Guide 05 · out now
Getting On
The Shortlist
66 pages. Where to look for brands, by the kind of brand you want. Which categories pay and which only ever gift. Who to ask for by name, and how to find that person on LinkedIn. And what a real offer looks like next to a scam.
Prices are in US dollars. If you’re in the EU or the UK, VAT is added at checkout at your country’s rate, and it’s collected and paid by the checkout, not by me.
A brand would send me a brief. Five creators, this budget, this category, by Friday.
Have a look inside
Four pages, out of sixty-six.
These are actual pages.
Click any page to read it properly.
What’s in it
Ten sections. No background, no theory.
Where to look
Fashion, beauty, fitness and wellness, tech, food and drink, home.
The four routes
None of them costs anything and none of them needs a follower count. The ads already in your feed. What your peers posted last month. Anything new. And the comments under a bigger brand.
Can they pay?
Three signals that a brand has money right now. And the one signal everybody uses that means nothing.
Who to ask for
The job titles that hold the budget at a small, medium and large brand. Two more titles that look right and aren’t. Plus the two-line email that turns a shared inbox into a name.
The email, and the scams
How to work out an address without buying a tool. The one rule that protects your sending.
The pitch and the list
The email itself, the single follow-up, and a page to write your list on.
How you use it
Built to be done, not read.
It ends with you having actually pitched somebody.
Exercises with ruled space to write in, across 55 lines.
Email templates written out in full, including the follow-up.
Fillable fields if you type into it instead of printing it.
The bit that makes it different
I ran an agency. I never charged a creator a penny.
There are two pages in here about agencies and databases that charge creators to be represented.
No signing fee. No monthly fee. No fee to be put forward for a campaign. I never took one, and nobody worth signing with does either.
Agencies get paid one of two ways. The brand pays us out of the campaign budget. Or we take a commission on a deal we actually got you, after you’ve been paid, out of money we brought in. There isn’t a third way.
So you only ever need one question. Which direction is the money moving?
The uncomfortable part
Some of these aren’t even illegal. There are real companies taking real money for a listing on a database no brand ever searches.
You won’t get that money back, and there’s nobody to complain to. So the rule isn’t “avoid the scams”. Never pay to be represented.
Honestly
Who it’s for, and who it isn’t.
Get it if
- You don’t know where to start looking for brands
- You keep emailing info@ and hearing nothing
- Somebody’s offered to represent you for a fee and you’re not sure about it
Skip it if
- You already have a full pipeline and a rate card
- You want what to say once they reply. That’s the Brand Partnership Guide
- You want me to find the brands for you. That’s the $99 audit
- You want a long, thorough reference
The list
Be first when the next one lands.
The list hears about every new workbook before it goes public, and gets the launch price.
One email a week. Unsubscribe from any of them.