Quitting her job with a salary of 150,000 USD/year, the 31-year-old girl started a business with an application for content creators

Christen Nino De Guzman is the founder of Clara for Creators, a community that empowers content creators through transparency, brand review, and discoverability. She is a content creator, speaker, and technology consultant.

Christen says she enjoys working with content creators. At 31, she’s helped launch content creation programs at some of the biggest tech companies like Instagram and Pinterest. However, she has always been annoyed by the inequality in remuneration for content creators. So earlier this year, she decided to quit her $150,000 annual job at TikTok to build a Glassdoor-like app, called Clara for Creators.

Since its launch, the app has helped over 7,000 influencers and content creators share and compare compensation and exchange their experiences working with brands. .

Searching for a niche market

Today, there are very few barriers to becoming a content creator. For example, with the popularity of TikTok, you don’t need to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars in equipment, anyone can try to build their own audience and monetize their videos. Recorded by smartphone.

As a result, more and more creators are entering this business. What is the problem here? That is, they have little knowledge of how much money they could or should have earned.

Deals with content creators are complicated. The amount you are paid depends on the type of content you are promoting for the brand and on which platform. Other factors include the size of the community that follows you, engagement metrics, and success rates with your previous partners.

To complicate matters, brands often ask influencers how much they expect to receive, instead of offering people a basic and negotiable salary.

Many content creators are not aware of their true worth, especially women and people of color. Christen said she once witnessed a man being paid 10 times what a female content creator was paid in the same campaign, just because he demanded a higher fee. Latino content creators are also paid at most half what a white influencer gets.

Mission-based startup

Christen says a big problem content creators face is that they can’t search on Google for the usual fee for marketing a product or service on the platform they’re using. It was that issue, along with her own interest in the content creators Christen has worked with, that inspired her to build Clara.

I want content creators to be able to share their reviews of brands they’ve worked with, along with how much they’re paid for different content based on how many followers they have.

In March 2021, Christen sent a series of messages to potential investors on LinkedIn. In July, after weeks of nonstop outreach with more than 10 convincing presentations to investors, she received a small investment from an individual investor. She used that money to contract with a team of developers, the same people she worked with, to build and test the app.

Clara finally launched on iOS operating system in January of this year. Within a month, without spending any money on ads, Clara attracted more than 7,000 content creators, including TikTok’s biggest celebrities like Devon Rodriguez and Nancy Bullard, to sign up to share. their remuneration.

Clara for Creators interface. Photo: NVCC.

On January 14, Christen decided to quit her job at TikTok as a program manager for content creators to devote full time to building Clara. Her income dropped significantly because she quit her job at TikTok, but Christen still manages to make a living thanks to her salary as a content creator and savings.

Currently, she is focusing on raising capital to develop the platform. At the same time, this girl also propagates about equal pay and the importance of information sources like Clara. On her TikTok account, she posts career advice and other resources to her 348,000 followers.

Career advice

There are many things you can do to make yourself and others in this industry more equitable.

When discussing pay with co-workers, it’s important to know what your rights are. Some companies may steer you away from that by saying it’s against company policy to discuss salary. However, under the US National Labor Relations Act, many employees have the right to talk about their pay with co-workers.

Christen said she worked six full-time jobs and her fear kept her from talking about money. But the first time she openly talked about her salary with a colleague, she discovered she was being underpaid. She then used that experience to look for new jobs where she was paid more fairly.

Conversations about this content are not uncomfortable at all, especially when you have established a safe and comfortable relationship with your co-workers. Instead of asking, “How much do you make?”, take a “help each other” approach. According to the founder of Clara for Creators, you might be surprised at how many people are willing to talk about their salary.

Remember that while you have the right to discuss your pay, your employer may still have legal policies against doing so and using devices, like laptops, at work. , to get the conversation between you. So protect yourself by understanding your company’s policy and always do your research before accepting a contract. Sites like Glassdoor, Levels, and Clara are free sources of this data.

You can also search sites like TikTok and YouTube for deeper insights into remuneration. There are innovators who, like me, have always been open about salaries at previous companies.

When asked about salary at previous employer or expected salary, you can say: “Based on my experience, skills and industry standards, I would like to be paid at X”. If you’re a content creator, mention the size of your follower community or engagement metrics to wow your partners.

And always remember to start with a high number. At most, the partner will say no.

According to Thach Lam