A creator program built to reach half a million people a month and turn that reach into four hundred paying subscribers, with the content you own becoming the ads you run.
Here is what your funnel does today, from the numbers you walked me through. Twelve to fifteen thousand impressions a day through Meta. A hundred to a hundred and fifty downloads. About twenty paid subscriptions. Roughly eleven dollars to acquire a subscriber worth about thirty-five.
That is a real business, and it is well run. It is also a business where every subscriber arrives through a single auction you do not control. Meta gets more expensive as you spend more into it, because that is how the auction is built. The eleven-dollar number is what the first three thousand dollars buys. It is not what the tenth three thousand will.
The second channel is the whole point. A creator program does not just add subscribers alongside Meta. It produces three things Meta cannot produce on its own: reach you are not bidding against anyone for, social proof the algorithm reads as authority, and a library of rights-cleared video that becomes your next round of ads at no additional creative cost.
We run one channel properly before touching a second. Ninety days building a base of consistent creators and securing rights to everything that performs, then that proven content goes into Meta, where you are no longer guessing at creative.
Tracking live in week one. Roughly a hundred approaches a week, briefs and scripts written, first cohort posting on commission. We learn which creators, hooks and formats actually convert for a Catholic men's app, with almost nothing at risk, because creators are paid on results.
Every winning video is already rights-cleared. It goes into Meta as paid creative and, where the creator agrees, runs whitelisted from her own handle, which typically outperforms brand-account creative on cold traffic.
Winners move onto standing arrangements. We test two or three larger creators against a set budget, open the Protestant audience, and negotiate the long-term partnerships worth locking in early.
Commission funds the testing. You keep the rights. The winners become paid creative. The loop repeats.
You asked for case studies. Here is the most recent one, with the client anonymised at their request: a direct-to-consumer brand in a crowded retail category, no faith angle, no built-in community. Harder starting conditions than yours.
Three months. Eighteen creators, all micro-tier, all recruited cold and all paid on commission at ten to twenty percent, with no upfront fees and no flat posting rates. Every order attributed by unique discount code or tracked link and then reconciled line by line against the store of record before a single invoice was raised.
3.69x is after creator commissions, after the management fee, after payout and processing fees. It is not gross attributed revenue divided by media spend. It is revenue divided by the total invoice. The 5.29x is what the creator commission alone returned.
Four creators out of eighteen produced roughly three quarters of the revenue, and there was no way to know in advance which four. That concentration is the pattern in every program that works, and it is precisely why the first ninety days are a volume game and why the creators are paid on commission. You are buying the search, cheaply, and then you keep the ones who win.
This is the arithmetic I owed you. It runs on your funnel, not on industry averages, and every conversion assumption is set at or below what your own Meta traffic already does.
Your traffic converts at about one percent from impression to download, and about sixteen percent from download to paid. I model creator traffic at the same download rate and half the subscription rate, eight percent. Half a million impressions gives five thousand downloads and four hundred subscriptions. If creator traffic converts at parity instead, which it often does because it arrives pre-trusted, the same reach returns closer to eight hundred.
| Month | Consistent creators | Posts | Impressions | Downloads | New paid subs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1tracking + first cohort | 12 | 20 | 100k | 1,000 | 80 |
| Month 2first winners visible | 22 | 42 | 210k | 2,100 | 168 |
| Month 3rights secured, ads begin | 30 | 60 | 300k | 3,000 | 240 |
| Month 4large-creator test | 38 | 76 | 380k | 3,800 | 304 |
| Month 5Protestant audience opens | 45 | 92 | 460k | 4,600 | 368 |
| Month 6target run-rate | 50 | 100 | 500k | 5,000 | 400 |
Assumes ~5,000 views per post across the micro tier (10k–100k followers), two posts a month per consistent creator, ~100 outreach a week at a ~10% conversion to first post. Roughly 1,560 new paid subscriptions across the six months, exiting at a 400-a-month run rate.
Creators compound. A creator recruited in month one is still posting in month five, so each month's reach is the sum of everyone who came before plus the new cohort. The curve is slow, then steep. That shape is the reason for a six-month term rather than a three-month trial.
I will not leave this in your sprint queue. Every creator gets a unique code and a tracked link from day one, which works before your developers touch anything. We reconcile against daily conversion deltas the same way the reference program was verified, and I will spec the deeper attribution build for your team at no cost.
Every number on this page is computed live from the sliders. Nothing is hard-coded. Set the inputs wherever you actually believe them and see what comes out.
| Month | Creators | Posts | Impressions | Downloads | New subs | Gross | Total cost | Net |
|---|
The roster compounds: each month carries forward the prior roster less churn, plus the new cohort. Vessels takes 10% of attributed revenue in every scenario. Processing is passed through at cost. "Net" is what Saint Steps keeps after creator commission, the Vessels share, processing and the retainer.
You ran the break-even live and landed near four hundred subscriptions. Right instinct, close to the right number. Here is the model underneath it, including the part that is not entirely in my favour.
Assumes the six-month plan at $49.99 with a 20% creator code, so $39.99 is collected, and a combined 32.99% variable cost: 20% creator commission at the top of the range, 10% to Vessels, 2.99% processing. Every one of those is paid out of revenue that did not exist before.
| Monthly subs | Retainer per sub | Commission per sub | Total cost per sub | Return on total cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $29.99 | $13.19 | $43.18 | 0.93x |
| 200 | $15.00 | $13.19 | $28.19 | 1.42x |
| 300 | $10.00 | $13.19 | $23.19 | 1.72x |
| 400 — target | $7.50 | $13.19 | $20.69 | 1.93x |
| 600 | $5.00 | $13.19 | $18.19 | 2.20x |
The program pays for itself at about 112 subscriptions a month, expected inside month two. Across the six months the model returns roughly 1.6x on total cost including the build months, exiting at 1.93x and still improving.
