Selling one format: the whole vendor cycle

Why one format beats being a generalist

The instinct when opening a shop is to advertise everything you can do — explainers, testimonials, memes, edits, thumbnails — because a wider net feels like more work coming in. On the marketplace it is the opposite. Buyers arrive to test one format against their audience, and they pick the row that obviously is that format. A shop that says "all kinds of videos" matches nothing anybody searched for.

Specialising is also the only thing that makes the work easy. Your tenth recaptioned meme takes a fraction of the time your first one did: same tools, same caption regime, same beat count, same export. You are not solving a new problem each time, you are running a process you have already tuned — which is exactly why you can charge more per video than a generalist and still spend less time on it.

So pick one thing you can make on autopilot and name your shop after it. Recaptioned memes. Greenscreen reactions. UGC testimonials. Product explainers from a URL. Slideshow carousels. If you truly do two, that is two machines in one shop — each with its own price, its own lot size and its own reviews — not one machine with a vague name.

Settings → MarketplaceGetting permission to sell

Open Settings → Marketplace → and scroll to the Vendor card. If your account already has a shop, Open Manage Shops → takes you to the console. If it does not, the same button explains the state honestly: selling on the marketplace is granted by hand for now, with a button through to Telegram.

Message us there and we set the shop up with you — what it sells, the lot size, the price. Say what format you want to specialise in and link two or three things you have already made; that is the whole application. The console sits behind a paid plan, so mention your account and we will sort that in the same conversation.

Your public profileOpening the shop

/marketplace/shop → is the console. It is a readout first — your profile and each machine render as the card a buyer will see — with every form behind a dialog. It also works completely with JavaScript switched off, because every control on it is a plain form post.

1. 1

   Name the shop and claim the address

   Vendor name is what buyers see beside every machine. Vendor address is your public URL — /vendor/<your-slug> — and it is fixed once it exists: a rename would break every link you have shared and free the old address for someone else to claim. Choose it like a handle, not like a headline.

2. 2

   Write the headline and the About

   One line under your name ("Short-form editor. 40+ ads shipped."), then a short About for your creator page. Say what you make and who you make it for. Do not list every service you could theoretically provide — see the section above.

3. 3

   Add a photo and a contact link

   Upload the photo from your computer and it is stored in your own vidfarm file directory, so it keeps working forever. The contact link must be https or mailto: — Telegram and WhatsApp are the common ones. Anything else is ignored, because a link on a public page has to be safe to click.

There is also a Hide my whole shop switch. It takes every shop off the marketplace and keeps all their settings, which is the right control for a holiday — far better than deleting machines you will want back.

One format, one lot, one priceLoading the machine

New Shop in the console creates a vending machine. Every field on this form is a promise a buyer reads before they commit, so they are worth a minute each.

• Machine title — printed large on the foil pack. Name the format, not yourself: UGC Recaption, Greenscreen Reaction, Product Explainer from a URL.
• Note — two short lines printed on the wrapper itself. What this machine dispenses, in the buyer's words.
• Videos per lot (1–60) — one lot is one pack. It sets how many examples the marketplace shows and it is what the buyer's stepper multiplies. Seven or eight is the common shape: enough to be a real test, small enough to be an easy yes.
• Price per lot — the marketplace divides it by the lot size to show a per-video price, so a round number per lot usually reads better. This is the single number that decides how much work each earnings tier is.
• Delivery estimate — free text, shown to the buyer exactly as you typed it. Nothing enforces it, which is precisely why you should promise a range you can keep: it is one of the four things they review you on.
• Pack colour and icon — a visual picker with a live miniature. It is how your row is told apart in a long list.
• Before you buy — the caveat you are tired of repeating, shown inside the order form directly above the buyer's notes box. "I do not do voiceover. Send raw footage, not a finished edit. One revision round included." It is snapshotted onto every order, so it is also your evidence later.
• Ask the buyer for — up to six things you want on the order before you start. Each is a URL field, and each carries a Required / Optional switch: a Required row means the buyer literally cannot place the order until it is filled, and an Optional one is offered and can be skipped. This is the highest-value field on the form: it converts "I'll send it over" into a link that is on the order before you have spent an hour.

Three gates, and you hold oneGetting on the marketplace

A machine is listed only when all three of these are true, and no single party controls them all:

• An admin approved it. The card says Waiting on review until then, and Approved for Marketplace after. Approval is per machine, by id.
• You switched it Active. One click on the machine card. This is yours, and it is how you take a shop off the marketplace while you are busy without losing anything.
• Your shop is not hidden. The shop-wide switch on the profile.

Editing an approved machine does not revoke its approval — otherwise nobody would ever fix a typo. And you cannot set your own rarity or feature yourself: those are claims the platform makes, not the merchant.

The strip is your portfolioLoad the stock

Buyers judge a row by its strip of examples, so ship your best ones. Open Examples on the machine card and add them either way:

• From your library — search your own templates and pick. This is the fast path if you already make this format on vidfarm.
• Add a new one — paste a TikTok, YouTube, X or Instagram link, or upload a video (up to 200 MB), give it a tagline, and it is filed into your private library first and then onto the machine.

The drawer shows a "N short of a full lot" badge — the one place you learn you are advertising a half-empty pack. Fill the strip to your lot size: a pack of eight showing three examples reads as a shop that is not ready.

What actually happensAn order lands

When a buyer places an order, three things happen at once and none of them need you to be online: their USDC is deposited into escrow on your machine's order gig, an Order row appears on your notifications →, and marketplace@vidfarm.cc emails you Open the order →. Your console grows a gold N Orders to Fulfill button on that machine.

