OFM agency

The phrase is a label before it is a category. It tells you which market a company works in (OFM), and nothing more. Two firms can both put “OFM agency” on the homepage and sell completely different things: one staffs an inbox around the clock, the other takes over pricing, posting and traffic and reports monthly. The label tells you the market. The scope, the headcount and the way it is paid all still have to be read one by one.

What does an OFM agency put on an account?

People, on a rota. That is the product, and everything else follows from it.

• Chatters, who hold the private conversations on a given shift.
• A creator manager, who sets prices, briefs the chatters and reports back to the creator.
• A shift plan and a handover, so the person taking over at midnight knows what was promised at 6pm.
• Sometimes a traffic side, paid or organic, feeding new subscribers in.

An agency without a written handover is a group of individuals sharing a login. The size of the team on your specific account is the number that matters, and it is rarely the number on the About page.

How is an OFM agency different from a talent agency?

The direction of the work. A talent agency sells a person to third parties; an OFM agency works an audience that already exists.

	Talent agency	OFM agency
Where the money comes from	brands and advertisers	fans, directly
What it sells	the person, to a third party	content, to an audience
What it operates	negotiations	conversations, every day
How it is paid	a cut of signed deals	a cut of sales

The practical consequence fits in one line: a talent agency works in deals, an OFM agency works in shifts. It needs headcount, not a contact book.

OFM agency or chatting agency: is there a difference?

Usually yes, and it comes down to who sets the price. A chatting agency sells conversation cover: it answers the messages and leaves pricing, posting and the content calendar with the creator. An OFM agency claims the whole account. In practice many chatting providers use the OFM label because it is the term buyers search for, so read the scope rather than the name.

How does an OFM agency get paid?

Almost always by commission on sales, with no retainer and no joining fee. The headline rate is the least informative part of the deal. What decides the real amount is the base it applies to: the fan’s price, or what is left after the platform’s cut. That clause is where the money is. Two questions are specific to an agency rather than to the rate:

• everything the account earns, or only what the agency’s own chatters closed;
• tips and custom orders included in the base, or carved out.

The revenue split entry sets out the order in which each layer is deducted, which is what turns a percentage into a figure you can actually check.