The New Creator Gig Economy
Once AI takes over all the jobs, we’ll probably all be making UGC videos to sell stuff to each other.
Dystopian jokes aside, there’s a wave of new UGC gig platforms popping up, and way more brands and apps are hiring creators and clippers to make content for them.
In this edition, we’re focusing on one in particular, along with their TikTok-first strategy for getting new users. So besides looking at these creator gigs and marketplace apps, we’ll break down what their growth play looks like — just like we always do here.
Making Noises
Early stage VC-backed Noise is a pay-per-view platform for creators and individuals to earn cash by posting content on TikTok and Reels.
It is built by a former consumer gaming app founder, who pivoted the company into Noise.
First launched a few months ago, they now have over 12,500 reviews and steadily rank around #70 in their category.
On the creator side of their marketplace, they have been running, since July, over 50 accounts posting nearly every day.
Although success is still limited, some accounts got over 4.4M views and likely drove a good amount of traffic and users. They do have a handful of accounts with a video at over 100K views.
From running a similar account, we know that although views are lower, those tend to convert highly if the right audience is targeted and captured. So in their case, it is really about monopolizing the vertical and spreading as much content as possible, knowing that they do have some, sometimes fierce, competition, although in different segments.
This strategy works at scale if the economics align. The price per video must be as low as possible here, although in their case it might be subsidized by venture cash.
It is a rather interesting approach, and counter-positioning from others has been to target at-home, rural American moms. If you look closely, most of the accounts are “hackermom” or “hustlermomlife” variations.
Let’s take a look at the top 4 accounts:
They are mostly using long text hooks over the mom cooking, with a baby or in other situations.
That is a typical volume-based hook, where the hook is extremely direct, mentions the app name and money earned, and thus will hit at a lower rate, but when it hits it drives a large surge of traffic.
The advantage of running such a large network is the ability to do comment hacking, getting other network participants to comment on videos:
The hook does mention “pay for groceries.” They do share hooks across the network, which shows that iteration is somewhat controlled:
Best hook across the network is:
Find all the accounts we have collected here: https://app.shortimize.com/c/2b10AYyV3QlnSQ
I have not used the app, but the positioning is interesting. I wonder how they will leverage this older audience to post more interesting, higher-quality content.
The new age of creator marketplaces
We have covered apps like Home from College, running accounts directly on platforms to recruit creators at scale.
They are running seven accounts, like the one below, with hooks targeting a very different audience:
“me because my parents think i’m not applying for jobs because im not getting hired but little do they know i’ve applied to every single job on the market (yes, even fish walking) and i genuinely cannot get an interview to save my life”
They are chasing a much more valuable crowd of Gen Z and high school or college students. But it is competitive there.
There are other marketplaces like SideShift, which ran creators once without great success, although they got some great hooks that did legit views over multiple accounts but did not mention the app.
They started again now with some more, albeit limited, success. One video got just short of a million views:
Note that they are now moving more into positioning the brand name straight in the text hook, as it is a higher-conversion way to drive app users.
The clippers
PayPer is one clipping creator platform that is also trying to grow straight from posting on TikTok, leveraging their network. They’re doing okay-ish. They’re still trying to scale their user acquisition there.
There is a long tail of clipping platforms like Virality, Whop, and PoolHall, just to name a few. We have not used any, so that is not to be taken as a recommendation.
Clipping can be tough for app growth. It might be good when you have a great faceless or meme format and want the ability to quickly scale it.
Who’s winning here
No one. And everyone.
The market for UGC and consumer or brand growth is expanding at extreme rates. There are players on every side, from self-serve marketplaces of students and clippers to done-for-you services that run operations and strategy for you.
We believe that as it becomes a larger marketing channel, more players will come and it will segment itself. There is no winner-take-all here, as the pie will be too big and there will be no other moat than performance or – less defensible – two-sided marketplace network effect.
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Just a heads-up: we’re not connected to any of the platforms mentioned above, and we haven’t tested or endorsed any of them.
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