Breakdowns
How the big names actually distribute. Reported, cited teardowns of the clipping machines behind creators, brands and platforms, and what the controlled version looks like.
Inside Iman Gadzhi’s clipping operation
A 3,000-post repurposing account, paid Whop bounties up to $2,000 a video, and part-ownership of the marketplace itself. The full machine, cited.
FoundersLuke Belmar stopped posting in 2023. The clipping machine didn’t.
Ten YouTube videos ever, a dormant channel, and a fan clip swarm that carried a $19M launch. The most rented audience in the creator economy.
Prediction marketsInside Polymarket’s clipping campaign
140 million views at fifty cents a thousand, then the WSJ analysis, a lawsuit and two senators. The cheapest reach in marketing, and its consequences.
MusicHow music labels quietly pay to make songs go viral
The unpublished rate card, the burner accounts, the sped-up flywheel, and the FTC gray zone the whole quiet-promo economy lives in.
PodcastsHow Diary of a CEO mastered podcast clipping
Clips flagged mid-interview, thumbnails tested as Facebook ads, 150 experiments a quarter. Podcasting’s most deliberate growth machine.
InfluencersDid Andrew Tate invent clipping?
Commissions for controversy, 11.6 billion TikTok views, four bans in a week, and the flywheel every bounty marketplace copied. The campaign that built an industry.
PodcastsThe Joe Rogan clip economy
Half of the biggest podcast’s official views are clips, and the clips never left YouTube, even when the show did. The nine-figure proof that clips are the discovery engine.
iGamingHow Stake built gambling’s viral clipping machine
Barred from normal ads, $4.7B in revenue anyway: its own platform, nine-figure star deals, and clippers at two cents per thousand views.