And the honest part: at four hundred a month, a blended $20.69 does not beat an $11 Meta CAC today. It is not supposed to. Three things close that gap: the retainer is fixed, so it halves every time volume doubles; Meta's number rises as you spend into it while a percentage of revenue does not; and every rights-cleared winner lowers the CAC of the Meta channel you already run.
$2,999 monthly retainer. Sourcing, contracts, briefs, tracking, management.
10–20% commission on attributed revenue, paid net-30 on results.
10% of attributed revenue, earned only on revenue we drive.
Three changes to the paywall before a single creator posts. None of them cost you anything, and Chris confirmed the paywalls can run side by side while we measure.
The six-month plan at $39.99 is already close to half your mix and the one you want to grow. Move the list price to $49.99 and hand every creator a 20% code. The customer still pays $39.99, exactly what they pay today, so nothing is lost. What you gain is a creator with something to give instead of something to ask, a reason for a viewer to act now, and every full-price buyer paying ten dollars more.
Creators promote the six-month package and the money-back guarantee together. Risk reversal is what converts a cold viewer who has never heard of the app, and it is the piece most creator briefs leave out.
| Per subscription | In-app | Web checkout |
|---|---|---|
| Collected at $49.99 less the 20% code | $39.99 | $39.99 |
| Apple 15% / card processing 2.99% | −$6.00 | −$1.20 |
| Creator commission at 20% | −$8.00 | −$8.00 |
| Vessels at 10% | −$4.00 | −$4.00 |
| Net to Saint Steps | $21.99 | $26.79 |
$4.80 a subscriber. At four hundred a month that is $1,920, roughly two thirds of the retainer recovered by moving a checkout.
I do not yet know how Upfluence attributes against in-app subscription events, and I would rather build around that than assume it. A hosted web checkout at saintsteps.vssls.co answers attribution and Apple's cut in the same move. We run it against in-app from day one, measure both, and keep whichever converts.
$39.99 to $49.99 list on the six-month plan, anchored against monthly.
20% code, unique to each creator. Customer still lands at $39.99.
Web checkout at saintsteps.vssls.co, run against in-app from week one.
Sourcing through to reporting, plus the partnerships already on your books, brought into the same pipeline, measured the same way, and renegotiated where the numbers say they should be.
Multiple creator databases plus direct search across Catholic and Protestant audiences. A living pipeline, roughly 100 qualified approaches a week.
Every agreement carries paid usage and whitelisting rights up front. You never go back to renegotiate for a video that worked.
Testimony, story, teaching, day-in-the-life. Multiple hooks per format so we learn what converts instead of guessing.
Per-creator codes and links, reconciled monthly to installs and paid conversions. Dashboards and automation built in at no extra cost.
The creator retainer you run now comes into the pipeline, tracked properly, benchmarked against your $11 CAC, and restructured toward performance if it is not earning it.
Three to five long-term relationships with large Christian creators I already know personally, negotiated directly, at rates cold outreach does not get.
You have creators who posted well before and went quiet. They are the cheapest reach available to you, already warm on the product, already proven. That list gets worked in week two.
A large share of your users already identify Protestant. The creator pool there is many times the Catholic pool, and the message needs almost no change. It is the single largest unpriced opportunity you have.
The six-month program is deliberately the modest version, sized so the numbers are defensible first. Here is what months seven through twelve look like once the machine runs.
| Month | Active creators | Posts | Impressions | Installs | New paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 7anchor partnerships go live | 56 | 112 | 560k | 5,600 | 448 |
| Month 8Protestant cohort scales | 62 | 124 | 620k | 6,200 | 496 |
| Month 9ambassador program opens | 68 | 136 | 680k | 6,800 | 544 |
| Month 10rights library feeds paid | 74 | 148 | 740k | 7,400 | 592 |
| Month 11Advent tentpole | 80 | 160 | 800k | 8,000 | 640 |
| Month 12year-one run rate | 88 | 176 | 880k | 8,800 | 704 |
Same assumptions as Section IV: 5,000 views a post, 1% to install, 8% to paid. No new channel, only more of it. Getting here means creator recruitment stepping up from twelve a month to around sixteen once the anchor partnerships land. The model above runs one flat recruitment rate across all twelve months, so setting that slider to sixteen from month one will read higher than this table does.
Three to five large Christian creators moved off one-off posts onto standing arrangements: recurring content, revenue share where it fits, real association with the app.
Many times the creator pool, almost no change to the message. Year one is where that stops being a test cohort and becomes a second full pipeline.
Lent, Advent and Easter run as coordinated pushes across the whole roster, with a standing ambassador cohort posting monthly on long-term terms.
Comparable programs run $5,000 to $15,000 a month. $2,999 is the rate if this is signed by Friday, held for all six months rather than resetting after an intro period. That is $12,000 saved across the term. After Friday it is $4,999.
One time, due on signature. Nothing launches September 1 unless it is built in August: briefs, outreach lists, creator contracts with usage rights, the $49.99 paywall change, the codes and the tracking spec all have to exist first. That work happens either way.
Performance fees are billed net-30 on tracked revenue, net of refunds, and Vessels fronts creator payouts so no creator waits on your close of month. Tracking spec, web checkout page, dashboards and automation are included. If we drive nothing, nothing beyond the retainer is owed.