vertical-creator

name	vertical-creator
description	Domain-knowledge primer for the marketing & creator vertical (creators, newsletter writers, podcasters, course sellers) so architect/pm don't spec naively against incumbents (Substack ~10%, Patreon 8–12%, Kajabi $149+, beehiiv, Buffer/Hootsuite/Later). Supplies the vocabulary, the non-obvious take-rate/red-ocean rules, the entities a real scheduler/analytics/monetization/sponsorship product must model, and the per-product wedge — with sponsorship-crm flagged as the white-space wedge. Applied by architect/pm during spec authoring for any of the four products in this vertical — content-scheduler, analytics, monetization, sponsorship-crm.
when_to_use	Apply when: - architect is writing ARCH-*.md for a marketing/creator product (content-scheduler, analytics, monetization, sponsorship-crm) - pm is decomposing one of these into tasks and needs to model the domain entities (Sponsor, Deal, MediaKit, ScheduledPost, ChannelMetric) correctly - any spec touches creator monetization, take-rate, brand deals, or cross-channel publishing Do NOT apply for other verticals (home services, restaurants, etc.) — the economics here (platform take-rate as the competitive lever, sponsorship white-space) are specific.
effort	low
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Grep, Glob
paths	["docs/architecture/**","docs/plans/**","docs/design/**"]

Vertical: marketing & creator — undercut the take-rate, own the white space

Creators monetize an audience across channels they don't control. Their economics are dominated by take-rate (the platform's cut) and by brand sponsorships that most creators still manage in spreadsheets. Two of the four products here (scheduling, analytics) sit in red oceans owned by entrenched incumbents; one (sponsorship-crm) sits in genuine white space. Spec against that asymmetry — don't lead with the commodity.

1. Domain vocabulary

• CPM (cost per mille) — ad/sponsor price per 1,000 impressions. The supply side.
• RPM (revenue per mille) — revenue the creator actually earns per 1,000 views/opens, net of platform cut. RPM < CPM; the gap is fees and unfilled inventory.
• Sponsorship / brand deal — a brand pays a creator to promote a product. The unit of white-space revenue here.
• Fee model — how a deal pays: flat fee (fixed $ per deliverable), affiliate (% of referred sales), or CPA (cost-per-action — $ per signup/install). A single deal can mix them (flat + affiliate).
• Deliverables — the concrete asset(s) owed: posts, stories, dedicated email, video integration (a segment inside a longer video), etc. Each has a channel and a due date.
• Usage rights — whether/how long the brand may reuse the creator's content (e.g. "whitelisting" to run as paid ads). Priced separately; easy to give away by accident.
• Media kit — the creator's sales one-pager: audience size, demographics, engagement, past brands.
• Rate card — the creator's published prices per deliverable type. The negotiation anchor.
• Audience demographics — geo, age, gender split — what a brand buys against.
• Engagement rate — interactions ÷ reach/followers. The quality signal brands price on.
• Take rate (platform cut) — the % a monetization platform skims (Substack ~10%, Patreon 8–12%). The single biggest competitive lever in this vertical.
• MRR — monthly recurring revenue from memberships/subscriptions; the membership KPI.
• UTM — campaign tracking params on a link; the raw input to attribution.
• Cross-channel attribution — crediting a conversion/revenue back to the right channel and post across platforms with different IDs. Hard, and the analytics moat.