Data Integrity
We take data, like, really seriously.
Last updated September 1, 2022
At Hashtag Pay Me, data integrity is a priority which is why we're writing this entire post all about what we collect, why we collect it and what it means for creator pay. Between January 2021 and June of 2022, Hashtag Pay Me collected and analyzed data from over 2,000 unique contracts submitted by brands, agencies and creators that looks at pay amount, industry, sponsored post requirements, and other compensable factors. We leveraged this sample to create our calculation and continuously look at the industry with fresh data coming in all the time. Our model only reports on 18 months of historic data as we've found that is most relevant to marketers and creators.
Our Process for Validation
- Collection. Our sponsored post survey is always on meaning that we get relevant data every month. As a part of our brand-creator partnerships, we also receive data directly from our data partners in exchange for access to our data.
- Validation. Because we request contracts as data inputs, we can be certain that the work was agreed to by both parties. We also review every post to make sure fradulent information wasn't input. We actively remove inputs that are spammy and do not follow community guidelines.
- Structure & Analyze. Data is structured to create groups based on location, influence "tier", influence type, and etc. so that it is relevant to users requests.
- Price & Reporting. Our proprietary statistical models allow our tools to deliver insights and calculation results that are specific to customers needs.
Our Data Strike Policy
To promote honest interactions with our platform, each user gets three strikes. How do we assign a strike?
Strikes are assigned if you are knowingly trying to spam our platform with false information. False information means that you enter in emails like "test@gmail.com" or "hi@me.com" and other knowingly fake emails into our brand rolodex request.
Strikes are also assigned if you enter in pay information that is erroneous in nature in an attempt to deceive the model in your favor. Meaning you enter in pay amount that is aggressively high or put in random numbers just to fill out the form.
Strikes are assigned if you enter in fake brands, fake agencies and fake usernames of your creator account.
Fake accounts are noted as entities that do not appear in social or google searches.
Strikes are assigned if you are found to be taking information from our platform for your own personal gain, i.e. reselling it to other creators, stealing our IP and promoting it as your own, gatekeeping access to the platform by putting it behind your own personal paywall, and other intentionally dubious actions to profit off of the platform outside of our affiliate program. Not only will this kick you off the platform for good, but we will also legally pursue you for any damages that you have caused the company.
We review every entry into our platform and will follow up with the email you provided to correct any mistakes we may have found that you entered. If you chose to ignore our follow up email, your submission will be deleted but a strike will not be assigned.
Why we request contracts as data inputs
1. We have a lot of data fields that need to be specially filled out
Our model has over 37 header inputs for creator pay and 28 inputs for the company/ agency you work for. So to mitigate your work, we ask for the bare bones contract so that we can chase down the nitty gritty aspects to plug into our model (if we don't have them already).
Since we are trying to get as-damn-near-close as we can to a true creator value, we need all of these inputs to be entered by contract specialists who can extract the terms from the contract and paste them in the model.
TL;DR to minimize errors and to maintain compensation data integrity, we need to be 100% sure we capture the information as prescribed in the contract.
2. We want to save you time
Duh, this is the whole reason we started this platform. You do enough as a creator to create content and manage your business, we're here to help you save time and improve confidence pricing your work.
By uploading a contract you save so much time than manually filling out a form. The average time to fill out our form is 26 seconds.
Go and try it yourself.
P.S. Are you worried if it's legal? Yes it's totally legal.
A little insider knowledge from working in compensation, it's totally legal and you are well within your rights to share information about your compensation.
A clause in a contract is there for scare tactics to keep you quiet and the nice thing is, with our platform, nothing you submit to us is ever published in an identifiable way to trace back to you.
Example: you submit data to us, we add to model, model reformulates to account for your contribution, you go into calculator to price work, you get an accurate representation of your pay based off of the work of others like you for this specific job.
If you want to read more about our privacy policy, read it here. We will never ever release identifiable markers such as your following number, platform, and brand deal details in a public forum.
