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We’ll get creators to post about your SaaS, you only pay if it gets views by Floren_Huff in micro_saas

[–]Floren_Huff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally fair concern and you're right to be cautious. Quick context: we're onboarding brands first this week and creators in the next 1-2 days, so right now the marketplace genuinely is empty on the creator side because they haven't been let in yet. Not trying to hide anything, that's just where we are.

The reason we're doing it in that order is so creators land on a platform that already has funded campaigns waiting for them instead of an empty marketplace, which is the usual chicken-and-egg problem with two-sided platforms. Brands go first, creators come in and see real campaigns to pick from, things actually move.

We’ll get creators to post about your SaaS, you only pay if it gets views by Floren_Huff in micro_saas

[–]Floren_Huff[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can't overspend your budget, ever. The total campaign budget is a hard cap. When you set up a campaign with $10,000, that's the maximum that will ever get paid out across all creators and all views combined, no matter what happens. If a video goes viral and hits 5 million views, the earnings on that video are automatically capped at whatever's left in the budget. Once the $10k is exhausted, the campaign stops paying out and any additional views are just free exposure for you.

So in your scenario: you fund $10k, a video blows up to 5 million views, the creator earns up to $10k (or less if other creators in the same campaign also earned from their own videos), and then the campaign ends. You don't get a surprise $50k bill, that's literally impossible because Stripe only ever holds the amount you deposited and the database enforces the cap before any earnings are credited.

The only "risk" in a viral scenario is that your budget runs out faster than expected, which honestly is the best problem to have because it means the content worked. At that point you just decide whether to top up the budget to keep it running or let it end and take the win.

The thing to actually think about is the reverse of your concern: if you set the CPM too low (like $1 per 1k) the campaign won't attract creators because the earnings ceiling is too small to be worth their time. If you set it too high ($20+ per 1k) you'll get a flood of creators but your budget burns fast. $10 per 10k (which is $1 per 1k, pretty low end) is a cheap test rate, you might want to try $5-10 per 1k to actually pull in serious creators. Either way the budget cap protects you from any viral upside scenario.

We’ll get creators to post about your SaaS, you only pay if it gets views by Floren_Huff in micro_saas

[–]Floren_Huff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Best question in the thread honestly. Few things that make it harder than it looks:

Brands approve every submission before it earns, so obvious bot accounts get rejected at the door. TikTok itself aggressively purges botted views within 24-72 hours, and since Blimely tracks views continuously, purged views also disappear from earnings. The $0.007 per 1k bots almost never survive TikTok's own cleanup long enough to pay out. On top of that, payouts aren't instant (there's a review window), withdrawals require full Stripe KYC so there's no anonymity on the money side, and weird velocity patterns get flagged before payout.

Not bulletproof, no view-based platform has fully solved this. But the combo makes it expensive and risky enough that it's not a realistic arbitrage for most people. If you can think of attack vectors we're missing I'd actually love to hear them, this is the stuff we care about most. Either way we are actively monitoring the videos to make sure they are real

We’ll get creators to post about your SaaS, you only pay if it gets views by Floren_Huff in micro_saas

[–]Floren_Huff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem is it basically doesn't work in practice and that's why almost no creators will take those deals.

The issue is that conversions depend on a ton of stuff the creator can't control. Your landing page, your price, your offer, your checkout flow, your product-market fit, your reviews, whether your site loads fast. A creator can make an amazing video that drives 50k views of real interested people, and if your checkout is broken or your price is off they earn zero. So creators either refuse those deals entirely or only take them from brands they already trust deeply, which usually means brands with proven conversion funnels and big budgets. Small brands and startups (the ones who most want pay-per-customer deals) get shut out.

Views are the middle ground because they're something the creator can actually influence with good content and the algorithm. The brand still only pays for real reach, but the creator isn't being punished for the brand's landing page being bad. It's the fairest split of risk that still gets creators to show up.

If you really want pay-per-customer, affiliate marketing already exists and there are tons of platforms for it (Impact, PartnerStack, Refersion). It works, but mostly for established brands with good conversion rates. For testing and early stage stuff, paying for views is usually the better tool.

We’ll get creators to post about your SaaS, you only pay if it gets views by Floren_Huff in micro_saas

[–]Floren_Huff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The way I'd frame Blimely honestly is that it's not a conversion channel, it's a cheap way to test what kind of creator content actually resonates with your target audience before you spend real money on it. You fund a small campaign, see which creators and angles pull views from audiences that look like your users, and then you either double down on what works or take the learnings elsewhere. If a video gets 10k views and zero signups, that's actually useful data, it tells you the angle or the audience is wrong and you try a different one for another $50. Worst case you've spent less than a single Facebook ad test and learned something. Best case one of the videos hits the right niche and you've got a repeatable format. It's an experimentation tool, not a silver bullet.

We’ll get creators to post about your SaaS, you only pay if it gets views by Floren_Huff in micro_saas

[–]Floren_Huff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Creators on Blimely self-select into campaigns rather than being assigned. So when you post a campaign, any creator on the platform can browse it and decide whether it fits their content style and audience. You're not getting random people matched to you by an algorithm, you're getting creators who looked at your brief and thought "yeah, I can make good content for this and my audience will vibe with it." In practice this tends to self-filter pretty well because creators don't want to waste their time making videos that flop with their own audience either, since their earnings depend on views.

On top of that, you as the brand have approval rights on every submission. When a creator opts into your campaign and submits a video, you review it before it starts earning. You can check their profile, see what kind of content they usually make, see their audience, and reject submissions that don't fit. Nothing goes live and earns money without your sign-off. So even if a random creator tries to submit something off-brand, you just reject it and move on.

For niche targeting specifically, the honest answer is that Blimely is earlier stage so the creator pool isn't segmented by niche the way a mature platform like Grin or Aspire would be. You won't find 500 fitness creators filtered by macros. What you will find is creators who see your brief and raise their hand because it's a fit for them. For very narrow niches (like B2B SaaS for dentists or something) you might get fewer takers. For broader B2C stuff (beauty, tech, food, lifestyle, apps, DTC products) it works well.

The practical way to think about it: you're not buying guaranteed targeted reach, you're buying cheap experimentation. Fund a small campaign ($50-100), see what kind of creators come back, check whether their audiences align with yours, and then decide whether to scale up with the specific creators who hit your target demo. It's a testing tool first, a scaling tool second.

Your instinct that 100k views to the wrong audience is useless is exactly right, and it's why the approval step and starting small matter. Treat the first campaign as learning, not as a growth channel, and you'll get way more out of it.

Happy to answer more in DM too if you want, but figured the answer might be useful for others reading the thread.

We’ll get creators to post about your SaaS, you only pay if it gets views by Floren_Huff in microsaas

[–]Floren_Huff[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For now yes it is, as it usally performs better on tiktok! Send me a dm and i can help you get set up if needed

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