The creator economy is booming with many creators earning through influencer marketing and from posting on social media. The creator economy is estimated to be more than $104 billion across commissions to creators, influencer SaaS tools, and influencer agencies. Being a creator has always been glamorous, but being able to make money is becoming a reality more and more each day.
However, one of the harder or more annoying parts of the job is dealing with payments. That includes creating invoices, requesting payments, following up on payment and even just waiting around for the money to hit you account.
In fact, tracking down late payments and invoices can be a nightmare for creators, which in this case can include influencers, freelancers, creative businesses, and even talent managers. While brands have been accustomed to working with creators, which opens a source of income for content creators, the nuances around payment still can be tricky.
Fortunately, Lumanu and Willa are focused on helping creators get paid more easily and seamlessly. Keep reading to learn the difference between the two cash advance tools and whether they are suitable for you.
Overview: Lumanu vs. Willa
Lumanu Overview
Lumanu's mission is to streamline not only collaboration and work but the whole payment system for creators. They serve both sides of the market. One on side, they serve brands, which comprise growth marketers, ecommerce marketers, influencer marketers and paid social marketers. The other side is content creators, which include influencers but can include other forms of creators as well like streamers, graphic designers and photographers.
Founded in 2016, Lumanu wants to empower creators to lead a life on their own terms by assisting them in managing operations and getting access to earned funds quickly. The company has raised $12 million dollars in venture capital funding from leading investors, so you know they mean business. You can even see the deck the company used to to pitch investors.
Lumanu offers technology that makes doing business in the creator economy fun, collaborative, and easy. Namely, it allows freelancers and creators to receive and send payments instantly, manage, and expand their business. Creators can also benefit from the community as it is designed to support them at every phase of their progress.
Willa Overview
Willa has simplified the procedure of invoicing. It’s a financial application used to process invoices fast. The app operates in the U.S. and Sweden and is a well-known fintech product that lets creators get money in advance for their freelance gigs.
Willa was established in 2019, so it’s pretty new. It makes invoicing and collecting payments easier. The company has raised even more money than Lumanu. About a year ago, the company raised $18 million dollars in funding from leading investors. FinTech Collective led the company's Series A with Entrée Capital and EQT Ventures also participating. These firms have also backed companies like MoneyLion, a leading mobile banking fintech app, and OpenSea, the leading NFT marketplace.
The company is founded by former employees of Spotify and Relatable. Everyone know Spotify, it’s a company that enables millions of online ecommerce stores, but Relatable is also a leading global influencer agency that counts clients like Google, Uber and Puma. That’s a strong founding team with lots of funding, so the company is just getting started.
Deeper Dive into Creator Cash Advance Products
What makes Lamanu special?
Lumanu, similar to Willa, is also focused on allowing creators access to funds more quickly.
The company’s mission is to empower content creators to do what they love instead of wasting time and attention on issues, collecting and following up on invoices. For a lot of creators, payment delays, continuous back and forth, and vaguely defined terms can be distracting and take away time from creating content. Creators should be focused on creating content, not creating invoices.
The platform is handy for creators and other freelancers to earn money and establish a legitimate business without all the stresses that come with managing a business. With Lumanu, solopreneurs can collaborate with companies and customers through the asset-sharing system known as Collabs. Basically, you can send your invoices for free and get instant payment on eligible invoices.
Given that creators have never been truly supported or catered to until very recently, this is a pretty neat offering. Plus one for the creator economy.
EarlyPay: How it Works
Once you submit an invoice to Lumanu, you’ll receive payments within seconds, instead of waiting for the payment on the invoice cycle and when the company pays an invoice. This core feature of Lumanu is called EarlyPay.
If you haven’t worked with large brands as a creator, it might help to understand why EarlyPay is valuable to creators.
Many companies, especially larger ones like tech unicorns or publicly-traded companies, may work on a net 30-day payment cycle and sometimes even net 90 days. That essentially means that the brands will pay you within a number of days after the services have been rendered. In an extreme case, there’s probably more than a handful of stories of brands working on a net 120 payment schedule. That’s creating content on January 1st and getting paid 4 months later at the end of April.
Through EarlyPay, Lumanu gets your payment instantly. From there, they’ll work to collect payment from the brand on whatever payment schedule the brand operates on.
Creators have a lot of flux in their life as part of the creator lifestyle is often not being a salaried employee and being on your own. Knowing you have money coming in, but there’s a lag of when you can access is frustrating. Lumanu gives creators some stability knowing they can access those funds earlier if needed.
What makes Willa unique and different?
Willa is built for creators and freelancers who work as contractors essentially. The app allows you to create an invoice and send a link to the vendor, but instead of just having to take care of the payment, the vendor can pick different payment terms. Willa takes on managing the collection of this payment and pays you upfront.
While Willa and Lumanu seem very similar, there seem to be some key differences. Namely, Willa is more about empowering creators to give their clients more flexible payment terms. At least, that’s how the company frames its offering.
