by Brendan Gahan

Late last year, New Media Rockstars made waves with their coverage of an exchange Maker Studios had with a potential advertiser, the advertiser had $30k for influencer brand deals and Maker responded stating they didn’t do deals under $200k.

Many creators were outraged by this information, and a reporter for NMR went so far as to say that this should be a “red flag to creators currently signed with Maker because it essentially says that a lot of money is being left on the table strictly because the MCN doesn’t want to deal with helping mid-level and smaller channels — creators who could really benefit from ANY added income — which is the majority of their client base.”

It’s expected that some are frustrated with MCNs – thirty thousand dollars is likely more than most creators in Maker’s network make off their channels in a given year, and I agree that creators need to be cautious.

Staffing Brand Integrations

First and foremost, brand deals take time to do well – I’ve been doing these since 2006 and have overseen thousands. They take A LOT of time when major brands, and multiple ad agencies are involved due to the layers of approvals. Before you get to the actual work there tends to be rounds of contract negotiations, and then, once a project is awarded there’s client and talent management, rounds of feedback, project managers, and so on. People’s time adds up very quickly, and with attorneys charging $350+ an hour expenses add up.

We’re in a service industry, and that requires man hours because how well you treat your clients is just as important as the quality of work you do. Although, digital advertising is booming, we haven’t been able to automate a lot of things – this is still largely a relationship based business.

So, an account manager at an MCN is vital for providing support and resources to the channels – but he or she has only so many hours in the day. How many clients can they ‘deal’ with while maintaining a reasonable level of service 1 5 10 20 It varies, but there’s certainly diminishing returns at some point. Clients don’t feel special if they’re being rushed, their phone calls never get returned, or you hardly know their name.

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