How Playkit Helped 200+ Creators Earn $1M+ in a Year

Humans in the Gig Economy is a new series by Dots, the global payouts platform for marketplaces, gig platforms, and creator tools. 

We talk to the people building and working inside today’s flexible work systems, from freelancers to founders, operators, and creators, who are stitching together multiple income streams, and tell you where the future of work is heading.

The backdrop: the gig economy isn’t a side plot anymore. Recent research puts the global gig economy at around $600B+ in 2025, with projections above $2T by the early 2030s. And surveys show that Gen Z is the most side-hustle-heavy generation: around 57% report having a side gig.

But behind those numbers are very real humans trying to pay rent, pass finals, and still have a life.

For this first edition, we sat down with Julia Pintar and Nick Sanchez from Playkit, a UGC agency helping (mostly) college creators earn meaningful income filming TikToks for apps and digital products.

From “I Don’t Want to Make All This Content” to Playkit

Playkit is a growth and creator agency that specializes in “tech UGC”: user-generated content for consumer apps and digital products, not just physical brands.

It grew out of a very practical problem.

Julia was working inside startups when this all began:

“I was a creator out of need for what these companies needed, not necessarily because I wanted to be.”

Apps like Airbuds and Locket were experimenting with high-volume, creator-led campaigns. Julia realized that instead of being the only one filming, she could hire, train, and manage other creators to do it at scale.

Nick’s perspective came from the other side of the table:

“I come from the app founder world,” he says, “and as a founder in this space, we’re always looking for the next distribution strategy. UGC was a potential option.”

They met on Twitter, started talking publicly about UGC for apps, and suddenly the thing everyone was quietly doing became something more people wanted to learn about.

Today, Playkit helps apps and digital products (you’ll recognize names like Substack, Ditto, and Flo Health) run large-scale TikTok campaigns using everyday creators rather than traditional influencers.

Why UGC for Apps Became Its Own Lane

There are many ways to be “a creator” now: influencers, freelance social media managers, agency creatives, UGC specialists, and more.

So why did UGC for apps break out as its own category?

Julia’s read on consumer behavior is blunt:

“Consumers are just starting to get really tired of seeing paid ads and influencer partnerships all over their feed. They’re very quick to say, ‘This is fake, this influencer is paid, I don’t really care about this content.’”

Tech UGC feels different:

• It looks like normal TikTok content, not high-budget ad creative.
• It reads more like “friend recommending an app” than an influencer getting paid to talk up a product.
• Viewers often don’t consciously realize it’s an ad, they just tap to try the app.

For apps, that matters a lot. The journey to use an app is much shorter than the journey for physical products.

Going from TikTok to the App Store to downloading an app is much shorter than going from TikTok to the website to Add to Cart to shipping to delivery to use.

As Julia puts it:

“You don’t need a physical product shipped to your house. It’s much easier for someone to download an app from a video. They don’t even have to move their thumbs very far on the screen.”

When the return on investment is higher, brands are more willing to put real budget behind these programs and that’s where UGC becomes a meaningful income stream, not just a one-off brand deal.

Who Are Playkit’s Creators?

Spoiler: it’s not a stable of mega-influencers with million-follower accounts.

“For the most part, it’s typically college students,” Julia says.

From day one, the goal was super clear:

“We want to replace the Starbucks job or the grocery store job.”

Instead of working a shift on their feet, students can:

• Sit in their dorm
• Film a batch of TikToks
• Get paid weekly

A few consistent creator traits Playkit looks for:

• College-age, often balancing classes + work
• Interested in extra income (not necessarily traditional “influencer” fame)
• No need for existing followers, campaigns use fresh accounts
• Strong feel for:
  • What makes a video go viral
  • TikTok / Gen Z content norms
  • Filming with decent lighting and following a brief

Nick finds that their best performers often aren’t “creators” in the classic sense:

“The best ones are the ones that have never done any kind of UGC before, but they just inherently understand what makes a viral video and they understand Gen Z content.”

So far, Playkit has worked with over 200 UGC creators, all coming in through this lens.

What Creators Actually Earn and How the Work Is Structured

Let’s get to the question everyone cares about: Is this real money?

At Playkit, yes.

