Farah Shams
A creator platform that takes payments, survives going viral, and ranks itself, all on a flat, predictable monthly running cost.
3M+
Followers across platforms
2.4M
TikTok community
326K
Instagram followers
Top 2%
UK TikTok creators on Favikon
The client
Farah Shams (@fdontcare) is a British-Egyptian content creator based in the UK with over 3 million followers across platforms: 2.4M on TikTok, 326K on Instagram, and active communities on Facebook, Twitch, Snapchat, and YouTube.
She ranks in the top 2% of UK TikTok creators and the top 1% of UK video-entertainment creators on Favikon. Her content spans comedy sketches, cultural commentary, beauty and fashion, charitable challenges, and Palestine advocacy.
She is represented by talent agency LimitsNoMore and has partnered with brands including Sheglam and Clineca.
The brief
A creator with a 3M-strong audience had no home of her own. Everything lived on platforms she does not control. She needed one destination that could:
Convert audience attention into brand-partnership enquiries, the revenue engine
Run charitable donation challenges with a live leaderboard, taking real money safely
Survive a traffic spike when a video pops, without falling over or running up a bill
Rank on Google for her name and for "UK influencer collaboration" style searches
What we built
A fast, single-destination site plus a dedicated brand-collaboration funnel and a full donation platform.
Charitable donation engine
Supporters fund live challenges through Stripe, with preset amounts, an optional public leaderboard, and a progress bar that updates in real time. Card details never touch our servers, only Stripe’s secure iframe.
Brand-collaboration funnel
A dedicated page presenting audience stats, collaboration formats, and a partnership-enquiry form, built to turn agency and brand interest into booked work.
Contact system
A contact flow with spam protection, profanity filtering, and abuse rate limiting, so enquiries arrive clean.
Private admin dashboard
Farah’s team can launch challenges, track donations, and manage enquiries without touching code.
Search and AI-assistant optimisation
Structured data (JSON-LD), a sitemap, an llms.txt file for AI search engines, and rich social-share previews. The site is built to be the answer when someone Googles "Who is Farah Shams?"
The technology
Every layer was chosen for speed, security, and predictable cost at viral scale.
Framework
Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript
Modern, fast, server-rendered for SEO
UI
MUI v7, custom theme, variable fonts
Polished, on-brand, responsive
Payments
Stripe (PaymentIntents + webhooks)
PCI-compliant, no card data on our servers
Database
PostgreSQL via Prisma
Donations and enquiries stored reliably
Hosting
Vercel
Global edge network, auto-scaling
Rate limiting
Upstash Redis
Blocks abuse and spam at the door
Bot protection
Cloudflare Turnstile
Stops bots without annoying real users
Analytics
Cloudflare Web Analytics
Cookieless, GDPR-friendly, no consent banner needed
Monitoring
Sentry
Catches errors before users report them
We load-tested the site with k6 before launch. The read path, the pages fans actually see, sustained roughly 950 requests per second on a single local machine alone, before Vercel’s global scaling even enters the picture. Every defence layer, bot protection, same-origin checks, and rate limiting, held under sustained attack with zero breaches. When one of Farah’s videos goes viral, the site does not blink.
Cookieless analytics, no consent banner, masked error tracking, a proper privacy notice, and a documented sub-processor list. Compliant by design, not bolted on.
Running costs
One of the strongest selling points: a platform that takes real payments and handles millions-of-followers traffic, on a flat monthly cost that does not move when she goes viral.
Hosting (Vercel)
Pro$20 / month
Database (Prisma / PostgreSQL)
Starter$10 / month
Rate limiting (Upstash Redis)
Fixed 250MB, eviction$10 / month
Domain (farahshams.com)
Annual~$1 / month
Bot protection (Cloudflare Turnstile)
Free$0
Analytics (Cloudflare)
Free$0
Error monitoring (Sentry)
Free tier$0
Total infrastructure
~$41 / month
Payments run on Stripe, which charges per transaction (UK cards: 1.5% + 20p), so it only costs money when money comes in. Hosting, database, rate limiting, domain, monitoring, and bot protection are all covered in that flat ~$41 monthly figure. No surprise invoices, no per-seat licensing, no scaling cliff.
The result
Farah now owns a destination she controls: a site that converts her audience into brand-partnership revenue, lets her community fund charitable challenges safely, ranks for her name, and absorbs viral traffic without a wobble.
All running on lean infrastructure with a flat monthly cost that holds steady through every viral spike.
Enterprise-grade architecture. Predictable running costs.
Want a platform like this for your brand?
Octet Lab designs and builds fast, secure, search-ready sites for creators and brands.