Frequently asked questions

SocialGuap is a marketplace for short-form video work. Clippers — editors who turn streams, podcasts and long-form videos into short clips for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and X — pitch funded pay-per-view campaigns and earn base pay per clip plus a rate on every 1,000 verified views, or take commissioned edits. Creators and brands fund those campaigns and hire clippers directly. Brands also hire creators: they filter the creator directory by niche, platform and format, message any creator who has joined SocialGuap, and post brand and UGC campaigns for creators to pitch. Agencies run the creators they represent from one account.

Every payment runs through the platform: campaign pots and budgets are funded up front, direct orders sit in escrow until the work is approved, and payouts go out through Stripe. Discovery, messaging, ordering, and dispute handling all happen in one place.

Three ways. Pay-per-view campaigns: pitch a live campaign, get accepted, submit your clip links, and earn from the funded pot at the posted rate per 1,000 verified views. Per-link base pay: campaigns also pay a fixed amount — at least $0.50 — for each clip that clears its 72-hour review, whatever its views, so the editing work itself is paid, not only the views. Direct orders: creators and brands hire you for commissioned work at a negotiated price, paid into escrow before you start.

Earnings appear on your dashboard as views verify and transfer to your connected Stripe account automatically.

With the Brand plan, a brand writes one brief, sets a budget and funds it — the budget plus 15% on top. The campaign opens once the payment clears, and creators with a verified YouTube channel pitch it. The brand agrees each deal in chat, and each accepted creator gets their own order at the price they agreed, drawn from the budget; the budget is the most the campaign can ever spend.

The terms agreed in chat — whether the creator or the brand sent them — say how the work is delivered: a post on the creator’s own channels, delivered as the link to the live post, or the finished video file for the brand to post, delivered as a download link under a usage-rights term. A UGC campaign is always the file, under the term the brand set on the brief.

Clippers subscribe to work: pitching a campaign, sending an offer and replying in a thread each need an active plan, though an order already under way stays open to finish. Creators and brands can use SocialGuap without one — browsing, a profile, and posting or funding a pay-per-view campaign are free — and an optional plan buys specific things. The Creator plan ($19.95/month) opens new brand campaigns to pitch instantly instead of after 48 hours — pitching still needs a verified channel — and takes 10% instead of 15% on direct orders with 3-day payouts. The Brand plan ($49.95/month) lets a brand message any creator who has joined SocialGuap and post brand and UGC campaigns. Agencies are paid-only, from $299.00/month for 3 team seats and 3 creators.

Pitching is unlimited on every clipper plan — one pitch per campaign, nothing to buy. What the plans differ on is how soon you can pitch a fresh campaign and how many clip links you can submit to each one. Starter $12.95/month: campaigns unlock 48 hours after they are posted, 10 links per campaign. Pro $29.95/month: 24 hours, 25 links, priority pitch placement, analytics. Elite $79.95/month: instant access, 50 links, a lower 10% platform fee and 3-day payouts on direct orders, and priority view verification. Pay-per-view earnings pay out every 7 days on every plan, Elite included. Billing runs through Stripe and you can cancel any time — access continues to the end of the paid period.

On direct orders the platform keeps 15% of the order price — 10% if the seller is on Elite or the Creator plan — and the seller receives the rest. The buyer pays the agreed price; the fee comes out of the seller's side and is locked in when the offer is accepted, so a later plan change never reprices an existing order.

Campaign funding works the other way around: the fee is added on top. A buyer funding a $500.00 pot pays $575.00, and the full $500.00 is available for payouts. A deal a creator takes from a brand's funded campaign carries no fee on the creator's side, because the brand paid it when funding. Minimum order and minimum pot are both $25.00. All prices are in USD, and any applicable tax is added at checkout.

A creator or brand funds a pot (minimum $25.00) and sets two numbers: a rate per 1,000 verified views and a per-link base payment. Clippers pitch, the owner accepts the pitches they like, and accepted clippers submit clip URLs. Each clip that clears its 72-hour review earns its base payment, and verified views accrue against the pot at the posted rate until the pot runs out — a deadline stops new submissions, not the clips already in.

Some campaigns set a minimum view threshold: below it a clip earns no view money, but once your clip crosses it, it pays on every view from the first — not just the excess. How many links you can submit per campaign depends on your plan: 10 on Starter, 25 on Pro, 50 on Elite.

A funded pot is committed for 90 days — the owner can't pull money out from under clips that are still earning. Closing a campaign only stops new submissions; clips already in keep earning.

Set a budget (the pot), a rate per 1,000 verified views, and the per-link base pay, then fund it at checkout. You are charged the budget plus a 15% platform fee on top — so 100% of your budget goes to clippers, and the fee is never quietly deducted from what you promised them.

The campaign goes live once payment is confirmed. The pot is committed for 90 days; closing early stops new submissions, but accepted clips keep earning. After the lock you can reclaim whatever the pot did not spend. Mid-campaign you can raise your rates to attract more clippers — never lower them.

