InfluentialOSHow the same 20% commission can be worth $44 an hour or $1,000.
Two managers can charge the same commission and earn radically different amounts for their time. The difference comes down to what happens between signing the deal and getting paid.
is the estimated commission earned per hour of deal work. Most charge 20%, but the hours per deal vary widely.
are paid late on a quarter of deals or more, and every manager who answered is paid late on at least 10%.
runs deals in a CRM. The rest run on spreadsheets, the inbox or both.
is the median time spent on deal admin. That is about 380 hours a year.
of brand money arrives after its due date on the sample's median profile. About $2,450 of it is the manager's cut.
The median agency reported 6 to 10 hours of deal admin a week, which is roughly 380 hours a year. Combining the survey medians of 9 hours and 7 deals a month points to the same figure, with admin at about half of each deal's time. The tasks managers named most often, email sorting, deal entry, invoicing and payment follow-up, are tasks software can reduce. If software removed half of that admin, about 190 hours a year would return to each manager. The working is in Sections 05 and 06.
InfluentialOS is deal-tracking software for talent managers. The survey was run to find out whether the founder's experience of the job matched other managers' experience. Section 06 shows the product, and everything before it is the data.
How the same 20% commission can be worth $44 an hour or $1,000.
Most managers in the survey charge the same rate, and the hours a deal takes are what separate the best-paid hour from the worst. 4 of 6 charge 20%, and 4 of 6 say their most common deal is $5,000 to $15,000. Hours per deal ranged from under 3 to somewhere between 12 and 20. Commission per deal divided by those hours gives a figure none of the ten had calculated before.
Estimated commission per hour of deal work for the 6 Benchmark managers, each labelled by a roster-size band and commission rate. Commission per deal (rate × midpoint deal size) is divided by midpoint hours per deal. "Under 3 hours" is counted as 2.
Roster size does not appear to explain the difference in this small sample. The two fastest managers run rosters of under 10 and over 50, and the two slowest run rosters of 6 to 15 and 16 to 30. The clearest driver is arithmetic. A $10,000 deal at 20% pays $2,000 whether it takes two hours or sixteen, so the same deal is worth $1,000 an hour to one manager and $125 an hour to another. Six people cannot establish a rule, but the arithmetic holds for any manager who runs the same numbers.
Where managers differ most from the market. Lumanu's 2025 payment data (255,000 creator payments worth $420M) found an average payment of $1,645, with the macro tier of 100K to 1M followers earning $2,000 to $15,000 per post. The most common managed deal here, $5,000 to $15,000, sits at the top of that tier, and one manager's typical deal is $15,000 to $50,000. The managed talent in this sample skews toward larger deal values than the published creator-payment benchmark, which is also why a late payment costs more here. One late $10,000 deal is six average creator payments.
Source: Lumanu, Breaking Down $1 Billion in Creator Payouts, January 2026. This is processed payment data rather than a survey.
- Managers should consider tracking their admin hours by deal to assess which types of collaborations eat more time.
- A $3,500 deal at 20% commission that takes 16 hours pays $44 an hour. A standardized process would help deals under $5K be more profitable per hour worked.
- Commission per deal divided by hours per deal is the number managers should know. A low figure is a reason to look at where the hours go before changing the commission rate. The benchmark tool further down works it out.
Every manager who estimated late payments reported them
Every manager who gave a figure is paid late on at least 10% of deals, and 2 of 5 are paid late on a quarter of deals or more. On the sample's median profile ($10,000 deals, 7 a month, 17.5% paid late) that is about $12,000 of brand money a month arriving after its due date, with about $2,450 of the manager's own commission inside it.
Benchmark survey of 6 managers, July 2026. *One manager answered "not sure" on late payments, so those counts are out of 5. Across all 10 managers in both surveys, 5 named late payment as a top problem or a bad experience this year.
The terms and the calendar. Net 30 is the standard term, and the full journey from first brand email to creator paid runs two to three months, because negotiation, contract, content and approvals all happen before an invoice exists. None of that will surprise a working manager. What the numbers add is how often the brand then misses the invoice date as well and what that lateness costs. The profile is built from sample medians and is illustrative rather than any one respondent.
How that compares with published data
Managers here who are paid late on 25% or more of deals
This survey, July 2026. One manager answered "not sure", so the count is out of 5.
Freelance invoices paid after their due date
Bonsai, invoicing data from 100,000+ freelancers over three years.
Creators paid late at least once in the past year
Lumanu, survey of 500+ influencers with paid brand work, May 2024.
These are three different units (share of deals, share of invoices and share of people), so this is a rough placement rather than a ranking.