For content creators and influencers, brands they are working with are able to pay on the available payment options while the creator gets paid upfront. Meanwhile, for other types of creators, and freelancers, there is potentially even more value added. For instance, if you are a fitness instructor, you can use Willa to allow your clients to pay on a given plan while Willa pays you upfront. While Bare Minerals might not care for you offering them payment flexibility, your fitness client might.
In this area specifically, Willa supports bank transfers and credit or debit cards as a payment method. Again, this is probably more relevant for broader forms of creators than content creators working with large brands. Although, if you’re used to working with smaller direct-to-consumer brands, Willa could be a good fit if these companies are a bit more resource starved than large companies.
Your clients don't need the app, and there is no complicated sign-up process. The clients or brands just use their preferred mode of payment and complete the payment. In case the payment is late due to internal approval, insufficient cash flow, or accounting cycle, Willa’s dedicated team can even assist you in getting your funds quickly.
Besides generating professional invoices for your customers, the team handles all the documentation required to get paid. Your clients will have a seamless experience working with you, allowing you to concentrate on your craft rather than worrying about late payments, forms, or W9s.
Willa empowers creators to act as true business entities that are able to offer their clients payment flexibility. If Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solutions like AfterPay, Affirm and Klarna is for the Gaps and Amazons to offer customers flexibility, Willa allows creators to offer a base level of payment flexibility that small creators wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
Willa's 2022 Superfast Sweet: Win a Tesla
Willa is recently running a massive sweepstake called "Superfast Sweepstake" where they are giving out a Tesla to the winner. The fine print basically says it's a 3-year prepaid lease on a Tesla, but that's still pretty cool.
Even if you don't win first place, you could win one of the two runner-up awards: SUPER73-S2 Electric Motorbike or a DJI FPV Drone.
To enter, you need to download the app and send a payment request. If you already have an app and account, you need to send another request. Each request counts as 10 entries.
But, why is a creator finance company giving away a free Tesla (lease)?
David Dobrik started the trend of giving away Teslas all the time. Maybe Willa is trying to win that same mind space in creators' minds, that they are just as cool as one of the largest and most successful creators ever.
Who uses these creator monetization products?
Who uses Lumanu?
Lumanu is actually built for both creators and businesses. They serve both sides of the transaction. On the creator side, they serve all forms of creators like:
- Influencers
- Graphic designers
- Photographers
- Podcasters
- Freelancers
Meanwhile, in terms of serving brands or business entities, they support:
- Talent managers
- Brands
- Agencies
Meanwhile, according to the company’s official site, some of the actual creators that use Lumanu include:
That’s pretty diverse since all these creators are on different platforms, serve different niches and offer different services.
Who uses Willa?
Willa is similarly used by creators and freelancers. The company’s site says they have over 10,000 creators on the platform. However, a 2021 article mentions them having 150,000 creators on the platform.
Also, the company has an entire webpage dedicated to reviews from creators using the platform. Most of these reviews just reference being from the app store, but the page also includes a quote from beauty influencer Beautejadore saying: “I no longer have to track down payments. I’m paid the day the campaign closes. I feel like it’s too good to be true."
Understanding the Pricing and Costs
Lumanu's Pricing
Lumanu comes in three packages, but only the free, creator page is relevant to creators directly using Lumanu. A free package for Creators and Freelancers, Business Lite, and Business Pro for talent managers, agencies, and brands. Business Lite costs $99 per month while Business Pro costs $299.
Willa's Pricing
Willa is free, but when you actually use their instant payment feature, you pay a 1.5% express withdrawal fee and a 4.5% early cash-out fee. Lumanu is better for macro creators as the pricing doesn’t scale, while Willa is ideal for micro creators as it’ll be more economical for smaller deal amounts.
Key Features: Lumanu vs. Willa
Lumanu comes with some great features such as:
- Approving and paying invoices instantly
- Sending bulk invoices
- Reducing tax reporting obligation
- Splitting payments automatically with collaborators
Meanwhile, Willa comes with a couple of features such as:
- Joining an easy-to-use app for free
- Withdrawing instantly with a small 2.9% fee
- Allowing invoice documents to be paid via debit or credit cards
- Getting paid in less than 30 minutes after submitting the invoice
They are pretty similar products but because they are focused on slightly different use cases, the features differ slightly.
Pros and Cons of Both Monetization Products
Lumanu Pros and Cons
Pros
- No monthly fees for small creators
- Helps with tax documentation
- Supports multiple collaborators on a project
- Caters to more than just social media creators (e.g. graphic designers, etc.)
