What to charge — and what you're giving away free.

Why nobody can give you a single number

A rate card that says a certain follower count equals a certain fee is wrong often enough to be dangerous. The same creator should charge very differently for a single organic story versus a reel the brand will run as paid advertising for a year with exclusivity attached.

The follower count barely moved between those two. The value transferred moved enormously. Price the value transferred, not the audience size — that is the whole discipline, and most creators never learn it because everyone quotes them a follower-based number instead.

The five things that build a rate

1. Deliverables. How many assets, in what formats, with how many revision rounds. Each additional deliverable has real cost to you — shooting time, editing time, and a slot on your feed you cannot sell twice. Bundle discounts are reasonable; free extras are not.

2. Usage rights. Whether the brand can only benefit from your organic post, or can also run it as paid advertising, put it on their website, use it on a billboard or in a marketplace listing. This is the single largest and most commonly given-away component of a rate.

3. Term and territory. Rights for three months cost less than rights forever; rights in one country cost less than worldwide. Perpetual worldwide usage should carry a substantial premium, and you should be suspicious of any brief that asks for it casually.

4. Exclusivity. If you cannot work with a competitor for six months, the brand is buying income you would otherwise have earned. That has a price, it should scale with how long and how broad the restriction is, and it is always negotiable.

5. Audience quality. Engagement, audience relevance and buying power. This is where two creators with the same follower count legitimately diverge — and it is the component our matching engine weighs most heavily.

Usage rights: the thing you keep giving away

Here is the pattern we see constantly. A creator quotes a fee for a reel. The reel performs. The brand then runs it as a paid ad for eight months, in every state, with spend behind it that dwarfs what the creator was paid — and the creator never agreed to that, or agreed without realising what they were agreeing to.

Organic posting and paid amplification are two different products. If a brand wants to put media budget behind your face, that is advertising usage and it should be priced separately, with a defined term and territory. Instagram's partnership ads make this technically easy for brands, which means the request is now routine — you should expect it and have a number ready.

The version to be most careful about is the brief that quietly says perpetual, worldwide, all media. Ask for a term. If the answer is that it has to be perpetual, then the price has to reflect that it is perpetual.

How to quote without underselling

• Ask what the content is for before you name a price. Organic only, or paid usage? What term? Any exclusivity? You cannot price what you have not scoped.
• Quote a package, itemised. Base deliverables, then usage as a separate line, then exclusivity as another. Itemising makes negotiation about scope rather than about your worth.
• Give a range only if you must, and make the bottom of it a number you are genuinely happy with — you will be held to it.
• Negotiate scope, not price. If the budget is fixed and lower than your quote, remove a deliverable, shorten the usage term, or drop exclusivity. Never simply cut the number.
• Put the term in writing. A rate agreed verbally with no defined usage window is how creators end up as unpaid ad talent.

Barter, and when it is acceptable

Product-only deals are worth taking in exactly two situations: the product is genuinely worth more to you than the fee you could command, or you have no portfolio yet and need sample work. Outside those, "exposure" is not payment and a brand with a media budget has money for creators.

Where products form part of a paid deal, treat them as a bonus rather than as part of the fee. Every deal through our network pays cash; products can be added, they cannot be the whole consideration.

If you are quoting for UGC instead

UGC pricing works differently, because you are selling production rather than reach. Follower count is largely irrelevant and usage rights become the dominant component of the quote. Becoming a UGC creator covers how that market works.

Either way, get your media kit in order first — a brand that can see your audience data clearly argues about price far less.