Daniel Caldas spotted a flaw in the business models of even the most successful content creators: a sprawling maze of monetization platforms that fragment audience experience and leak potential revenue. His company, Caldas Ecom, launched in December 2024, consolidates these scattered income streams into a single-owned platform that immediately boosts creator revenue by an average of 8 to 12%, up to 20%, by eliminating third-party platform fees.

The Brazilian e-commerce specialist targets high-profile creators, athletes, and celebrities from markets including the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and Dubai who aspire to grow beyond content creation into full-fledged businesses.

“I had this idea to join the creator economy as a huge fan of YouTube myself and long-form content,” Daniel explains. “While it’s great that a lot of creators nowadays have much more opportunities to monetize their audience besides the usual AdSense and brand deals, there are a lot of opportunities to streamline their customer journey and consolidate their monetization.”

The potential TikTok ban crystallized this vulnerability for Daniel. “The TikTok ban a couple of months ago taught us that creators don’t own their audience,” he notes. “Many things can change, like algorithm changes, platform bans, and now this tariff situation, which may impact companies’ budgets and reflect on brand deals to influencers going forward.”

Having already secured partnerships with several talent management agencies, Daniel’s vision is straightforward: “Creators becoming businesses is already the now. Not thinking about it is missing out big because there are many opportunities to monetize your audience directly and own your future.”

The Techlith Monetization System

To address these challenges, Daniel developed the “Techlith Monetization System,” which helps creators consolidate their monetization strategies into a single platform they fully own and control.

His approach centers on creating custom e-commerce websites as the foundation for a creator’s business focused on the most popular monetization channels in the industry. “The foundational channel is an e-commerce website, which is completely custom-tailored to their brand, needs, and what they sell,” he says. This enables the native integration of various revenue streams—from gated content, private communities, physical and digital products, full-fledged courses, to one-on-one consultations and subscription models—all under one roof.

“It’s easy for the customers diving in, the audience diving in, to click and find everything else the influencer offers,” he adds.

The system focuses on conversion rate optimization, Daniel’s specialty. “There is a huge focus on my end to make sure that when I build the platform, completely custom-tailored to the talent’s needs, that I will take every click, every scroll, every step of the customer journey into consideration to decrease friction and make sure that the volume, the eyeballs they bring to the platform through their social channels are extremely optimized.”

One of the most immediate benefits Daniel guarantees is a revenue boost of at least 8-12%, particularly for creators using subscription models.

“Platforms like Patreon and Substack charge a revenue cut of 8% to 12%, and others like Fanfix even more at a whopping 20%,” Daniel explains. “By ditching them and going with my framework, creators will instantly make more money because I don’t have a subscription revenue cut on my system.”

More Than Revenue Boost

The value of Caldas Ecom’s system extends beyond the immediate revenue increase.

Daniel notes that by consolidating and streamlining monetization options, creators can introduce additional products and services more easily, creating entirely new revenue streams, besides cross-promotions and offers that might have been logistically challenging with fragmented systems, such as private community subscribers getting a discount automatically applied during the checkout process for courses, consultations, and other products and services. 

“Having everything they do under a single roof, just a click away, would effectively increase their conversions,” he explains, adding that every additional click, step, or platform switch creates friction that loses potential customers.

This experience also drives up average order value, as the system makes it “easier to add more products and services in the same session on the same platform.” Through better retention and engagement strategies enabled by the consolidated platform, creators see increased follower lifetime value, extracting more revenue from their existing audience rather than constantly chasing new followers.

Perhaps most valuable in Daniel’s system is his emphasis on first-party data collection, which he sees as underutilized in the creator economy.

He elaborates, “One big thing the industry is missing is the lead generation front. Therefore, we need to implement systems that create relevant and irresistible incentives to ensure they sign up with their name, email, and even phone number during the audience’s first interaction with the creator platform. The lead generation, paired with advanced user tracking and segmentation, creates a richer database of the creator’s highest-quality and highest buying intent audience, with deeper data insights filtered from the non-engagers, lurkers, and bots on their socials. And this database can also be leveraged when negotiating future brand deals.”

Daniel is also enthusiastic about SMS marketing, describing email as “saturated” and noting that the “average person receives 250-300 emails per day.”