Where managers differ. The managers here report a smaller share of deals paid late than either published figure, but they report a longer delay when it happens. Lumanu found 38.5% of late payments ran more than a month over, which matches what managers describe. The problem is rarely one invoice slipping a week. It is a whole cycle stretching to a quarter, and the money inside it is larger than the market average.
- Consider adding a late fee to the contract. It is standard in other creative industries and it is the one lever a manager controls.
- Set a reminder on day 25 to nudge the client so that a Net 30 invoice is not already late when the chasing starts.
Spreadsheets still run most talent-management deals
1 of 10 managers uses a CRM. In the Benchmark, 5 of 6 track deals in spreadsheets, 4 of 6 use the inbox itself as the system, and 3 of 6 pay nothing for software at all.
Tools used to track deals in the Benchmark survey of 6 managers. Multiple answers were allowed.
The one "very happy" answer came from the one manager not running on spreadsheets or email. Of the other 5, none are very happy. 2 are mostly happy and 3 are somewhat happy. The Agency survey shows the same thing from the other side. Asked how valuable a tool that creates and tracks deals from email would be, respondents averaged 4 of 5, and 5 of 5 picked follow-ups and reminders as the feature they want.
Against published data. Remote's 2025 State of Freelance Work found 49% of companies managing freelancer contracts and billing in spreadsheets and in-house tools. The managers here are more spreadsheet-bound still, at 9 of 10. The populations differ (companies hiring freelancers versus managers representing talent), so the figure is for context.
Source: Remote, The State of Freelance Work 2025, which surveyed 1,900 employers and 3,300 freelancers across 10 countries.
- 3 of 6 pay $0 for software while spending 6 to 10 hours a week on admin. For a manager in that position, the comparison that matters is not the cost of software on its own but the cost of software against the time it would save.
Eight hours a week go to admin
5 of 5 agencies answered the question on weekly deal admin. The median answer was 6 to 10 hours, and 4 of 5 sit at 6 hours or more. Over a 48-week year that is roughly 380 hours per manager. That is about nine and a half working weeks spent on contracts, tracking, invoicing and reporting.
Weekly hours per manager on deal admin from the Agency survey of 5 agencies , January to July 2026. Bars use range midpoints (3 to 5 = 4, 6 to 10 = 8, 15+ = 15).
Where managers differ. freelancermap's 2024 study of 3,424 freelancers found about 6 hours a week spent on all admin. The managers here report 6 to 10 hours on deal admin alone, and the agency with the most tooling (a CRM plus a custom build) reports the most hours at 15 or more. Roster size did not track with hours either. The 50+ creator agency and the 6 to 15 creator agency gave the same answer, which suggests the hours come from the process rather than the headcount.
Coded from 5 open-ended Benchmark answers.
Coded from 5 open-ended answers. 3 of 5 want a rate benchmark for managed talent, and none exists in public.
- Managers should try batching follow-ups into one block a day.
- A manager who knows their admin hours a month and their commission per hour can see what that time would be worth as deal work. That figure is the ceiling on what a fix is worth, whether the fix is a tool, an assistant or a template.
Four numbers, three answers
Commission per hour is the clearest test of whether a deal is worth the time it takes, and most managers have never calculated it. Four numbers a manager can answer from memory give three results: commission earned per hour of deal work, estimated hours of deal admin a year and what it would be worth if software took half of that admin on. Each is set against the ten managers surveyed. Nothing typed here is saved or sent.
Where the admin share comes from. Across the two surveys, the median manager reported 9 hours of work per deal and 7 deals a month, while agencies reported a median of 8 hours a week of deal admin. Combining those medians implies roughly 5 admin hours per deal, which is about 55% of total deal time. The tool uses 50% as a conservative estimate. This is derived from combined sample medians and is not something any individual respondent reported.
Two measures point to the same workload. At 9 hours per deal and 7 deals a month, treating half of deal time as admin gives about 378 admin hours a year. That is almost identical to the roughly 380 hours implied by agencies reporting 8 admin hours a week across 48 working weeks.
Group figures use range midpoints, so they are estimates. The share of admin that software removes is an assumption of half, not a measured result.
Thirty-day checklist
Six changes a manager can make this month without buying anything. Each one comes from a finding above. Tap a line to tick it off.
Record two dates on every open deal: the day the brand first emailed and the day the invoice went out. The gap between them is the real deal cycle.
Add a late-payment fee to the standard contract before the next deal is signed.
Set a reminder for day 25 on every Net 30 invoice, so the follow-up goes out before the payment is late.
Track the hours spent on each deal for one month, from first email to paid.
