Custom Marketplace App for Brand-Creator Collaboration

Business Challenges We Addressed

Brands faced fragmented workflows, creator inconsistencies, and payment risks while trying to scale UGC collaborations. CreatorConnect addressed these core inefficiencies with a secure, automated, and scalable solution.

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  Limited Audit and Change History

  The initial database design lacked detailed change history, rollback capabilities, and field-level auditing, limiting visibility into system events across a marketplace handling payments and content.

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  Incomplete GDPR Compliance

  Without automated data retention policies, data export tools, or consent auditing, the platform's GDPR compliance was incomplete, exposing the business to serious regulatory and legal risk.

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  High Media Storage Costs

  Hosting high volumes of video and photos up to 4K resolution, for both public creator portfolios and private brand submissions, threatened to push infrastructure costs beyond profitability.

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  Margin Pressure from Token Discounts

  Discounted, higher-volume credit packs purchased by brands added further margin pressure, making cost control across storage, processing, and payouts critical to the platform's long-term profitability.

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  Risk of Leaking System Information

  Misconfigured exception filters risked exposing sensitive system information in error responses, creating a security gap that attackers could use to learn how the platform worked internally.

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  Injection Attack Exposure

  Validation pipe failures opened the door to injection attacks, putting user data, payment records, and campaign content at risk across a platform built on trust between parties.

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  Fragile Shipping Dependencies

  Relying on carrier APIs like FedEx meant any API failure or unsupported courier could break the strict 7-day content delivery timers that campaigns depended on.

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  Creator IP Protection

  Creators needed their work protected during brand review, since unrestricted access to submitted content would let brands use deliverables without approving or paying for them.

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  Unreliable Creator Payouts

  The business needed a way to guarantee creators were paid reliably, even if a brand became unresponsive or abandoned the platform in the middle of a campaign.

End-to-End Marketplace Infrastructure

Through creator marketplace development across web and mobile, the platform covers every step of a UGC campaign, from secure sign-up and campaign setup to discovery, submissions, revisions, payments, and moderation.

Role-Based Access & Authentication

Stateless JWT sessions with refresh token rotation, optional OTP two-factor authentication, device fingerprinting, and strict RBAC give Admins, Brands, and Creators secure, role-appropriate platform access.

Campaign Management Wizard

A multi-step flow lets brands set objectives, deliverable types, targeting filters, and budgets, with options to save drafts, clone templates, and pause campaign discoverability at any time.

Creator Discovery & Proposals

Brands filter the creator marketplace to invite creators directly, while creators browse active campaigns and submit pitches of up to 5,000 characters, with duplicate applications blocked automatically.

Token-Based Wallet Economy

Brands buy credit packages through Stripe to fund campaigns. Tokens stay in escrow during active jobs and convert automatically into creator payouts and platform commission on approval.

Watermarked Content Submission

Creators upload up to 10 high-resolution MP4, MOV, HEIC, or PNG files per submission, and FFmpeg applies a proprietary watermark that is removed only after brand approval.

Revisions & Contract Extensions

Brands get up to two revision rounds, with 7-day timers enforced through BullMQ jobs. After approval, they can request extra deliverables at the original credit rate.

Real-Time Chat & Auto-Moderation

Socket.IO messaging scoped to active campaigns supports file sharing, while auto-moderation blocks off-platform contact attempts, such as shared Instagram handles, and flags violations to admins.

Multi-Channel Notifications

Firebase Cloud Messaging, SendGrid, and WebSocket in-app alerts keep brands and creators informed about campaign deadlines, revision requests, and payment events across mobile, email, and web.

Admin Moderation, Disputes & Ratings

Admins verify creator KYC, manage support tickets, issue strikes or bans, refund credits, and track KPIs in GA4, while mutual brand-creator ratings feed admin-only reputation scores.

Redefining UGC Collaboration Efficiency

speeding up execution, and reducing coordination costs through intelligent, secure, and scalable marketplace app development.

Flexible Token Economy

The token-based economy handles transactions from single-token hires up to high-volume 100-pack enterprise tiers, giving this UGC marketplace pricing that fits brands of every size.

Predictable Creator Payouts

An automated fixed revenue split guarantees creators a predictable payout for every approved asset, while the platform's commission is routed automatically on every completed transaction.

Built for Demanding Business KPIs

UGC platform development focused on scale produced an architecture built to support KPI targets of over 90% campaign success, payments under 2 minutes, and approvals within 24 hours.

High-Availability Infrastructure

Resilient infrastructure designed for 99.9% uptime, under 200ms response times, and under 0.1% error rates gives this user-generated content platform a reliable foundation, with queue jobs under 30 seconds.

Hardened Platform Security

Security targets include a failed login rate below 5% and vulnerability response within 24 hours, protecting brand budgets, creator payouts, and content across the marketplace.

90% Test Coverage

Core modules for campaigns, messages, submissions, and payouts reached 90% test coverage across 1,433 successfully executed test cases, reflecting Ditstek's quality standards for custom marketplace app development.