/marketplace/shop/orders → is every order on the shop, searchable by pack, customer or order id, each row carrying its own stage: Needs fulfilling, Delivered — not opened yet, Opened by buyer, Changes requested, Refund requested, Paid out, Refunded. Opening one gives you the desk.

Read the brief, then do the workThe order desk

The order page opens with the pack, the buyer, the video count and the order value, plus a three-step track — Delivered → Opened by buyer → Paid out — so you always know where this one stands. Under it:

• “What was agreed”, open by default on your side because you have to read it to do the job: your own before-you-buy note as it read on the day, the buyer's brief, and every file they handed over as a real thumbnail with a download.
• The conversation — the same thread the buyer sees, organised as topics with replies rather than one chat log. Ask your questions here, not by email; anything either of you paste gets a thumbnail.
• The rail — the money on this order, the delivery link once one exists, and the reference ids with copy buttons for when you are working from the terminal.

Preview public, master sealedDelivering

The fulfil form starts with one item and an Add another button, because that is how the work actually arrives — a buyer who ordered twenty should not be shown twenty empty boxes. Each item has three fields:

• Preview (watermarked) — what the buyer watches and rules on. Upload straight from your computer, or paste links. One URL per line; several lines make a slideshow.
• Master (after payout) — the clean, unwatermarked file. It is sealed: the buyer cannot reach it until Dollar Platoon stamps the payout, however many times you re-upload.
• Note to the buyer — what you changed, what to look at first, what you would do next. This is the field that gets people rebooked.

Pressing submit does three things in one call: it creates the delivery and mints the /delivery/<id> link, attaches it to the order, and files the Dollar Platoon proof with the note already sealed correctly. You never hand-build any of that. The buyer is told twice — a row on their notifications and the your pack is ready to tear email — so there is no need to chase them in the thread as well.

And what each one means for youWhat the buyer can do next

They tear the pack, review the videos card by card, and then face exactly three doors. Reading the vocabulary correctly matters, because two of them use the word "rejected" for completely different things.

• They accept. Escrow is released, your payout lands, and your masters unseal for them. Final — the verdict cannot be undone in either direction.
• They ask for changes. Your notification says “Order rejected”, and it is not a rejection: nothing was sent to the chain, the deposit has not moved, and the order is fully alive. Their note is on the order and in the thread. Re-upload from the same form and the flag clears. A vendor who reads that word and stops working has abandoned a funded order.
• They refund. This one is “Order withdrawn”: the deposit went back and the order is dead. They may instead ask you to issue it — that appears as a button on your page, because whoever signs the refund pays the gas and they did not want to. You are not obliged to press it; you can answer in the thread or deliver again instead.
• They do nothing. A pack order runs a 7-day review clock. If the buyer never rules, the delivery auto-approves and you are paid. Silence cannot strand you.

A revision is the normal case, not a failure. The same form reopens with what you sent, the count survives, and the order page tracks how many times changes have been asked for. What never changes is the release rule: masters stay sealed until the payout.

The payout and your wallet

Payouts arrive as USDC on Base, into the hot wallet on your shop console. The panel shows both balances, a receive QR, your address as a copy button, and the chain named in full — never assumed, because funds sent on the wrong network are gone.

• Send is USDC only. That is Dollar Platoon's limit, not a vidfarm choice: their API has no ETH transfer at all.
• Your ETH is gas, and you need it. It signs your payouts and refunds. A vendor who swept their ETH could not sign the transaction that pays them, which is why the ETH row shows the balance and states the reason it cannot be sent.
• Sending takes two presses. The first relabels the button with the exact amount and address, because the second one is irreversible and nobody can recover a mis-sent transfer.
• The order page prints your net. The platform fee comes out of the order, so a $14 pack nets you about $12.60 — the exact number is on the decision card and on the rail, before you deliver.

The ladder, honestlyWhat it pays

Your monthly income is a very simple product: price per video × videos delivered. Specialising is what lets you raise the first number without raising your hours, which is why the same target is a completely different amount of work at different prices.

At roughly ₱58 to the dollar (check the rate on the day), here is what each tier costs you in packs, net of the platform fee:

• +₱5,000 a month (~$86) — 12 packs at $8 a pack of 8, or 7 packs at $14 a pack of 8, or 4 packs at $25 a pack of 5.
• +₱10,000 a month (~$172) — 24 packs at $8, or 14 packs at $14, or 8 packs at $25.
• +₱20,000 a month (~$345) — 48 packs at $8, or 28 packs at $14, or 16 packs at $25.

Read the middle column: ₱10,000 is about three packs a week — around a dozen short videos, in one format you have already made a hundred times. ₱20,000 is six or seven packs a week. That is the honest shape of it: a real second income, on top of whatever you already do, from a process that gets faster every month.

Reviews and analytics

After a payout the buyer may review you on four axes — Value, Speed, Quality, Support — and the overall is derived from those, so nobody can leave five stars and a one-star complaint. You get one public reply, and only one: you cannot edit their words, delete the review, or answer twice. Nothing is sorted to flatter you either, so the fastest way to a good page is to be genuinely easy to deal with.

The Earnings panel on your console charts orders and dollars over time, and there is a per-machine copy inside each machine card. It is the same component your public shop page uses, so your console and your public page can never disagree about what you have earned.

Where to go next

Read the other side before you price anything: Buying a pack → shows exactly what a buyer sees, what they are testing your format against, and how they decide. A vendor who knows the buyer is running an experiment writes a very different machine name — and gets re-ordered when their format wins.