How to get clients for a clipping agency
A clipping agency with no clients has a roster and a deck. A clipping agency with one client has numbers, and numbers are the only thing the second client buys. This guide is the order of operations: who actually pays for clipping, how to get the first campaign without a client, where the next ones are, what the pitch says, and what keeps them.
It assumes you have read how to start a clipping agency and know the two-line pricing model: a client-funded working budget, and your management fee on top.
Who actually buys clipping
Not "brands". Specific people with a specific launch and footage they aren't using. In rough order of how easy they are to close:
Who pays, and what they're buying
- Podcasts and interview shows
- Hours of footage, a weekly release, and a host who hates editing. They buy a rolling campaign and judge it on plays and follows. The easiest first client.
- Artists, labels and managers
- A release date and a sound that needs volume. They buy a release-week campaign and judge it on uses of the sound and saves.
- Apps and games
- A launch, a store page and an install number. They buy launch-week volume and judge it on installs and wishlists. The biggest budgets, the most demanding briefs.
- Streamers and creators
- A VOD archive and a growth plateau. They buy a standing campaign and judge it on follows and average viewers.
- DTC products
- A product that demonstrates well and a code to measure by. They buy launch and restock windows and judge it on orders.
- Events, tours and conferences
- Dates on sale and footage from last night. They buy per leg and judge it on tickets per city.
Pick one of these rows and stay in it. The roster, the brief templates and the case study all compound inside a niche and reset outside it.
Get the first campaign before the first client
Nobody hires an agency on a deck. Run one campaign yourself, for a show, artist or product you can get footage from: your own, a friend's, or a small client at cost. Fund it at the platform minimum, write a real brief, review daily, and come out with the five numbers every pitch needs: clips posted, verified views, cost per 1,000 views, the top clip, and what the client tracked downstream. That campaign is your agency's first employee.
Doing this on Shoot
An agency runs each client as its own funded campaign from $500, under its own page, with its own report. The first campaign can be your own: fund it, run it, and the report it produces is the case study. See tryshoot.com/for-agencies.
Where the next clients are
- People already posting clips badly. Search your niche on TikTok and Shorts for shows, artists and products posting their own clips at low volume or low quality. They have already decided clips matter; they just can't make enough. This is the warmest list that exists, and it's free.
- Their comment sections and DMs. Cut one real clip from their public content, post it or send it, and say what a hundred of them would cost. A clip is a better cold email than a cold email.
- The people around the buyer. Podcast producers, artist managers, label marketing, app growth leads, game publishers' community teams, UGC and influencer agencies that don't do volume. One manager is ten artists.
- Your own clips account. Post the best clips from your campaigns (with permission) and the numbers under them. The account is the portfolio, and the inbound comes from the client's peers seeing it.
- Where buyers ask. Subreddits and Discords for podcasters, indie devs and musicians, answered as a participant with real numbers, never a link first.
- Launch calendars. Release dates, store launches, tour announcements and festival lineups are public weeks ahead. Pitch the launch, not the brand.
What the pitch says
One number and two lines. The number is your cost per 1,000 verified views from the campaign you ran, next to what paid social costs them now. The two lines are the working budget the client funds (which reaches creators) and your management fee on top. Everything else in the pitch is answering three questions before they're asked: are the views real, who approves the clips, and what do I get at the end.
The pitch, in five parts
- The launch
- Name their specific launch and the footage they already have. Show you watched the content.
- The proof
- Your campaign's five numbers, and the top clip, playable.
- The mechanics
- They fund a budget; creators post; views are verified before anyone is paid; they approve every clip against a brief you write with them.
- The price
- Working budget as one line, management fee as another. Never a blended number; it's the one objection that kills deals.
- The report
- What they see, how often, and which of their own metrics you'll put next to the views.
Don't promise views
You can promise a brief, daily review, verified counting and a report. You cannot promise a number of views, and an agency that does is one bad week from a refund conversation. Quote ranges from your own campaigns and say they vary.
The proposal and the first invoice
A one-page proposal: the launch, the brief outline, the platforms, the working budget, the fee, the start date, and the report cadence. Bill the client for the budget plus the fee before anything posts. If you take the money on a platform that lets you bill a client and fund the campaign from that balance, you never carry the working budget and the fee is yours the moment it clears.
Doing this on Shoot
Agencies bill clients through payment links for any amount, fund the campaign from the balance, and withdraw the rest. The client's report carries a Powered by Try Shoot mark; there is no white-label version, so say so if a client asks.