“Only about 25% of companies engage in SMS marketing,” he notes. “That’s a blue ocean in the creator economy space. SMS has an open rate that is over 90% higher than email. And even more importantly, 90% of those messages are seen within the first three minutes they’re sent.”

Technical Implementation: Building for Ownership and Flexibility

Rather than developing another proprietary platform, Daniel takes a pragmatic step by leveraging existing best-in-class tools with proven reliability and longevity.

“To make sure that the platform is cutting edge and up to date is one of the big things,” Daniel explains. “By owning the platform, the accounts, and all their IP, the talent has the peace of mind that they are dealing with the best tools available on the market and full control for everything they’re trying to do.”

Daniel specifically mentions using Shopify, which he describes as “the biggest e-commerce platform in the world,” as the foundation.

“Shopify was here way before, and it’s going to be here way longer,” he notes. “Instead of me being a startup and building a new Patreon or Substack, people would be right to doubt me if I were here in the next couple of years. I took a different route. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I’ve chosen the best tools on the market based on my experience.”

For other components of his system, he selects complementary best-in-class tools: “Klaviyo, a leading email and SMS marketing platform, and the best software within the Shopify ecosystem for running private communities, gated content, courses, one-on-one consultations, and other monetization modules.”

This approach ensures that creators own their platform, data, and intellectual property, with the flexibility to customize, add new features, and explore future monetization opportunities within the same platform and foundation—something Daniel views as essential for future-proofing a creator’s business.

Client Onboarding Process and Early Traction

Daniel has designed an onboarding process that acknowledges the busy lives of creators who “have to juggle a lot of things nowadays in terms of content creation or dealing with brand partners and agencies.”

“One of my focuses on the onboarding process would be making it as simple as possible,” he explains. The process starts with a simple Google form that gathers information about the creator’s following, market, current monetization strategies, frustrations, and future goals.

Daniel then sends what he calls the “onboarding HQ,” which he describes as “a comprehensive document outlining the onboarding process, the project timeline, and numerous resources on marketing concepts, in-depth strategies, monetization funnels, and ideas, among other topics.”

“Since they are moving on from being quote-unquote just content creators and would have to think like businesses, I’ve also included resources about some basic marketing concepts, details about strategies and our processes, even a digital security guide, so clients not only feel they have all the support they need, but are also getting instant value” he says. 

The process continues with a shared Google Drive folder, a group chat on Telegram or WhatsApp, and an onboarding call to dive deeper into the creator’s specific needs and deal with any pending doubts and tasks.

Though Caldas Ecom is still in its early stages, having focused on developing the system and building connections in the industry, Daniel has already secured partnerships with several talent management agencies.

“I already closed with a couple of agencies in the space. Even a shout out to a big friend, Dari Arrington, who was the first to share the vision, is excited about it, and also an athlete management agency from London,” Daniel shares. “There’s also another one from Africa, and I’m in the final stages of closing in.”

The creator industry has welcomed Daniel with open arms. “It has been a really exciting journey from someone completely outside with no knowledge at all in the industry,” he shares. “I’ve met a lot of great people. I would even like to shout out to Yogi Patel, who I can call a big friend, a veteran in the talent management space in London.”

What’s Next for Creator Monetization?

Daniel sees artificial intelligence playing a major role in helping creators operate like established brands more efficiently with leaner teams and faster turnaround times.

“With the rise of AI, I think creators will be able to evolve into these brands like we’re talking about, but with much more linear teams,” he predicts. “With only a few people at the helm, but with the power of AI and these advanced systems, instead of having a lot more people to do time-intensive tasks, like research, copywriting, content creation and editing, data analysis, and more.”

For Daniel, the creator economy’s future isn’t just about helping influencers make more money—it’s about entirely revamping how they think about their businesses.

“I propose to help creators pivot from just being creators and seeing themselves as content creators making money on the side into evolving to become big brands themselves and seeing themselves as businesses,” he says.

With the increasing vulnerability of social platforms to algorithm changes, government regulations, and competitive tactics, Daniel believes this shift is necessary.

“Creators becoming businesses is not the future. It’s already the now,” he asserts. “By not owning your product and service distribution, not owning your platform, and not owning your audience, I would go as far as to say that’s kind of playing Russian roulette. Own your audience, own your future.”