Julia breaks down what their creators typically earn:

• Average creator income at Playkit
  • About $500 per week and roughly $2,000 per month
• Top earners
  • Around $10,000 per month
• Work structure
  • Each creator makes 15 posts per campaign
  • Rates start around $175/week and increase as creators level up and perform
  • Pay is on a weekly cadence, tied to the number of posts

Beyond Playkit, the market uses a mix of models:

• Per post
• Per campaign
• CPM-style (paid per thousand views)

Julia’s standing recommendation to creators: “Always try and advocate for a flat rate plus performance bonus.”

The flat rate protects you when content doesn’t land (for reasons that aren’t always in your control), and the performance bonus lets you share in upside when a video blows up.

How Playkit Finds 200+ Creators (Without Posting on LinkedIn)

This might be the most “of course” part of the story.

Playkit uses its own method to recruit:

“We actually dogfood our own product,” Nick says. “We run Playkit campaigns on TikTok to recruit Playkit creators.”

Instead of job boards, they:

1. Run TikToks explaining what creator work with Playkit looks like.
2. Let those videos reach exactly the people who are already natives to the platform.
3. Funnel applicants through their interview and onboarding process.

Nick’s view on TikTok as a channel:

“TikTok is the best distribution tool to really recruit any type of individual, whether it’s a job or users for your app or whatever.”

It’s meta, but it works: UGC campaigns used to recruit UGC creators.

How Creators Get Paid and Where Things Still Feel Broken

We’d love to say there’s a clean, standard way everyone pays creators now, but the reality is… patchy.

How Playkit pays

In the early days, the team did what most scrappy programs do:

“We just Venmo’d people a lot,” Julia laughs.

As they scaled, that stopped being sustainable, and, frankly, stopped feeling professional. Today, they use a proper payout/payroll platform, especially for U.S.-based creators.

Weekly pay works especially well given their mostly-college demographic:

• Students can change their schedules around finals, spring break, or getting sick.
• Playkit can also change it up if someone ghosts.
• Both parties get structure and flexibility.

Why the way you pay matters

Nick sees a real trust gap when brands treat payouts as an afterthought:

“If a company just says they’re going to pay via Venmo, it creates this automatic distrust. It doesn’t feel like a legit company, and there’s no protection.”

Creators are right to be wary. One widely-cited survey, covered by Business Insider, found that 87% of creators have been paid late, paid the wrong amount, or not paid at all. Late payments and missing payouts don’t just slow campaigns, they damage trust, which is the core currency in creator ecosystems.

That’s exactly the space where serious platforms graduate from “we’ll just Venmo you” to real payouts infrastructure i.e. systems that can:

• Handle multiple payout methods
• Track what’s been sent and what’s owed
• Provide records for both creators and finance teams

Contracts, rates, and taxes

Two other pain points Julia and Nick see:

1. Misaligned rates & expectations
   • Some creators quote very high flat fees (think $10-20k per video) that rarely make sense when the goal is measurable revenue or installs.
   • Brands and agencies, on the other hand, sometimes don’t share what counts as “success,” so creators can’t optimize for the right outcome.
   • Julia recommends creators ask directly: “What is the downstream impact you care about? Is it downloads, purchases, traffic? How can we optimize for that?”
2. Tax confusion
   • Many Playkit creators DM the team asking: “How do I handle this with my taxes?”
   • For hybrid student/creator/freelancer setups, public guidance is still thin.

Julia also mentions Creator Vault, an app built by Mia Mirzayan, where creators anonymously share what it’s really like to work with different clients and who pays on time and who doesn’t. 

The fact that something like that exists at all says a lot about the current state of creator payments.

Making UGC Income Sustainable

The real challenge in UGC is building something that actually feels like an income stream.

Julia’s playbook for sustainability:

1. Retainers over one-offs

One-off campaigns are fun and great for variety, but they’re lumpy.

“If you want that sustainable income, retainers are what you can vouch for,” Julia says.

That could mean:

• Long-term contracts directly with a brand, or
• Working with agencies like Playkit, where there’s a baseline flow of campaigns.

Many Playkit creators have been with them for about as long as the company has existed!

2. Act like a partner, not just a content vending machine

Julia encourages creators to go one step beyond “I delivered the video”:

• Ask: “How did this video convert?”
• Did you see download spikes, purchases, or traffic from it?
• What worked in the script, hooks, or edits?

“People underestimate that care goes a long way because most people don’t show it,” she says.

Creators who clearly care about business outcomes tend to be the ones clients keep.

