Evaluate a creator before you pay for a booking
by CIA updated 21/09/2026 4 min read
Also available in: Tiếng Việt
Evaluating a creator takes three steps in order: check whether the channel's numbers are real, check whether its audience overlaps your customers, and only then price the deal. Do them out of order and you will pay for a high-engagement channel that talks to somebody else. This page arranges every article in that order.
Where to start, by the job you are doing
You have one channel to check. Read how to calculate TikTok engagement rate first, because every number after it depends on whether you divide by views or by followers. Then read seven signs a channel buys engagement.
You have no candidates yet. Start with finding creators by niche keyword, not with a list somebody sent you.
You have picked someone and need a price. See pricing a booking and the 12-point pre-contract checklist.
Three questions every article here returns to
Are these numbers real? Engagement can be bought and so can followers. Views are harder but not impossible. The hardest thing to fake is the relationship between numbers: a channel with 200,000 followers whose every video lands on almost exactly 3,000 views has a problem.
Is their audience my customer? This is the most skipped question. A food channel with 8% engagement can still fail to sell a single jar of moisturiser.
What is a fair price? No trustworthy public rate card exists. What you can do is build a reference range from channels in your own niche at your own size.
The tools that go with it
| Job | Tool | Price | Limit per run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read one TikTok channel | Channel report | 5 credits | 60 most recent videos |
| Find candidates by keyword | Find creators | 15 credits | 3 pages of results |
| See who the followers are | Audience analysis | 12 credits | 3 pages |
| One creator across platforms | Multi-platform report | 20 credits | runs in background |
| YouTube channel | YouTube report | 5 credits | 50 posts |
| Instagram profile | Instagram report | 6 credits | 50 posts |
| Threads profile | Threads report | 5 credits | 25 posts |
| X profile | X report | 5 credits | 20 posts |
Every number these tools return is an estimate from public data the platform displays. It is not the channel's internal analytics and it is not audited.
Two boundaries to know up front
CIA does not find email addresses and does not find personal phone numbers for creators, and it sells no lists of people to contact. You read the channel's numbers and then reach out through whatever public channel the creator has published themselves.
Anyone has the right to see, correct or delete data about themselves under Vietnam's Decree 13/2023/ND-CP, at the data request page. An account that has asked to be blocked is refused before any credits are charged, for everyone.
Frequently asked questions
How many followers make a channel worth booking? Follower count is the weakest number in the set. Read median views and engagement by views first.
Do I have to pay to evaluate a creator? No. Every formula in these articles you can work out by hand. Credits buy you not having to open 45 videos and retype each number.
Does CIA score creators for me? No. The tools return numbers and distributions; the decision is yours, because only you know who your customer is.
More on this topic: Creators & KOLs