approves it and forwards it to payments.
4. Payments pays within 30 days of the creator sending it.

A sponsorship fee is separate from, and additional to, anything the creator earns on the Collective. Never net one against the other.

Step 7: Measure

For every placement, record:

• Views or impressions and clicks, from the creator's own report and the platform. Source and date beside each.
• Sessions from the ?via link and signups attributed to it. Pull these from Intempt's own analytics.
• Signups where the person named the creator at signup.
• For paid placements, cost per thousand views: fee divided by views, in thousands.
• A note on anything qualitative that justified the spend: new audience reached, clips we can reuse, or a stronger relationship.

Dogfood point: the ?via handle is stored on the customer record at signup, so creator-attributed signups can be queried in Intempt's own analytics. There is no dashboard that joins view counts to signups. The per-creator view is the ?via breakdown in analytics plus the marketing spend sheet.

Rules for the numbers: put a source and a pull date beside every figure. Never carry a number forward from an earlier report without re-pulling it. Do not claim a strongest format or channel until the data supports it. Compare creators only against our own placements, not against external benchmarks.

Feed the result into the pricing reference. After enough placements, write the observed CPM range and cost per signup into influencers. Until then, say "unset".

Step 8: Renew and grow

• Within a week of the metrics landing, send the creator a short debrief: what the link drove, what worked, what you would change.
• Reply quickly, give real feedback, and stay in touch between campaigns.
• Offer the next placement against the next launch, at least a month ahead.
• Creators who performed and are users: offer a per-creator code once creator attribution ships and they are vetted, and invite them to publish a recipe so the Build track applies.
• Ask for two referrals to similar creators.
• Creators who underperformed on a fit basis: decline the next placement without drama. The agreement runs per placement and either side can pass.
• Prefer recurring collaborations across launches over one-off reads.

Operational today vs still a gap

Related: influencers · who-we-build-for · campaigns-and-coupons · startup-programs.