agency commission

Commission is how almost every OFM agency gets paid, and the logic is clean: the agency earns only when the creator earns. The flaw is just as clean. Two contracts showing the same headline rate can take very different amounts, every month, and neither party notices until someone reconstructs a statement. The rate is the part everyone negotiates. The base is the part that decides.

What are the three terms of a commission?

A rate, a base and a period. All three belong in writing, and the second is where the surprises live.

• The rate. The advertised percentage.
• The base. The amount that percentage applies to.
• The period. A calendar month and a platform payout cycle are not the same window, and a sale made near the boundary lands in one or the other.

Miss the third and you get an argument about a month that looks abnormally thin for reasons that have nothing to do with performance.

Gross or net of the platform’s cut: which base?

Net of the platform’s cut. That is the base that only counts money that actually arrived, and it is the one question in the contract worth a real negotiation.

Platforms take their own share before anything reaches the account, on the order of a fifth of the price the fan paid. A commission calculated on the full price the fan paid therefore applies to money nobody ever received, including the platform’s cut.

Base written in the contract	What it means in practice
Gross: the full price the fan paid	the commission is charged on the share the platform already took
Net of the platform’s cut	the commission only touches money that actually arrived

At an identical rate, the first base always takes more than the second, month after month, because part of what it is charged on never reached the creator. A clause that says “a percentage of revenue” without saying which revenue has settled nothing. The sentence to get in writing names the base, not just the rate.

What should the commission cover?

Everything needed to produce the sales it is calculated on: the conversations, the scheduling, the reporting, the agency’s own tools and the people on shift. What can be legitimately billed on top is what falls outside that scope (a shoot, travel, paid acquisition) and only if it is agreed in advance, in writing, amount included.

A workable rule: if the spend benefits the agency first, it sits inside the commission. If it benefits the creator first and would have existed without an agency, it can be billed on top.

How do you know the rate you are really paying?

Divide what you received by what the fans paid, over a full month. That single number is the effective rate, and it is the only one that describes reality.

It will sit above the contract rate more often than not, for reasons that are usually mundane: the base, an expense billed on top, a refund from the previous month landing late. What matters is whether every point of the gap has a line behind it. The effective rate is read on the payout statement, not on the contract, and it is only meaningful against your own net revenue. The full order of deductions is laid out in revenue split.