3. Use agencies as stepping stones

Playkit has also seen creators “graduate” from part-time UGC into full-time in-house roles at brands they’ve worked with through the agency.

“We’ve been able to place a couple of our really great creators as they’ve been looking for full-time jobs,” Julia says. “They kind of graduate out of Playkit and go to the next place that is special for them.”

UGC, in that sense, is not just money. It’s a portfolio, a reference, and sometimes a bridge job.

What Freedom & Flexibility Actually Look Like

“Freedom and flexibility” are the headline promises of the gig and creator economies. In practice, they look more like… smart scheduling.

Julia jokes that she personally doesn’t have as much traditional “freedom”. Founder life means calls and responsibilities. But her roommate, who’s a Playkit creator, has figured out a flow:

• Block a few hours on Sunday
• Film and edit all drafts for the week
• Post and engage throughout the week while working a full-time job

For full-time creators, a similar cadence works:

• A couple of deep-work content blocks
• Then using the rest of their week to live their lives while lightly tending content (comments, tweaks, reposts)

It’s not freedom from work, instead it’s the ability to design how and when that work happens.

Humans vs AI: The Current Moat

With AI tools getting better at scripts, voice, and even video, it’s natural to ask: Where does that leave UGC creators?

Julia’s answer:

“The true moat with human-generated content is that we’re the ones in touch with the consumers, because we’re people.”

To succeed online, you have to:

• Be inside culture and micro-communities
• Understand inside jokes, trending sounds, and formats
• Move quickly on new memes and retire old ones before they cringe out

Right now, that live, in-the-group-chat awareness is still something humans do better than models.

“Who knows five, ten years from now,” she says, “but for now, the more you leverage your humanness and being in touch with culture, the more you can outperform AI.”

Where UGC Goes Next

Julia and Nick both see tech UGC as the starting point, not the whole story.

• The model originated in consumer apps, where installs are low-friction and easy to track.
• Playkit recently ran its first campaign for a physical product, and Julia expects more to follow.
• Other verticals are watching what works in apps and porting the playbooks over.

“I don’t imagine the creator economy slows down anytime soon,” Julia says. “It’ll be the next big side gig that everybody’s hopping on.”

Given that side hustles are becoming a default feature of Gen Z’s work lives, not an exception, that doesn’t feel far-fetched.

Julia and Nick’s Advice for Aspiring UGC Creators

If you’re just starting out, or thinking about it, Julia and Nick’s advice is happily unglamorous:

• Keep going.
  • Socials are a roller coaster. Expect viral weeks and very quiet months. Your job is to stay in motion through both.
• Send the emails you assume will get ignored.
  • Pitch brands. Pitch agencies. You may get more yeses than you think.
• Care about what happens after you post.
  • Ask clients how content performed. Learn what affects installs, sign-ups, or sales, not just views.
• Protect your baseline with structure.
  • Whenever possible, aim for flat rate + performance bonus, not pure “pay per view.”
• Get your financial house in order.
  • Multiple clients and payout methods are a mess at tax time if you don’t keep track. Even a simple spreadsheet helps.

Where to Find Playkit

If you want to learn more about Playkit or apply as a creator:

• Website: playkit.xyz
• TikTok: @playkit.xyz
• Instagram: @playkit.xyz
• Youtube: @playkit_media
• LinkedIn: Playkit
• Hooked Podcast: hookedpodcast.com

How Infrastructure Like Dots Keeps the Gig Economy Moving

Stories like Playkit’s only work if the money side keeps up with the creativity.

Creators need:

• To be paid on time
• In ways that work for them (bank accounts, wallets, local rails)
• With clear visibility into what they’ve earned

Platforms and marketplaces need:

• A way to onboard creators and gig workers (KYC, tax forms, payout info)
• To send payouts across countries and currencies without reinventing the wheel
• To track everything in one place for finance, ops, and compliance

That’s the layer Dots is built for.

Dots offers an end-to-end payouts platform that lets companies:

• Onboard and verify creators and contractors
• Send and track payouts globally in 190+ countries with local methods like bank transfers, mobile money, and digital wallets
• Set their own flexible payment schedules and rules, whether it’s weekly payments or bonuses for good performance

If you’re building the next Playkit-style marketplace, UGC platform, or any gig network, Dots sits quietly in the background so that:

• Your team can focus on growth and product, not spreadsheets and bank files
• Your creators and contractors can focus on the work, without wondering when, or if, their money will arrive

Book a demo here!