“Everybody wants me to play for free. The exposure will be good for you, they tell me,” he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.

How much of your creative work should you give away for free?

It makes me seriously angry that many people don’t realise, probably don’t even care, that creatives need to pay bills too. Yet those same people consume our work every single hour.

#paycreatives #creativework #creatives

https://neenamaiya.substack.com/p/lets-talk-about-something-dirty

‘Contact’ Wants to Help Creatives Navigate the Business World

Contact -- an online platform that originally put models at the forefront and gives them tools to manage their bookings -- has been backed by actress Maisie Williams and has recently raised $1.9 million of funding to scale its business further.

Traditionally, modeling talent is managed by agencies that take a commission fee, however, as with other types of creatives, professionals have embraced using social media for its ease of access for both the talents and those looking to hire. First launched in October 2020, the platform offered models space to register their profiles, take bookings, and manage some aspects of their work, and for hiring brands, companies, and individuals to find the right talent by cutting out the middle man.

Although this opens up doors for many who otherwise wouldn't be discovered or able to put their names in front of brands, businesses, and photographers, it is only one of the steps involved in managing a talent's career. Social media doesn't provide tangible business tools to smoothly run and process bookings, which is where online platform Contact comes in, as reported by Tech Crunch.

In a similar manner that F*ck You, Pay Me platform gives the power back to influencers and content creators by facilitating a space where users can evaluate and compare brand deals and sponsorships to ensure fair compensation, Content aims to give models a safe, honest, and reliable space to work.

The company's initial vision was to address the modeling world, but now it has expanded its vision to become a scalable back-end solution and plans on adding other creative verticals, such as photographers, stylists, videographers, and others. The focus is also on the distribution of work to enable creatives to monetize their work, not just wait for brands to approach them.

"There's no middleman or funny business. Just diverse, creative talent and transparent fees," reads the company's ethos. "We get you from shortlist to shoot, faster than ever."

Now, the company has raised a $1.9 million in it slatest seed round of funding led by Founders Fund among other funding initiatives and is supported by actress Maisie Williams -- famous for her role in Game of Thrones -- who has joined the team as Creative Strategist and Advisor.

The company's co-founder and CEO Reuben Selby explains that the idea for Contact emerged from his own personal experiences as he tried to break into the creative industry as a model, photographer, and creative director, only to be faced with unreliable methods to get paid for his talent while agencies benefitted by taking cuts from both sides.

Instead, the platform does not take any money from creators but charges the booking companies a 20-percent fee on transactions. So far, Contact has onboarded almost 600 creatives and served over 1,400 clients, such as Depop, Farfetch, Nike, Vivienne Westwood, and Vogue.

As Content is a startup in its early days, it remains to be seen how much they challenge the current issues faced in the creative industry and how their future plans materialize.

#culture #industry #news #businesstools #hire #hiring #modeling #modelingagency #paycreatives #platform #startup

‘F*ck You, Pay Me’ is a Glassdoor-Like Platform That Reveals Scummy Brands

The new platform F*ck You, Pay Me (FYPM) has set out on a mission to improve the disparity between online brands and influencers to help content creators negotiate better pay or to avoid certain brands completely.

Set up by Lindsey Lee Lugrin, a social media businesswoman and equity analyst, and Isha Mehra, a former Facebook data scientist, FYPM aims to give influencers and content creators more power, transparency, and information when negotiating sponsored content, reports Taylor Lorenz for _The New York Times. _

Not dissimilar to Glassdoor -- a platform where former and current employees can review the companies they work for -- FYPM allows registered users to anonymously share information on how much they got paid to work with brands in order to help others use it as a tool to gauge and compare proposals received by companies.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by f*** you pay me (@fypm.vip)

For Lugrin, the initiative grew out of her personal experiences in the past when she was offered an opportunity to appear in a Marc by Marc Jacobs ad campaign, where she was paid $1,000. Although thrilled at the time, she soon realized that she had undervalued herself after seeing her images appear on billboards and ads across the internet.

As most influencers don't have an agent and operate as a one-man band when it comes to marketing, PR, securing deals, and delivering the content, negotiations often happen "through a messy mix of direct messages and emails and there are no standard rates of pay, either. This has led to brands having the upper hand," writes The New York Times.

The disparity doesn't just rear its ugly head through brands, both small and well-established ones, undervaluing creators and influencers by offering low rates of pay, Lugrin also noticed the differences in what was offered to male and female creators. According to research last year by Klear, an influencer marketing platform, the average is $476 and $348 per post for men and women, respectively.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by f*** you pay me (@fypm.vip)

However, FYPM is not the first company to help level out the playing field for social media professionals. Others include Collabstr, which acts as a directory of available influencers and their set rates of pay, while some social media accounts -- such as, We Don't Work For Free and Influencer Pay Gap -- share anonymous posts by influencers who have been burned by bad brand deals or have dealt with exploitative brands.

Although FYPM is still being tested and fundraising is ongoing, once registered, users can already filter brand deals by social media platform, location, niche, and brand category. The New York Times reports that so far, around 1,500 creators have shared more than 2,000 reviews of 1,300 brands on the platform.

While designed with influencers in mind, many photographers who suddenly find themselves negotiating with a large company for a commercial campaign often both praise their luck and curse their lack of knowledge. Photography often feels like a black box when it comes to commercial and advertising work, and many photographers greatly undervalue themselves in this context. FYPM could be the answer to at least providing some level of aid for photographers of all levels to negotiate with brands more intelligently, rather than going always in blind.

#culture #industry #news #fuckyoupayme #fypm #influencer #influencermarketing #influencers #instagraminfluencer #marketing #paycreatives #travelinfluencer