• Livestreamer N3on pays an army of "clippers" to post snippets of his content on social media.
• Clipping is one of his top expenses: He paid out over $1.4 million in a recent five-week period.
• The clipping economy can expand a streamer's audience and also incentivize inflammatory content.

You may have never tuned into N3on's livestream. Thanks to "clipping," he might have popped up in your social feeds anyway.

The top-10 Kick streamer, 21, belongs to a group of livestreamers who have gained mainstream attention in recent months thanks to clipping, where people are paid to post grabby moments from longer videos or podcasts on social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

An hourslong stream might only get 40,000 live viewers, but a successful clip can fetch millions of views, helping a streamer land partnerships with brands and celebrities.

Streamers like N3on have helped create an elite class of professional clippers who command high prices. Clipping is one of N3on's largest expenses. In a recent five-week period, he paid out over $1.4 million to 303 clippers, according to a document his team shared. In any given month, he estimated that he's paying at least one clipper upward of $100,000.

"I feel like my life is clipping now," he said.

N3on, whose real name is Mikyle Rafiq, said he has a network of around 1,000 clippers. About half belong to a group he and fellow streamer Adin Ross built. The rest are paid by Kick.

Other top creators also have clippers who post on their behalf. YouTuber MrBeast has his own clipping platform, Vyro, that helps promote his content.

Rates for clippers can vary depending on factors such as a streamer's level of fame. Rafiq pays clippers on the higher end of the market for a big Kick streamer — $40 per 100,000 views, or $50 if he especially wants to incentivize them.

Clipping has its defenders and critics

Clipping can help a creator reach a wider audience that might not be watching their livestream or podcast — and get them into the center of internet discourse.

On the other hand, the clipping economy can incentivize creators to create inflammatory moments and stretch the truth.

"A lot of it is staged," said Mustafa Aijaz, VP at SoaR Gaming, a digital entertainment company and creative agency. "Audiences will call it out as clip farming. But people will still watch it."

Rafiq, who's been trying to reform his negative public image, said he used to do "crazy stuff" and even paid clippers to post bad PR about him to keep his name relevant.

He said sometimes eye-catching clips can come from subpar streams.

One of his most-viewed clips came from a stream he and former rapper Iggy Azalea did from a yacht that ran into technical problems and was barely seen.

"The clippers made it seem like it was this insane, crazy stream," Rafiq said. "No one actually watched the stream. They just saw the clips, and they're like, 'Wow, N3on and Iggy had a great time on this yacht.'"

• "Clipping" marketing, a practice where creators get paid to repost video clips, is taking off.
• Top-tier clipping creators can now earn thousands of dollars a month, with guaranteed pay.
• Clipping has gained popularity among podcasters, Kick streamers, and YouTubers like MrBeast.

There's a new class of creators moving from side hustlers to in-demand pros.

Dubbed "clippers," these creators are paid to post snippets of podcasts, livestreams, movies, or songs on TikTok and other social apps, creating the impression that they're trendy.

Even if you haven't heard of "clipping," you've likely seen this emerging social-media strategy in the wild.

YouTubers, podcasters, and Kick streamers are early adopters of the tactic, which is performance-based and usually only pays out if a video gets significant views.

The clipping community is filled with side hustlers who are happy to earn $200 from a viral video. However, as the category has matured and attracted larger budgets, a new professional class of high-performing clippers has emerged. These clipping all-stars can still get performance-based pay, but they're also being offered guaranteed retainers of $500 to $1,500 a month to ensure they get to work, according to one "elite clipper" application viewed by Business Insider.

"An elite clipper is someone who runs hundreds of pages, and across those hundreds of pages, multiple have millions of followers or a minimum 100,000 followers," said Evan Stanfield, cofounder of the clip-marketing agency Clipping Culture. "If we're paying a monthly retainer, we can ask them to post 20 or 30 times a month, instead of whenever they feel like it."

These "top 1% of clippers" can earn five figures a month, Stanfield said.

Clipping is gaining popularity at a moment of flux in the world of social media marketing. As algorithmic feeds become more personalized, hiring influencers to post sponsored content doesn't necessarily translate into views (unless you're a superstar). Marketers who post clipping campaigns only pay when their content performs.

YouTuber MrBeast recently launched his own clipping platform, Vyro, which he uses to promote his channel, according to the company's website.

"The clippers that we're talking about are not like influencers," said Johnny Cloherty, CEO of the marketing-agency Genni. "You're getting people that are like you and me, or maybe some college kids that are just looking for some extra dough."

Clippers can sign up for campaigns in Discord servers, side-hustle sites like Whop, or marketing platforms like Genni. While they're often paid to clip footage, at other times the task is to add a brand's logo to a viral video clip or to embed a song beneath a post.

They're typically offered between $1 and $4 per 1,000 views, marketers told Business Insider, though some agencies offer higher rates when creators reach thresholds like 100,000 or 1 million views.

To promote the launch of Beast Land, MrBeast offered creators $2 for every 1,000 views on clips they posted about the pop-up theme park, for example. A Vyro promotion for a November boxing match between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. offered the same rate. One of Clipping Culture's recent briefs asked clippers to promote footage from Sabrina Carpenter and María Becerra's Lollapalooza Argentina appearance for around $1 per 1,000 views.

"It is a little bit of a roll of the dice for the clippers, but it's a super low lift for them," Cloherty said. "These clippers have become an ecosystem and a community out there that kind of know what they're doing, and know the pros and cons of it."