August 29, 2026

How I Price Creator Discovery So It Doesn't Eat the Retainer

I used to hide the scrolling in "strategy." A coordinator sits on TikTok for six hours. Then a senior rewrites the list because it looks like last month. Nobody billed the scroll. The retainer still has to cover it.

I used to do that scroll by hand. Fresh TikTok and Instagram account. Put myself in the customer's shoes. Linger, save, like, comment. Once the algorithm is trained I grab whoever keeps showing up. You really need to do this for hundreds of creators per day. Doing it manually is kind of soul-crushing. JumpTrend is me automating that part.

How I actually price it

You can still do it by hand. Fine at one client. At eight it eats the month. You can have the client send names, then you are a contracting desk and they will churn when they realize that. You can pull a database, which is fast, and also public, so the client can do it too. I price a feed. One avatar, one list, a number the client understands.

Scout is $1,500/month per avatar. It's a number you can put on a SOW as feed discovery without explaining TikTok's algorithm in the kickoff.

Outreach is $2,500 if the client wants you to move and your people are already on other accounts. Dealmaker is $5,000 if you want negotiation and contracts too. Creator pay is not in those numbers. Don't bury talent fees in your software line. Then they argue.

What not to do

Don't mark Scout up and call it proprietary methodology unless you actually changed the brief. The client will find the product. Use the feed on purpose. Don't hide a SaaS invoice inside strategy.

Don't run five clients on one $1,500 plan. The phone will not stay loyal to anyone. You will ship a smeared list and blame the tool.

If you cannot write who the customer is, don't buy this. Talk to three of their users first.

How I put it on a retainer

Keep strategy, relationships, and creative as your hours. Put discovery on a small, boring line. If the list is good, you look sharp in the first two weeks, which is when agencies usually look slow. If the list is bad, you find out at $1,500, not after a coordinator's month.

This is the process JumpTrend automates. Describe your customer and we scroll their algorithm on a real phone.

Start at $1,500/mo