For creators
How Hotline works if you are the one making the videos, from your first upload to getting paid.
What Hotline is, from your side
A brand you work with runs their creator programme on Hotline. You upload your videos here, they review them here, and when a video becomes an ad you can see what it did and what it earned you.
The part that is unusual is the last one. Your royalties are calculated from the real numbers on your own ads rather than agreed after the fact, and you can see those numbers yourself.
You see your own work in full, including what the brand spent running it. What you do not see is anyone else's: other creators' deals, their figures, and the brand's account wide numbers.
Getting set up
You join from an invitation the brand sends to your email. The invitation shows you the terms before you accept, so you know what you are being paid before you agree to anything.
Your profile
Your name and a photo.
Social accounts
Where your audience follows you.
Shipping address
Where brands send product. You need this on file before you can request anything from their catalogue.
How it works
A short explanation of how your earnings are calculated, before you start rather than after.
Connecting Stripe is not part of this. You can do it whenever you like from Settings, and you need it done before any money can leave Hotline.
Where things are
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Home | A summary of your work and earnings |
| Content | Briefs, My Creatives, Products and Documents |
| Messages | Your threads with the brand |
| Performance | What your videos did as ads |
| Earnings | What you have earned, and cashing out |
| Settings | Your profile, your payout method, your emails |
Working from a brief
Brands post briefs in Content, then Briefs. A brief says what to make, which angles to try, which hooks to avoid, how many videos are wanted and by when.
Your Briefs tab is in two parts: Yours, the briefs you hold, and Up for grabs, everything open to you that you have not taken.
Claim one to say you are working on it, or a brand can put you on one directly. If a brief asks for a set number of videos, only that many creators can hold it at once. You can give a brief back if your plans change.
Your submission attaches to the brief you made it for, so both sides can see what has arrived against what was asked for.
You only see briefs that are open to you. A brand can post one to everybody, to a segment, or to named creators.
Uploading
Uploads go in Content, then My Creatives. The uploader asks one question first: were you briefed on this creative? Yes leads to the brief it was made for, no goes straight to the file.
Each upload takes a title, an optional note to the brand, and the file.
Every upload is a version, including the first. If the brand asks for changes, your new cut is added as the next version rather than replacing what you sent, and the note that prompted the change stays attached to the take it was written about.
How do I upload content?
Accepted formats, the size limit, and what happens after you upload.
Review and revisions
The brand watches your video and either approves it or asks for changes. Their notes can be pinned to a specific moment in the video, so feedback points at the frame it is about instead of describing it.
A revision request is not a rejection. Answer it by uploading the new cut, which arrives as the next version with the original still there.
Requesting product
If the brand has connected Shopify, their catalogue appears in Content, then Products. Request what you need to film with, and the brand approves it or sends something over unprompted.
Some brands set limits on how much can be requested at once or how often. Going over one does not block your request, it just means a person looks at it.
Your orders and their tracking sit on the same tab.
Performance
Once an approved video is running as an ad, its numbers flow back roughly every two hours. Performance shows impressions, clicks, click through rate and what each video has earned you.
A video running as several ads can be read either as one card per ad or folded into a single card with a variant count.
Getting paid
Your earnings
How royalties accrue, when a balance becomes yours to take, and how cashing out works.