At its peak, ATRX Agency managed a roster of nearly 900 TikTok creators. Founder and CEO Bill Herndon says he cut most of them deliberately.

For Bill, the decision to scale back over the past year and a half is inseparable from his read on what went wrong with how the industry developed. Agencies that built their business on routing large volumes of LIVE streamers through the same diamond-accumulation playbook are already losing relevance, he argues. “The Creator Economy is booming right now,” he says. “There’s a lot of potential, but there’s also a lot of potholes.” 

ATRX, which Bill founded in 2020 and operates from West New York, New Jersey, serves TikTok LIVE creators. His argument, shaped by two decades of entertainment work developing talent for competition television and major label projects, is that content quality and community depth determine whether LIVE revenue holds over time.

The potholes, he argues, catch agencies and creators that mistake current performance for sustained growth. To put the alternative model to a larger test, Bill is running a strategic partnership with NewStar, an international TikTok creator network led by CEO John Saifiev, with operations in the United States, Vietnam, Indonesia, China and Korea. The arrangement divides responsibility along each company’s strengths. NewStar manages creator infrastructure and LIVE operations. ATRX focuses on content development and talent.

Creators Who Peaked Last Year Are Showing the Model’s Limits

Bill traced the first warning signs to creators on his own roster. Some had earned over $250,000 through TikTok LIVE one year and struggled the next, not because the platform changed but because they stopped developing their content once the income arrived. “As a creator that’s going to continue to thrive, you have to keep evolving your content,” he says. Agencies running large rosters with no individual development plans have no mechanism to push any single creator in that direction.

The format he identifies as the most visible symptom is match battles, where live audiences compete to send the most virtual gifts to a creator. Revenue from that format is temporary by design, he argues. “How long are people going to just keep giving their money to people doing match battles?” he says. His own agency numbers declined when creators on the roster stopped building what had drawn audiences to them.

John draws a similar conclusion. LIVE hours matter, he notes, but only as a baseline. The indicators he tracks are whether viewers return across sessions and whether community participation deepens, rather than simply grows in raw count.

A Themed LIVE Competition Quadrupled Revenue and Reshaped the Agency

About a year and a half ago, Bill built a program he called “Mind Trap.” Participating creators were assigned a theme for each LIVE session (Marvel, Masquerade, or Halloween) and built their sessions around it, with costumes and in-stream trivia tied to each theme. The goal was to give both creators and their communities something to engage with beyond a gift count. “It quadrupled our revenue, but it also quadrupled the revenue for the creators, and it also made their community feel vested,” Bill says.

The result drove two decisions. Bill cut the ATRX roster, removing creators he assessed as being in it primarily for short-term income rather than long-term development. Those who stayed received individual plans tailored to their specific strengths and areas that needed work. Creators who would not commit were told ATRX might not be the right fit.

The experiment confirmed the direction Bill had been building toward. Content development and talent were where ATRX could create something durable. “We are going to be a boutique agency,” he says, “and we’re going to make sure that we always put content quality at the forefront.”

Volume-Based Agency Operations Are Already Losing Relevance

The business model Bill left behind had been, in his assessment, the industry standard three years ago: run hundreds of creators through a system built to maximize diamond output on a given night, and the commission from TikTok follows. “I don’t think it’s as relevant [today],” he says.

His more pointed concern is how that model treats creators. Agencies that optimize their rosters for output rather than development may generate short-term revenue but are not building something creators want to stay in. “It may feel like it’s a winnable situation,” he says. “But it’s not sustainable.” Bill has put a formal brand-training process in place at ATRX, preparing creators for sustained partnerships rather than one-off campaigns. Long-term brand relationships, he argues, require preparation on both sides.

The scale problem runs parallel on the agency side. “There are too many agencies,” he says. “Anybody can be an agency, but the truth is not everybody can create successful creators.”

‘The Rise’ Shifts from Music Competition to Creator Development Program

The first major initiative under the ATRX-NewStar partnership is “The Rise,” a creator development platform that started as a music competition before being redesigned. The original format, where winners advanced by outperforming other participants, was not a natural fit for what Bill wanted to build. “When I mirrored it against the Creator Economy,” he says, “I said it’s not a natural fit if we want to continue to grow.”

The redesigned program starts with a music vertical. Participants who sign up as musicians get access to industry executives, brand representatives, and social media agency contacts who evaluate where they are and advise on paths forward over the next six months. The competitive element, Bill says, now measures how well creators work against their own tendencies to get complacent, avoid collaboration, or let emotion interfere with business decisions, rather than measuring them against each other.

Beginning in November and continuing into the new year, “The Rise” will expand to include creators and personalities broadly. Bill describes the eventual format as “AGT meets Shark Tank.” A spring phase is planned to include a pop-up concert series and bus tour, with weekly challenge content flowing through each participating creator’s own channels.

Bill Steps Back from Creator Operations; NewStar Handles That Side

“I have grown to not like to babysit creators,” Bill says. “I like creating content. I like challenging creators to be more than just sitting in front of their phone.” What he wanted from a partner was someone built for the operational side that ATRX had stepped back from. NewStar, he says, has built the infrastructure for that: creator management and LIVE scaling.

What drew him to NewStar specifically was the work the company had done with dance groups, particularly “Viice Versa,” which John describes as one of the leading dance acts on TikTok in the U.S. 

Photo: NewStar Dance Group “Viice Versa”

John is developing that format as a recurring entertainment program rather than a series of individual streaming sessions. “Rather than relying on traditional livestreaming formats,” he says, “we’ve been building entertainment experiences that give audiences a reason to tune in regularly, connect with the performers and become part of their community.”

The revenue structure is straightforward. Agencies generate income from TikTok based on the monthly diamond total their creators earn. When ATRX and NewStar work together on a creator, they split that commission between them. “We never take from the creators,” Bill says.

The Proof Will Come from What Creators Build Beyond TikTok

For Bill and John, the year-one measure of this partnership goes beyond platform revenue. John frames success around whether creators who came in primarily as live streamers have expanded into new business and performance opportunities they did not have before. “The Rise” is the structure meant to drive that movement.

Bill is using Q4 as a planning reset. He reviews where ATRX started in January against where it actually landed, then lays the groundwork for 2027. Getting the partnership and “The Rise” fully operational before year-end is the immediate priority. Bill says he starts planning for the new year well in advance rather than waiting to make resolutions.

The test, as both Bill and John frame it, is whether combining content development and operational infrastructure can create more for creators than either company built independently. “Don’t fall in love with what you did yesterday,” Bill says.

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