Both Sides of Every Contact: Why Every Creator Is Also a Buyer

I was on a call with a creator last year — just a check-in, nothing strategic — and he mentioned offhand that he was looking for a new video editor. “If you know anyone good, let me know.”

I knew three. I’d placed two of them with other creators in my portfolio. Made an introduction. The creator hired one within a week.

No commission. No fee. No angle. Just a connection that cost me thirty seconds and made me the most useful person in his inbox that month.

But here’s the thing that clicked for me afterward: that creator — who I’d always thought of as a traffic source — was also a buyer. And the video editor — who I’d always thought of as a service provider — was also a seller.

A matchmaker who spent fifty years connecting buyers and sellers built his entire career on one insight: every contact is both a buyer and a seller. The person who sees both sides has twice the inventory of the person who only sees one.

An operator at a cocktail bar holds a Rolodex card up to the light, revealing hidden text on the back side

Translate this to the toll position world and the implications are immediate.

The one-sided view

Most operators see their network in one dimension:

Creators = traffic sources. They have audiences. They generate clicks. You build infrastructure to capture those clicks and monetize them. The creator’s value is their traffic.

Merchants = product sources. They have products. They pay commissions. You promote their products through your infrastructure. The merchant’s value is their affiliate program.

This is accurate. It’s also exactly half the picture.

The two-sided view

Every creator in your portfolio is also a buyer.

They buy tools: email platforms, video editing software, analytics dashboards, hosting services, project management apps. They buy services: video editors, thumbnail designers, copywriters, virtual assistants, accountants, lawyers. They buy education: courses on YouTube growth, SEO, monetization, taxes for creators.

All of those purchases represent products and services that someone in your network — or someone you could add to your network — sells.

When a creator mentions in passing that they’re looking for a new video editor, the one-sided operator hears small talk. The two-sided operator hears a placement opportunity: “I know three video editors who work with creators in your category. Want an introduction?”

That introduction isn’t a toll position play. It’s a relationship deepener that costs you nothing and produces goodwill worth more than any single commission. And if you’re structured for it, it can also be a revenue event — either through a finder’s fee from the editor or a referral commission from a service marketplace.

The merchant side

Every merchant in your inventory is also a traffic source.

They have customers, email lists, social media followers, and content channels. A software company whose product you promote through your toll position also publishes blog posts, runs a YouTube channel, sends a newsletter, and speaks at conferences.

The one-sided operator promotes the merchant’s product to the creator’s audience and collects a commission. The two-sided operator also asks: “Your blog gets 50,000 monthly visitors. Would you feature my [landing page tool / diagnostic / free resource] in a blog post? I’ll send you qualified leads in exchange.”

Now the merchant isn’t just paying you commissions — they’re sending you traffic. Traffic you can capture through your infrastructure, add to your intelligence database, and monetize across your entire product inventory.

The merchant goes from a single revenue line (commissions on product sales) to a dual revenue line (commissions + captured traffic). Same relationship. Double the value.

The network map

At one partner, the one-sided view and two-sided view produce similar results. You have one creator, a handful of merchants, and limited interactions between them.

At five partners, the two-sided view explodes the opportunity space.

Partner A (fitness creator) also buys supplement tracking software. Partner B (nutrition creator) also buys professional photography for recipes. The supplement tracking company (Merchant X) also has a newsletter with 30,000 subscribers. The photography studio (Merchant Y) also serves e-commerce brands who need product shots.

The one-sided operator sees 5 creators and 15-20 merchants. The two-sided operator sees a network of 20-25 entities, each of which is simultaneously a potential traffic source, product source, service buyer, and referral node.

The cross-network intelligence that makes the portfolio valuable isn’t just about subscriber overlap. It’s about seeing the full map of who needs what and who supplies what across every entity in your network.

The practical application

You don’t need a complex system to capture both sides. You need a habit.

Every time you add a new contact — creator, merchant, service provider, tool company — ask two questions:

What do they sell? (This is the obvious one. The product, the service, the content.)
What do they buy? (This is the one most operators skip. The tools, services, and education they purchase as a business.)

Keep both answers in your notes. When someone in your network mentions a need, check your notes for a match. The match might be a formal placement (affiliate link, partnership deal) or an informal introduction (relationship building, goodwill).

Over time, this habit turns your contact database into something far more valuable than a list of creators and merchants. It becomes a network intelligence layer — a map of supply and demand across every entity you’ve ever worked with. The CCI database that starts as subscriber behavior data evolves into a full network graph of who sells what, who buys what, and where the unserved connections are.

The matchmaker’s real asset

The fifty-year matchmaker didn’t get rich from any single deal. He got rich because his contact catalog — his notebook full of who needed what and who had what — was the most comprehensive map of supply and demand in his market. Every new contact added both a buyer and a seller to his inventory. Every deal he facilitated taught him more about who needed what.

The catalog compounded. Not just in size, but in density. More contacts meant more potential matches. More matches meant more deals. More deals meant more contacts. The cycle fed itself.

Your toll position network works the same way — if you see both sides.

Every creator you onboard is also a buyer of services and tools. Every merchant you place is also a source of traffic and data. Every service provider you introduce to a creator is also a potential merchant in someone else’s toll position. The network isn’t a list. It’s a web. And the operator who sees the full web earns from connections that the one-sided operator never notices.

Both sides. Every contact. That’s the discipline that turns a portfolio into a network.