What 4 million brand messages tell us about creator deals
Most creators feel like their inbox is full of brand interest that never turns into money. We can finally put a number on it.
Affilimates has parsed more than 4,060,145 inbound brand messages into a structured deal graph across 8,640 brands. About 107,602 became real, trackable deals. That is 2.65 percent. Here is what the rest of the data shows.
01What share of brand DMs actually become deals?
Of 4,060,145 parsed brand messages, 107,602 became confirmed deals. That is 2.65 percent, about 1 in every 38.
The takeaway is not that creators are doing something wrong. It is that raw inbound volume is a bad signal for how a creator is actually doing. The 37 messages that go nowhere are noise: reused templates, dead-end pitches, and asks that were never going to close. The one that becomes a deal is the only one worth your time, and finding it by hand is where the hours disappear.
02Does negotiating change how often brands reply?
Yes, and the gap is measurable. Looking at the last 30 days, the way a creator answers a brand moves the odds that the brand answers back.
+6.6 points. Negotiating instead of taking the first offer is the difference between a 1-in-3 and a 2-in-5 chance the brand writes back.
Every step toward a real, considered reply pulls the brand back into the conversation more often. The creators who treat the first message as the start of a negotiation, not the end of one, hear back more.
03How long do brands take to reply?
About three days. A brand takes 77 hours on average to respond after a creator reply, and 82 hours after an auto-generated one, so roughly 3.2 to 3.4 days.
A silent brand at 24 hours is normal, not a rejection. Plan your follow-up cadence around a three to four day window and you stop chasing deals that were simply still in the queue.
Brand deals are the single biggest way creators make money, about 70 percent of creator income, in a market Goldman Sachs projects will roughly double from $250 billion to $480 billion by 2027.
What this is
This is the first edition of the Brand Deal Index, a monthly read on what the Affilimates deal graph shows about how creator and brand deals actually work. The numbers above are pulled from the live platform on the day of publishing and move as the graph grows.
If you want the deal engine working on your own inbox, Affilimates starts free, and here is the story behind it.
Frequently asked
Based on 4,060,145 parsed messages, about 2.65 percent, or roughly 1 in 38.
Yes. Negotiated replies see a 39.9 percent brand response rate, versus 36.2 percent for a manual first reply and 33.3 percent for an auto-generated one.
About three days, 77 to 82 hours on average.
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Start freeMethod: figures drawn from the Affilimates deal graph and 30-day deal-lifecycle metrics, pulled at publication. Response and latency figures cover the trailing 30 days and will shift as sample grows. External market context: Goldman Sachs Research (2023). Affilimates Pro is $19.95 per month.