Creators are looking for a fun way to find and try out products they might like to promote; brands are looking for an easy way to connect with creators eager to promote their products. But there was no single, self-contained platform that made this possible – until PopTribe arrived.

PopTribe brings brands and creators together in one place, but there’s no money involved in the transaction; it’s strictly products for posts. The creator gets to keep the product; the brand gets a quality promotional post from a creator with a proven following. Everybody wins, and the process is slicker than you might think.

The PopTribe Process for Creators

What if you could simply shop for the products you’d like to promote, put them in your shopping cart, and check out, only you wouldn’t actually have to pay a penny? This is the approach PopTribe takes from a creator’s perspective. Rather than whipping out your credit card, you submit an offer to the brand with which you’re interested in collaborating. The brand then has the ability to accept or decline your offer.

If they accept it, they’ll ship you the product free of charge. If they don’t, you simply keep shopping and send brands as many offers as you like.

If a brand does accept your offer, you have three weeks to try the product and create a post about it on the brand’s preferred social media platform. Once you’re done, you simply mark the collaboration as complete and move on to the next one. If the brand isn’t happy with your content, they’ll let you know, and you have two weeks to submit something acceptable.

The PopTribe Process for Brands

When you create your account, you can specify a variety of preferences, such as from which countries you’re interested in working with collaborators. You can also let potential collaborators know which platform you want them to post on so that you don’t end up working with a creator who doesn’t have a strong following on your platform of choice.

You upload your products into the PopTribe system much like you would any other online store. Once you’re done, you just sit back and wait for the offers to come in. When you receive an offer, you’ll be able to see a rough count of how many followers the creator has accumulated. This gives you a good amount of information to use to determine whether you want to work with a particular creator.

If you do, you accept their offer and send them the product they requested. Then, you sit back and wait for the system to let you know they’ve made their post as specified. If you’re not thrilled with their content, you can report that to PopTribe, and the creator will be required to submit another post that you’re happy with within two weeks. If they fail to do this, they can be sanctioned by and even removed from PopTribe.

The Nuts and Bolts of PopTribe

That’s how the collaboration process works in a nutshell, but what about the implementation? Brands and creators are able to communicate with one another through the PopTribe system, and indeed PopTribe encourages you to do just that to manage expectations and iron out any issues that might crop up. If a brand or creator needs to contact the PopTribe team, that’s easily done as well.

The interface for both brands and creators appears well thought out and functional without getting too fancy. Brands and creators alike can see past collaborations, pending offers, and collaborations for which creator content is either due soon or overdue. They appear to have thought of just about everything, and the interface is surprisingly simple and efficient.

The Verdict

Most influencer marketing platforms I’ve seen tend to be brand-focused. They manage influencer-brand relationships, but the payment is usually handled off platform by whatever arrangement the parties make. PopTribe avoids all that because there’s no payment involved. Brands get to pick from a curated list of creators with at least 1,000 followers on a given platform to promote their products, and creators get to use the latest and greatest products in perpetuity at no additional charge beyond the  small monthly fee. This makes things much easier logistically, and it gives both creators and brands what they want.

But do they pull it off? By and large, yes. The interface is straightforward, the product catalog works as advertised, and both brands and creators are compelled to play ball. A brand that fails to ship a product to a creator won’t see that product promoted, and creators who submit subpar work or try to game the system will likely receive negative feedback from brands and can even be sanctioned by or removed from the platform.

All in all, PopTribe has managed to thread a pretty fine needle with its unique, platform-based approach to the products-for-posts paradigm. Whether it catches on is up to brands and creators alike.

Take a tour of PopTribe and sign up for a free trial, merchant or creator, at http://poptribe.com.