SocyAds - Influencer Marketing Marketplace

SocyAds is a full-stack web marketplace that connects brands and buyers with social-media creators and influencers. It follows a gig-based model in the spirit of Fiverr or Upwork, but specialized for influencer marketing across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Twitch. Creators list their services as gigs with tiered packages, buyers discover and order them, pay securely, and collaborate through the platform, and administrators keep the marketplace healthy - all in one place that replaces the scattered DMs, emails, and spreadsheets the industry usually runs on.

The platform is built around three roles, each with its own dashboards, APIs, and workflows. Buyers browse and filter gigs or search with AI, view creator profiles, place orders, and message sellers through delivery, revisions, and a final review. Sellers apply to join through a multi-step onboarding with identity verification, build a professional profile, create listings through a six-step gig wizard, and fulfill orders while building their rating and earnings. Admins review seller applications, moderate gigs, manage users, and watch the marketplace through analytics dashboards.

At the centre is a complete order lifecycle. A buyer picks a package on a gig page, pays through Stripe Checkout, and an order is created in the database with the buyer and seller, the package details, and a payment status that a Stripe webhook keeps in sync. From there the buyer submits requirements, the two sides exchange messages and files on the order, revisions can be requested, and the buyer leaves a review at the end. Gigs themselves move through their own moderation workflow from draft to pending to active, so nothing goes live without admin approval.

A standout feature is AI-assisted discovery. Instead of only filtering by category, a buyer can ask in plain language for what they need, and an OpenAI-backed endpoint interprets the query, scores the available gigs by relevance, and returns ranked recommendations with formatted pricing and platform context - turning a vague brief into a shortlist of the right creators.

Authentication and user management run through Clerk, with sign-in and sign-up handled by Clerk and a webhook that syncs every user-created, updated, or deleted event into the application's own MongoDB user records, verified with signed webhook signatures. Each user's role, whether buyer, seller, or admin, is then enforced both in the API routes and in the interface, so people only see and do what their role allows.

Under the hood the application is a Next.js App Router project in TypeScript, with more than sixty REST API routes grouped cleanly by domain - gigs, orders, seller, buyer, admin, payments, AI, auth sync, meetings, and uploads. Data is modelled in MongoDB through Mongoose, with schemas for users, gigs, and orders that capture everything from tiered package pricing and gig metrics to embedded order messages and reviews. Forms are validated with Zod, file uploads for portfolios, gig media, and verification documents are handled through UploadThing with server-defined permissions, and the admin analytics are charted over configurable time ranges.

The front end is a responsive interface built with React and Tailwind CSS on top of accessible UI primitives. It spans a full marketing site with a hero, stats, categories, featured gigs, top influencers, and testimonials, buyer and seller dashboards, a messaging centre for order-level collaboration, a meetings area for scheduling, and public influencer listings.

Security was treated as a first-class concern. Every protected route relies on session validation, admin actions go through a dedicated admin check, webhook calls from both the authentication provider and the payment provider are verified by their signing secrets, role-based access is enforced from the synced role field, and all user input is validated before it reaches the database.

SocyAds closes the full marketplace loop - creator onboarding, gig listing, AI-assisted discovery, secure payment, fulfillment, and admin governance - on a modern Next.js foundation with clear domain separation and established services for authentication, payments, storage, and AI. It is the kind of platform that is built to scale toward enterprise features such as dispute resolution, notifications, and multi-currency support.