Cons
- Only the free package is relevant for creators
- Pricing doesn’t scale well for bigger businesses
- Have to go through a 1-on-1 onboarding to get set up
Willa Pros and Cons
Pros
- Free to join
- Simplifies the invoicing and payment procedure
- Withdrawing funds is instant with a small fee
- Professionally created invoices
- Can pay invoices via debit or credit cards
Cons
- Early cash-out fee of 4.5%, which can be a meaningful sum
- Express withdrawal fee of 1.5%
- Only available in the US
Taking a Look at their Apps
Lamanu's App: Less of a Focus
Lumanu released version 1 of their app back in June 2021. They've since had around 10 to 15 updates to their app. It's pretty new but hard to make much sense of this data in a vacuum (we'll have to see how fast Willa is developing.).
However, while Lumanu has a 4.9 stars rating on the Apple App store, that's based on a meager 35 reviews, which is hardly meaningful. The reviews are pretty good though, with creators saying things like: it's really easy and they're happy it exists.
Overall, hard to draw too many insights from the actual app store reviews. Maybe a year from now, the company will have prioritized its app more. While this is hardly a great proxy to learn much, the company's webpage does get about 150,000 monthly page views according to SimilarWeb. Maybe more creators use Lumanu as an app? In fact, that can't be true as they're telling creators to download the app when you go to their creator-facing page.
Given that Lumanu focuses on serving businesses and creators, maybe they've been focused on serving the business side more to kick things off.
Willa's App: Seems like a Priority
Willa seems a lot more dedicated to their app than Lumanu.
The app has a 4.8 rating on the app store, so 0.1 lower than Lumanu's 4.9, but Willa's rating is based on more than 800+ reviews. That's a lot more legit than 35 meager reviews.
Not only that, but if you poke around a bit, the company started the app in 2022 but has updates regularly on the app, not to mention detailed version notes if you wanted to know what they're fixing up.
While a company's velocity on product development isn't the final factor that one should consider, usually companies that prioritize development will end up building a more robust product as long as they are listening to their users. That aligns well with the fact that Willa has 22x more reviews on their app than Lumanu as well. Usually, users leaving a review means they are impressed (or sometimes incentivized to leave the review.) Given Willa is running a campaign and giving out a Tesla, it wouldn't be shocking that they are telling users to give them a 5-star review in exchange for some incentive. However, it really just shows the company is smart across the board.
However, worth noting is that Willa's site gets under 5,000 monthly visitors based on Similar Web data, as it shows nothing, which usually means under 5,000 monthly unique visitors. Perhaps, Willa is focused on their app without caring for anyone coming to their site.
Expert’s Verdict (and Peblo)
Both platforms have their pros and cons, but Willa is the better overall option for creators.
Willa is the better option for creators. It is free to join and has lower fees for withdrawing funds. It also simplifies the invoicing and payment process, which can be a hassle for creators. However, it is only available in the US. Their speed of development hints they might come out ahead in the long run as well.
Lumanu is a good option for creators as well, especially if you are based in Europe. It helps with tax documentation and supports multiple collaborators on a project. However, the pricing doesn't scale well for bigger businesses or larger deals. If you have goals to be a creator with millions of followers and lots of brand deals, keep that in mind.
Both products have their pros and cons, but ultimately it is up to the creator to decide which one is best for them. And not to mention there actually are tons more out there and new ones are popping up every day. If you are based in the US and need to get paid quickly, then Willa is a great option. However, if you are based outside of the US or need more features and flexibility, then Lumanu is a better option.
Curveball: Peblo
Not to throw in a quick curveball, but there's also a platform called Peblo that allows creators to get paid early. Instead of requiring you to send the invoice through Peblo though, you can just upload your brand contract or invoice and get paid early on it. It's a bit of a different spin, but still interesting.
The company's site says they've worked with brands like Youtube, Manscape, Instagram, Depop, Pixi, and Steve Madden. They also have a handful of creators that are speaking very highly of them in testimonials on the site.
Despite Peblo seemingly like a great product, it's not as well known as Lumanu or Willa. This is namely because, unlike Lumanu and Willa who each raised $15M+ in venture capital, Peblo didn't raise much. Instead, they were acquired pretty early by Wayflyer.
While Peblo is based out of the US, in New York specifically, Wayflyer is an Ireland-based unicorn. It seems the company is still serving creators in the US, but it will be interesting to see how the acquisition could impact the business and product and ultimately, creators.
The Final Word on Creator Cash Advance Products
Lumanu, Willa, and Peblo are just three players in a new space that's serving creators' financial needs. There will be more and more players and each one will be slightly different in how they operate.
As a creator, it might even make sense to try a handful of them and see how you personally feel about them. Maybe Willa's app makes you love it more or you feel more secure about the fact that Peblo is backed by a unicorn.
For now, the functionality they all offer is quite similar, but it'll be interesting to see how the companies each develop - and who else enters the market.
![Lumanu vs. Willa, Battle of the Creator Cash Advance Apps [2023 Review]](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626be0409a74b1a1df7b7df5/651dcd4750681e571267e7c6_62e4d22b32c44cd23e1f29b8_Lumanu%2520logo%2520(2000%2520%25C3%2597%2520750%2520px).png)