Handle all follow-ups in one block each day instead of as they arrive.
Use the tool above to work out commission per hour for the most common type of deal.
The implied economics for all six managers, with the working shown
Survey answers were ranges, so each figure uses the midpoint of the range each manager chose. These are estimates and they are only as good as the ranges.
| Manager (creators represented) | Commission | Typical deal (mid) | Commission per deal | Hours per deal (mid) | Per hour | Deals a month (mid) | Commission a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Over 50 creators | 15% | $10,000 | $1,500 | 2 | $750 | 50 | $75,000 |
| 6 to 15 creators | 20% | $10,000 | $2,000 | 9 | $222 | 7 | $14,000 |
| 6 to 15 creators | 20% | $3,500 | $700 | 16 | $44 | 7 | $4,900 |
| Under 5 creators | 10% | $10,000 | $1,000 | 9 | $111 | 2 | $2,000 |
| Under 10 creators | 20% | $10,000 | $2,000 | 2 | $1,000 | 7 | $14,000 |
| 16 to 30 creators | 20% | $32,500 | $6,500 | 16 | $406 | 38 | $247,000 |
| Median | 20% | $10,000 | $1,750 | 9 | $314 | 7 | $14,000 |
Midpoints used: $2K to $5K = $3,500; $5K to $15K = $10,000; $15K to $50K = $32,500. Under 3 hours = 2; 6 to 12 = 9; 12 to 20 = 16. Deals a month: 1 to 3 = 2; 4 to 10 = 7; 26 to 50 = 38; 50+ = 50. "Commission a month" covers the deals a manager personally closes, gross, before any agency split or costs.
The profile below combines the sample medians and is illustrative rather than any one respondent. It is $10,000 deals, 7 a month, with 10 to 25% paid late (midpoint 17.5%). Brand money late each month is $10,000 × 7 × 17.5%, which is about $12,000. The manager's cut inside that is 20% of $12,000, which is about $2,450. For the manager reporting 50%+ late on 7 deals a month, it is about $35,000 of brand money and $7,000 of commission every month.
The median Agency answer is 6 to 10 hours a week (midpoint 8). 8 × 48 working weeks is about 380 hours a year. At the sample's median commission per deal hour of $314, those 380 hours are equivalent to about $119,000 of deal time. At the lowest rate, $44, it is about $17,000. These figures show what the time would earn if spent on deals rather than revenue that could be recovered.
What changes when AI handles the admin
InfluentialOS was born from firsthand experience inside the creator economy. Founder Lyndsay Wyndham ran an agency that represented creators on partnerships with brands including L’Oréal Paris, Capital One, Riot Games, Taco Bell, DoorDash and Abercrombie & Fitch. After facilitating these deals across inboxes, spreadsheets and a variety of tools, she built the system she had needed herself. It is software that identifies brand deals directly from email and turns them into structured deal records. What exists today is Gmail ingestion, deal identification, structured records with terms, deliverables and payment information, plus status tracking against those terms. Below, each part is set against the finding it responds to.
The median agency reported about 380 hours of deal admin a year, and the combined survey medians of 9 hours per deal and 7 deals a month land on the same figure. Email sorting, deal entry, payment tracking and invoicing were the tasks named most often, and they are the tasks software can take on. If half of that admin were removed, 190 hours a year would return, which is almost five working weeks out of nine and a half. The half is an illustrative assumption. How much any tool removes depends on the manager's deals, inbox and process.
Connect Gmail and each brand thread is read and filed as a paid, gifted or affiliate deal, with the brand, agency, creator, deliverables, money and terms populated from the thread. Most deal details arrive already filled in, which reduces manual entry.
The survey measured total hours per deal, not where they went. Deal entry, deliverable lists, contact records and payment tracking are the parts InfluentialOS takes on, and they are also the tasks managers named most often when asked what still feels ridiculous to do by hand.
Where the thread contains payment terms and an invoice date, they are attached to the deal record. The deal is marked overdue once that date passes, with the contact to chase shown beside it.
Generic CRMs are not built around creator-specific fields such as whitelisting, usage rights and deliverables, and a spreadsheet cannot read an email. InfluentialOS starts from the deal thread, because in this industry that is where the information lives.
Inbox sorting, deal capture, deliverable tracking and payment tracking are live today, with invoices attached to the deal rather than lost in a drive. Follow-up reminders and contract reading are on the roadmap and are not counted in any figure on this page.
Each paid deal carries its own financials. The creator payout and the manager cut sit side by side, in the manager's currency and the creator's, with the invoice attached and the status set against the terms in the thread.
