If a creator with 5,000 followers can get more people to act than a celebrity with a million, what exactly are you paying for? Drawing on his experience building Winible, Noah Traisman looks at how creators helped turn curiosity into participation. He’ll unpack why specialist knowledge and audience trust can give smaller creators an outsized influence, and how affiliates can spot that potential, build a partnership around it and work out what it’s worth.

• Spot influence before everyone else does: Look for the signals that a niche creator has a community that listens, comes back and acts on their recommendations
• Turn connection into conversion: Test partnerships built around content the audience already values, with clear roles, distribution and a commercial deal that works for both sides.
• Follow the money past the first click: Use conversion, retention and lifetime value to judge which creator partnerships are worth scaling.
• Borrow a page from prediction markets: See how creators turn conversation into participation and which tactics you can test with your own audience.