CreatorSource recognizes the challenges social media creators face when it comes to monetizing their audience and content. Many times, creators don’t even know where to begin to find brands for sponsorship deals, and offers they do receive provide little to no pay for the hard work they put into their content. Ashley LeMieux co-founded CreatorSourceto fix this problem by offering early-stage creators a chance to reclaim their careers and begin to monetize their skills doing the thing that they love — creating content and inspiring their audience.
“One of our first users was a stay-at-home mom of three,” states LeMieux. “Her problem wasn’t that she wasn’t a great content creator or hard worker, it’s that she didn’t know how to earn money doing it.” Within two weeks on the CreatorSource platform, this mom earned enough through brand deals to pay for two months of her family’s groceries.
LeMieux built CreatorSource after noticing a gap in the influencer market. “$16.4B was spent on influencer marketing in 2022 and the vast majority of it went to the top influencers who have a talent agent, have been around long enough to learn from mistakes, or who have made it onto someone’s short list,” states LeMieux. “There are still 18-20 million early-stage creators with thousands of followers who already have an audience and create great content, but have never been given the insider knowledge or tools to monetize.”
It’s creators like this stay-at-home mom who CreatorSource wishes to support, and the platform is designed to help creators grow their income from the ground up. “Our program builds each creator a custom game plan with tools and strategies to create consistent income through brand deals,” mentions LeMieux. “We help them optimize their social channels, create a media kit, price themselves with our rate calculator, and learn from training videos how to improve as a creator and negotiator.” The company also offers templates and a contact database to proactively reach out to the brands creators want to work with. All this knowledge currently exists – CreatorSource is now just removing the gatekeepers and making it available to the masses.
“We want to democratize creator monetization,” says LeMieux. “And we plan to do so by helping creators learn to price and pitch themselves properly, as well as negotiate brand deals with confidence.” Long-term, CreatorSource aims to help creators expand their income streams beyond brand deals, and even offer brands CreatorSource universities for their creator and ambassador programs.
“We want to act as an educator and resource for creators,” LeMieux says. She wantsCreatorSource to be a place of openness and education when it comes to the tricks and tips behind maximizing creator monetization. The company leans on LeMieux’s experience as a creator for over ten years, during which she built up the knowledge, experience, and relationships to launch this project.
“During my time in the industry, I noticed many boot camps and creator gurus out there who pitch themselves as the one-stop-shop for all answers,” LeMieux shares. “Instead, we asked some of the best creators, platform executives, and talent agents to each provide short training videos that help users learn and improve.” In this way, the platform is truly built for the creator community by the creator community.
“We launch in late April,” mentions LeMieux. CreatorSource is excited to help more creators make a living doing what they love and offer the creator community all the support they need in one easy-to-use platform.