Keep them
- Report on their number, not yours. Views next to plays, installs, saves or orders. Agencies that report reach get cut at the first budget review; agencies that report reach against the client's own metric get renewed.
- Weekly, short, and honest about the misses. A report that only has good news is read as marketing.
- Bring the next campaign before they ask. The second single, the first update, the restock, the next leg. The brief is already half written.
- Show them the top clips and why they worked. It's programming feedback as much as marketing, and it makes you part of the content, not a vendor.
- Refresh the brief yourself. New footage, new dates, new links. Clients churn when the campaign goes stale and they don't know why.
Mistakes that stop agencies getting clients
- Pitching before running a campaign.
- Pitching "brands" instead of a launch.
- A blended price that hides the fee.
- Promising a number of views.
- Serving every niche, so no roster or case study compounds.
- Fronting the working budget and billing afterwards.
- Reporting views alone.
- Letting the first campaign end without proposing the second.
Frequently asked
How do I get my first clipping agency client?+
Run a campaign before you have a client, for your own content, a friend's show, or a small client at cost, and come out with real numbers: clips, verified views, cost per 1,000 views, the top clip and what it moved downstream. Then pitch people in your niche who already post clips badly, with one real clip cut from their content and those numbers.
Who hires clipping agencies?+
Podcasts, artists and labels, apps and games, streamers, DTC products and events, in roughly that order of how easy they are to close. Each has a launch and footage they aren't using. Pick one niche; the roster and the case study compound inside it.
How do I pitch a clipping campaign to a brand?+
Name their specific launch, show your campaign's numbers and top clip, explain the mechanics in three sentences (they fund a budget, creators post, views are verified before anyone is paid, they approve every clip), quote the working budget and your fee as two separate lines, and say what the report shows and how often.
How much should a clipping agency charge?+
A client-funded working budget that reaches creators, plus a management fee quoted separately: a retainer or a percentage of the budget. Rates vary widely by market and niche; the rule that matters more than the number is never blending the two lines.
Should I promise a number of views?+
No. Promise the brief, daily review, verified counting and the report, and quote ranges from your own campaigns with the caveat that they vary. Agencies that guarantee views are one bad week from a refund conversation.
How do I keep clipping clients?+
Report weekly on their own metric next to the views, be honest about misses, show them which clips worked and why, refresh the brief yourself, and propose the next campaign before the current one ends.
Related guides
How to start a clipping agency
Start a clipping agency by picking one niche, running a campaign for a first client on a self-serve platform so you never front creator payouts, and charging a management fee on top of a client-funded working budget. The hard parts are sourcing reliable clippers, verifying views, and paying everyone on time — which is the work worth handing to a platform before you hire for it.
How much does a clipping agency make?
A clipping agency makes its money from a management fee charged on top of a client-funded working budget, usually a monthly retainer or a percentage of that budget. A solo operator with a handful of rolling clients commonly earns in the low thousands a month per client; the ceiling is clients multiplied by fee, and the margin depends on how many campaigns one reviewer can run. Here is the model, a worked example with the assumptions shown, and where agencies lose money.
Clipping agency business plan: a template you can fill in
A clipping agency business plan has nine sections: the one-line service, the niche, the customer and what they buy, the two-line pricing model (client-funded working budget plus a management fee), the campaign operation, the creator roster, costs, cash flow that never fronts payouts, and the first ninety days. Here is each section with the question it answers, a worked default, and a blank to fill in.
How much does a clipping agency cost?
A clipping agency usually costs a creator budget plus a service fee, and published rates run from about $0.10 to $3 per 1,000 views depending on the agency and the campaign. Published minimums range from none to around $30,000. Your real number is total spend divided by verified views, so ask for that before you sign.
How this works on Shoot
How agencies run campaigns for clients
Agencies get their own page on Shoot: one creator community, a separate campaign per client, each funded by that client, with payouts, view verification and per-client reporting handled for you. No software retainer and no per-seat pricing.
How to launch a campaign (for brands)
Build a campaign in the wizard — basics, budget, platforms & pay, content rules, access & proof — then fund it. Creators post clips, you approve them from a real-time queue, and you pay only for approved performance.
How campaign funding and escrow works
Brands fund a campaign's budget up front and those funds are held until creators' approved work clears. Approved creators are paid automatically; Shoot's 7% is charged on payouts and on budget returned unspent.
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Last updated 2026-11-03