The median agency reported 6 to 10 hours of deal admin a week, which is roughly 380 hours across 48 working weeks. A second route gives the same answer: the median manager reported 9 hours per deal and 7 deals a month, and the combined medians put admin at about half of each deal, which is 378 hours a year. The tasks managers named most often, email sorting, deal entry, invoicing and payment follow-up, are tasks software can reduce. If half of that admin were removed, about 190 hours a year would return to each manager. That half is an assumption used for illustration, not a measured outcome of InfluentialOS or any other tool.
At the lowest commission per deal hour in the benchmark, $44, 190 hours is equivalent to about $8,400 of deal time. At the median, $314, it is about $60,000. These figures show the opportunity cost of a manager's time. They are not a forecast of revenue.
It does not pitch brands, negotiate or make a creator hit a deadline. It does not replace the manager's judgement on rates or usage rights. It reads, files, tracks and flags, which is the part of the job every respondent described doing by hand.
See your own inbox organized with Lyndsay, founder of InfluentialOS. In a 20 minute call, she’ll show you exactly how InfluentialOS turns your existing brand emails into tracked deals, using your own inbox.
What managers said
These are open-ended answers, lightly trimmed and unattributed.
“Creating invoices. Super easy to automate but I feel I'm constantly typing.”Manager at a small agency
“Following up on inbound leads every two or three days.”Manager at a mid-sized agency
“Outreach. It feels like begging sometimes.”Talent manager
“They think it's flashy and highly social. It can be, but most of the time it is spreadsheets.”Manager at a large agency
“Getting high paid deals is not as easy as you think.”Manager at a small agency
“Everyone's lives are different and life happens. While timelines are important, so are the creators' lives. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, from redlines to invoicing to legal teams, that helps creators get paid.”Manager at a mid-sized agency
Questions managers ask
Short answers drawn from the survey, followed by how the data was collected and every published source used.
What does an influencer talent manager earn per hour?
In this survey, estimated commission per hour of deal work ranged from $44 to $1,000, with a median of about $314. Most managers charge 20%, so the difference comes from how many hours a deal takes, which ranged from under 3 to between 12 and 20.
How long does it take for a creator to get paid on a brand deal?
In this survey, 4 of 6 talent managers said two to three months from the first brand email to the creator being paid, even though 5 of 6 work on Net 30 terms. Net 30 starts when the invoice is sent, and negotiation, contract, content and approvals all come before that.
What commission do influencer talent managers charge?
4 of 6 managers in this survey charge 20%. The range across respondents was 10% to 20% of the deal value.
How much time do talent managers spend on admin?
The median answer from the 5 agencies surveyed was 6 to 10 hours a week on deal admin, which is roughly 380 hours a year per manager. Invoicing, contract review, follow-ups and payment tracking were the tasks named most often.
What tools do talent managers use to track brand deals?
1 of 10 managers in this survey uses a CRM. The rest track deals in spreadsheets, in the inbox itself or both. 3 of 6 pay nothing for software.
What is InfluentialOS?
InfluentialOS is deal-tracking software for influencer talent managers. It connects to Gmail, reads brand emails and turns them into paid, gifted and affiliate deals with the brand, agency, creator, deliverables, payment and terms filled in. It tracks each payment against its terms and flags deals that go late.
About the data
The Agency survey collected 5 responses from January to July 2026. The Talent Manager Benchmark collected 6 responses in July 2026. One manager answered both and is counted once, giving 10 unique managers. Answers were multiple-choice ranges plus open-ended questions, and range midpoints are used for every dollar and hour estimate. Nothing is weighted or tested for significance, because the sample is too small for either.
One respondent's reported deal volume and hours per deal implied more than one person's monthly workload, so those figures were interpreted as team-level hours and excluded from individual comparisons. A separate survey of 4 solo creators who manage their own deals is included in the PDF version.
Collabstr's $202 average deal comes from a marketplace of mostly nano and micro creators rather than managed talent. Commission "norms" from trade blogs have no original research behind them.
Published sources
- Lumanu, Insights from 500 Influencers on their Payment Experience, May 2024. 500+ influencers with paid brand work in the prior year.
- Bonsai, How often do freelancers get paid late? Invoicing data from 100,000+ freelancers over three years.
- Lumanu, Breaking Down $1 Billion in Creator Payouts, January 2026. 255,000+ payments, $420M, 12 months.
- freelancermap, Freelancer Study 2024. 3,424 freelancers, 84 countries, 93% Europe.
- Remote, The State of Freelance Work 2025. 1,900 employers, 3,300 freelancers, 10 countries.
- Smallpdf freelancer survey, July 2026, 397 freelancers, as reported by ContentGrip. Supporting only.