The creator budget gate: can you afford a paid creator yet?
A fill-in prompt that divides a creator's monthly retainer by your net revenue per sale to get payback sales per month, then says whether you are in Phase 1 (founder-led, $0) or allowed to pay.
Compute the creator budget gate for {app name} and write the result as a short paragraph with the arithmetic shown. Inputs: - Retainer per creator per month: {retainer}. Agency creator retainers run about $1,000-2,000 per month each; use the number you were quoted if you have one. - Price per sale: {price} - Store cut: {store cut percent} % - Net revenue per sale = price * (1 - store cut) - Current sales per month: {sales per month} Steps: 1. Payback sales per creator per month = retainer / net revenue per sale. 2. Compare current sales per month with payback sales. 3. If current sales are an order of magnitude (10x) below payback sales, the verdict is PHASE 1 ONLY: founder-led content and niche accounts at $0, no paid creators. Write the sentence 'A creator would need N sales a month to pay for themselves; the app makes M.' 4. If current sales are within 10x of payback, say so, and state the cost per install at which a retainer pays back: retainer / (payback sales / paywall conversion). Output: the arithmetic, the verdict, and one line on which number has to move before the verdict changes.
In Claude Code, paste the prompt as a message, or run /creator-growth which does this end to end.
Steps
- Pull the real funnel first: launches, core action, paywall shown, purchase; price after the store's cut; the weekly trend. No analytics means the first deliverable is instrumenting that funnel, not a content plan.
- Run the prompt; paste the paragraph into docs/marketing.md as the argument for not hiring yet.
- Rerun it monthly with the new sales number. The verdict changes when the arithmetic does, not when a video does well.
Example
Retainer $1,500. Price $9.99, store cut 30 %, net $6.99. Payback = 1,500 / 6.99 = 215 sales a month per creator. Current sales: 12 a month. 12 is more than 10x below 215: Phase 1 only. A creator would need 215 sales a month to pay for themselves; the app makes 12.
Tips
- Write the arithmetic into the doc. It is the argument for not hiring yet, and it ends the discussion faster than any opinion.
- A content plan for an app whose paywall converts at 0 % is a plan to pay for traffic that leaks. Fix the funnel before the gate.
- In Claude Code, `/creator-growth` writes docs/marketing.md with this gate, the formats, the accounts and the campaign links filled with the app's numbers.
| works with | Claude Code: Runs as a skill or a prompt in the terminal; can read your files and write the result. · Claude: Paste into claude.ai or the Claude app. · ChatGPT: Paste into ChatGPT; works with any GPT model. · Any LLM: Model-agnostic: Gemini, Mistral, a local model. · By hand: No tool needed: a checklist or a technique. |
| skill | npx skills add fortunto2/solo-factory/creator-growth · source |
| cost | Free. No API, no key. |
| status | Unverified: written from the technique, not yet run end to end by us. |
| license | CC BY 4.0 for the text here; skills are MIT. |
| updated | 2026-11-01 |
| for agents | creator-budget-gate-payback-arithmetic.md |
Related
Phase 1, founder-led: the four formats and what each one buys
Educational converts, POV and humor get reach, story builds trust, comparison works when the app replaces something expensive. A prompt that plans a week of founder videos across all four.
Phase 2 trigger: when to pay micro-creators, and how much
Pay nobody until one video passes a view threshold AND its campaign link shows installs. Then 3-5 micro-creators in the same niche, paid per video or per million views, no retainer yet.
The download ask lives in the comments, not in every video
A call to action in every video is what gets a video scrolled. Put the app name in the replies to 'what app is this?', keep the link in the bio, and write the replies before you need them.
2-3 niche accounts, one audience archetype each, one app per account
Why several small accounts beat one big one for an app: each speaks to one kind of viewer. A prompt that defines the archetypes and the account plan, and the clone trap that gets accounts suppressed.
Measurement: one store campaign link per platform and account
The iOS campaign link format with the provider token and a 40-character ct tag, the Android Play referrer, where installs show up, and the rule to judge a format after a week on installs, not views.
In-app growth levers: brand credit, 9:16 output, one-tap preset
Four product changes that turn every export into UGC and make a creator's demo work in one tap. An audit prompt for the codebase that marks each lever done or next, plus the disclosure rule.