YouTube Shorts counts come from the official YouTube Data API when it's configured — a source that can't be gamed by editing a page. Otherwise we read the count from the Short's public page, and by default a successful read counts toward earnings automatically; when manual review is switched on, those public-page readings wait for an admin instead. TikTok, Instagram Reels, and X don't expose a view count we can read automatically, so views on clips there earn only once an admin confirms the count — the clip's base pay is still owed once it clears its 72-hour review.

A count that can't be read and trusted automatically goes to the admin verification queue, and those views don't pay until a human confirms them; Elite clippers' clips sort to the front of that queue.

Every reading passes fraud checks: a count that drops, or jumps implausibly since the last check, flags the clip for review and pauses earning until an admin clears it. Two things never happen — your recorded view count is never lowered, and money you've already earned is never taken back.

Direct orders start in messages: the two sides agree the scope and the price (minimum $25.00), and either one sends the terms for the other to accept. The buyer then pays the full price up front through Stripe Checkout, and the work and its delivery clock start only once that payment clears. The money sits in escrow — with neither side — while the work is delivered.

The seller delivers through the order page. The buyer then approves, requests a revision (the offer says how many are included, up to two), or reports a problem. If the buyer does nothing for 72 hours after delivery, the order auto-approves, so a silent buyer can't strand a finished job.

Usage rights say how a brand may use a video it buys as a file. Every file delivery is licensed under exactly one term: “Organic only”, “Paid ads — 30 days”, “Paid ads — 90 days”, “Paid ads — 1 year” or “Paid ads — perpetual”. On a UGC campaign the brand sets the term once, on the brief; on any other deal it is named in the terms the two sides agree. It is recorded on the order and starts when the delivery is approved.

A creator can list starting prices on their rate card (the organic-only base) and, if they choose, their own percentage add-on for each paid-ads term. Brands see whatever a creator has listed on their profile — starting points, not quotes: the price that counts is the one both sides agree in the offer.

An agency runs the creators it represents from one account. A creator joins through an invite link the agency emails them, which doubles as their signup, or by asking to join from their own settings; once accepted they are on the roster — one agency per creator, and either side can disconnect. Team members get seats and the creators they handle, and every message records who wrote it, for which agency, on behalf of whom. The agency pitches campaigns, negotiates, accepts offers, hires clippers and approves deliveries for its creators, whose payouts still go straight to their own accounts.

Agencies are paid-only: the plan is what lets an agency act for its roster. It is priced by seats and creators — $299.00/month for 3 seats and 3 creators, $399.00/month for 5 seats and 5 creators or $499.00/month for 10 seats and 10 creators — plus $50.00/month per extra seat or creator, charged immediately and prorated to the billing period. While the agency is in good standing, every creator it represents can pitch a new brand campaign the moment it is funded, whatever their own plan — pitching still needs a verified channel.

Payouts go through Stripe Connect, using Stripe's Express onboarding, which handles identity and tax — SocialGuap never sees your banking details. You can accept, deliver and complete work before you connect; anything you earn in the meantime is held for you and sent on the next payout run after you finish onboarding.

Order payouts release 7 days after the order completes (3 days on Elite or the Creator plan); the hold covers disputes and chargebacks. Pay-per-view earnings — a clip's base pay, owed once it clears its 72-hour review, and its view earnings — transfer automatically: the unpaid amount goes out every 7 days for as long as the clip keeps earning. Once transferred, money lands on Stripe's normal payout schedule for your bank.

A buyer can report a problem on an active, delivered, or recently completed order (within the payout hold). Reporting freezes the payout while support reviews the order and the delivery evidence, then resolves it with either a refund to the buyer or a release of the money to the seller.

If an order runs more than 3 days past its deadline, the buyer can cancel it and get the full price back. A refund on a direct order goes back to the card that paid; on a deal from a brand campaign, the money goes back into that campaign’s budget — or, if the brand has already reclaimed what was left of that budget, into the brand’s SocialGuap wallet together with the 15% fee paid on it. Card chargebacks are contested with the delivery evidence — links, timestamps and approval records. While one is open, a seller who was already paid has the transfer reversed; if it is won, the payout goes out again.

Emails, phone numbers, @handles, and Telegram, WhatsApp and Discord invite links are automatically hidden in messages (links to public portfolio and social profile pages stay visible). Taking a deal that started on SocialGuap off the platform is against the Terms of Service and grounds for account termination.

The rule exists because the protections only work on-platform: escrow, dispute resolution and verified reviews all apply to on-platform work only. Off the platform, both sides lose them.

Reviews are double-blind. For 14 days after an order completes, the buyer and the seller can each leave a 1–5 star rating, with an optional written review. A review stays hidden until the other side has reviewed too, or until 14 days after it was written — and once one side’s review is public, the other can no longer write one — so nobody reads the other’s review before writing their own, and nobody can retaliate.

Published reviews show on the reviewed member’s profile, which members can read once signed in, and review text passes through the same contact-info masking as messages.