Former Maker Studios Exec Launches App To Help Creators Determine Their Worth

YouTube creators now have a new tool to help them figure out just how much they deserve to be paid. After six weeks in beta, the digital influence tool and analytics resource Social Bluebook launched on July 21, 2015, with former Maker Studios executive Chad Sahley leading the way.

The entire idea behind Social Bluebook, whose name refers to valuation and standards systems, is to give creators the power of determining their own bottom-line monetary worth, without relying on a middle-man negotiator or general channel data. The tool seeks to answer questions such as “What is my brand value or digital worth?” and “How much should I charge for brand deals?”

Essentially, Social Bluebook empowers YouTube, Vine, and Instagram creators’ negotiating rights by using algorithms to reveal their respective valuations. Bluebook determines these numbers based on digital reach, engagement, and the social profiles entered by the tool’s users upon registration. Numbers and values naturally fluctuate according to the creators’ changing digital influence.

“Our objective is to provide creators with a fair and accurate starting point for their negotiations,” said Sahley, Bluebook’s CEO, in a release. Sahley is the former VP of Production at Maker Studios; now, the executive runs the Bluebook development team of analysts and programmers who, according to the company’s official site, use a constantly-changing, Google PageRank-like “secret sauce” method of calculating worth.

“The creators have united and we’ve engineered what the community has been asking for,” Sahley explained. “There are amazing tools out there to accurately assess a variety of metrics, but none of them empower the creators to help them negotiate fair deals.”

Creators can sign up for the beta of Social Bluebook for free by visiting the tool’s website. Bluebook notes on its site it will be adding support and integration for Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, Snapchat, and other social platforms in the future.