Creator tiers and commission structures that do not fall apart

Every program has tiers. Most are set by follower count on the day the creator joined and never move. Six months later the 'Flagship' creator has stopped posting and the nano who drives a third of revenue is still on the bottom rung. Here is a structure that fixes itself.

Tier on what they did, not who they are

Rank creators by trailing 90-day attributed revenue, with an on-time delivery floor. Follower count decides who you recruit. Revenue decides who you reward. Recalculate on the first of every month, automatically, and tell each creator where they stand and what moves them up.

Tier 3: on the roster. Base commission, product seeding.
Tier 2: $5,000+ trailing 90-day revenue, 80% on-time. Higher commission, early product access.
Tier 1: $20,000+ trailing 90-day revenue, 85% on-time. Top commission, whitelisting priority, seeding of every new SKU, a monthly call.

The commission ladder

Affiliate only: 10 to 20% of attributed sales, no fee. Works for nano and for creators who already buy the product.
Fee plus commission: a flat fee per post and 5 to 10% on sales. The standard for micro and up; the fee gets the post made, the commission gets it made well.
Retainer: a monthly fee for a set number of posts plus commission. For Tier 1 only, with a 90-day term and a performance review at renewal.

Perks that cost less than money

First access to new products, two weeks before launch.
A named contact who answers within a day.
Whitelisting, which pays the creator and outperforms your own ads.
Their content on your channels, credited.
A real renewal conversation, not an auto-renew clause.

You will need overrides

A creator who had a slow quarter because you were out of stock should not drop a tier. A creator you are recruiting from a competitor may start at Tier 1. Every tier system needs a manual override with a written reason and an expiry date, so the exception explains itself when someone asks in six months. Company OS does this: tiers work themselves out monthly, overrides carry a note and a date, and the creator sees the same ladder you do.

See tiers that work themselves out

Company OS ranks the roster on trailing 90-day revenue, applies the ladder you set, and shows every override with its reason. Click around the demo, no sign-up.

See tiers that work themselves out

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Written by Austin Bailey, RostrLab. Numbers are the same formula as the calculators on this site and inside Creator OS and Company OS. Not legal advice; for a contract that matters, have a lawyer read it too.