Arc or Media: clips from your footage, or the whole channel

$2,000 is the minimum for a public Arc campaign, and $2,000 is also the bottom of the Media Full Page range.

Same number, two different jobs, and I have watched people pick the wrong one because the figures looked alike.

So this is the post I should have written before the first person asked VALORAE Arc to run a channel from nothing.

Arc has never been built to run a page from nothing. I did not know how to say that without losing the conversation, so here is the long version.

Step 1: What Arc does with your footage

VALORAE Arc is the clipping agency.

You send episodes, we cut them into short clips, caption them, and upload them. That is the entire product, and it stays that narrow on purpose.

The upload part matters more than it sounds. A clip sitting in a shared folder is not a post, and half of what a clipping retainer buys is that the queue keeps moving without you.

If you have a podcast, a recorded talk, or an hour of founder footage sitting in a drive, that is Arc's raw material. The closest map I have of the two delivery styles is clip delivery vs managed distribution.

On price, Arc has no public price list, but an in-house campaign starts from $1,000 and a public campaign has a $2,000 minimum. Where your project lands above those floors gets set on the call, which I go into in podcast clipping cost.

Step 2: The four receipts

Four numbers from the Arc home page, and I want them beside every claim in this post rather than floating above it.

500+ videos delivered, 10M+ views generated, 65%+ retention, and 1000+ posts uploaded.

Those are house totals across everything we have cut. They are the only Arc performance figures I will print here, and I do not have a per-client number I am willing to publish.

And the honest caveat sits right next to them: a retention average across hundreds of clips says nothing about what your third episode will do.

Step 3: What Media runs

Media is the social media agency, and the word that matters is runs.

VALORAE Media takes the channel end to end: the edits, the titles, the captions, the scheduling, the posting, and on the top tier the comments and the calendar too.

The top tier is the one where you stop logging in.

So if the phrase "nobody is running it" describes your channel, this is the side of the house you want, and Arc will only ever hand you files.

Arc hands you files. Media runs the feed. That one gap is most of the difference.

Step 4: The listed tiers

Three tiers, straight from valoraemedia.com/faq.html as read on 27 September 2026.

Edit is editing only, and it is quoted on the call.

Manage covers editing plus titles, captions, scheduling and posting on one or two platforms, with a monthly report. It is quoted on the call too.

Full Page runs $2,000 to $3,500 a month and covers every platform plus the calendar, strategy, repurposing and comments.

Now the trap from the top of this post.

A $2,000 public Arc campaign and a $2,000 month of Full Page read like the same purchase on a spreadsheet. One buys clips cut from footage you already have, and the other buys a channel being run every day of the month.

No number on either page tells you which house you belong in. Compare the job first and come back to the price with the job settled.

Step 5: The comparison table

Then the caveat under the table, because tables lie by being tidy.

Both sides will take a podcast. The difference is what each one calls done: Arc calls a clip done when it is uploaded, and Media calls the week done when the channel looks like someone lives there.

Step 6: Which to start with, by what you have today

Only footage: Arc.

A channel and nobody running it: Media.

Footage, a channel, and a person already posting: Arc, because a Media retainer would be paying for a seat you have filled.

No footage and no channel: neither yet, and I say that as the person who sells both. Record ten episodes first, then come back, because a clipping agency, an in-house editor or a freelancer all need something to cut.

And this is where the $2,000 trap from the top resolves. A channel with no footage behind it is a Media job, whatever the two price lines look like side by side.

The right answer to that first request was one line pointing at Media, and I should have sent it on day one.

Step 7: The question to bring to either site

Ask one thing before you book anything: who decides what goes out on Tuesday?

Tuesday is the whole test.

If the answer is you, and you only need the clips to exist, book Arc.

If the answer should be the agency, book Media, and read their own version of this comparison first: Edit, Manage or Full Page, which one.

But do not book either to escape the question. No tier fixes a team that does not know whose job Tuesday is.

I post the working notes on x.com/VALORAEARC and the clips themselves on youtube.com/@ValoraeArc, so you can check the receipts against the output before you email anyone. My own notes live at tgsidd.com.

The short version

• Count your footage before you count your budget.
• Only footage: send it to Arc.
• A channel and nobody running it: talk to Media.
• Do not let two $2,000 figures convince you they buy the same thing.
• Read the three tiers on valoraemedia.com/faq.html before the call.
• Decide who owns Tuesday before you sign anything.

Cutting podcasts and founder footage into clips is what we do at valoraearc.com.