I did not start with a clean system for managing brand partnerships. I started the way many creators and small business owners do, by navigating each affiliate platform as it came up and trusting that I would remember where everything lived.

At first, it felt manageable. Inefficient, but manageable.

That changed once the volume increased.

Each brand came with its own platform, login, and process. Some links lived in bookmarks, others in email threads, others in notes I was sure I would come back to. Every time I needed to share a link or check a detail, I found myself retracing the same steps. Which platform does this brand use. Where is that login. Why is this taking longer than the actual work.

My initial solution was a spreadsheet, my go-to.

I listed the brands, added affiliate platforms, pasted links, and tried to impose some order. For a short time, it helped. Then it grew. More rows, more columns, more scrolling. The spreadsheet became harder to read and slower to use. Finding the partnerships that actually mattered started to feel like work in itself.

What was meant to simplify things had become another source of friction.

At that point, it was clear the problem was not structure, but organisation. I needed a system that could scale without becoming overwhelming, one that surfaced the information that mattered whilst the rest stayed out of the way until I needed it.

It was time to bring the spreadsheet into Notion. The goal was not to create an elaborate dashboard or recreate a spreadsheet inside a different tool. It was to design a small, focused workspace that supported how I actually work.

That workspace became the Creator Collab CRM, a Notion dashboard for all my partnership details.

The Creator Collab CRM

This system is intentionally contained. It includes only what is necessary to manage partnerships clearly and consistently.

It provides:

  • a central place for brands, PR contacts, and affiliate programmes
  • a clear pipeline for collaborations and campaigns
  • tracking for deliverables, deadlines, fees, gifted value, and affiliate income
  • simple views for active work, priority partnerships, and what is coming up

There are no overloaded dashboards and no extra layers competing for attention. The aim is visibility without noise.

Why it works

Creator admin already comes with enough moving parts. The system supporting it should releive pressure, not introduce more.

This CRM makes it clear what needs attention now, what can wait, and which partnerships are worth focusing on. It removes the need to keep everything in your head or hunt around to find basic information.

It also supports a part of creator work that is easy to overlook: the backend. The agreements, timelines, payments, and follow-ups that affect income, reputation, and ultimately the long-term health of those collaborations.

I built it in Notion because that is where I already think and work, and it gave me the flexibility to shape the system around how I actually operate rather than forcing a fixed process.

Try It Yourself

If managing brand partnerships currently means switching between platforms, maintaining an unwieldy spreadsheet, or relying on memory more than you would like, this system may help.

You can find the Creator Collab CRM in my template shop

It is designed to be simple, stable, and easy to use by beginners.

Over to you

How are you managing brand partnerships right now?
Is your process working, or simply coping.

If you have rebuilt your system recently, or are thinking about it, I would be interested to hear what prompted the change.