There’s a question that shows up in the first email from almost any brand: “what’s your rate?”. And there’s an answer that leaves you badly placed in both possible directions: name a low number and you work for free, or name a high one you can’t explain and the conversation ends right there.
The problem isn’t the number. It’s that almost nobody knows what they’re actually charging for.
What you’re really selling is four things
When a brand pays you for a partnership, it isn’t buying “a post”. It’s buying four separate things that can be priced separately, and that almost always get bundled into one number nobody breaks down.
One: production. Shooting, editing, writing, reshooting because the light shifted. It’s work with measurable hours. A photo carousel and a scripted reel don’t cost the same, even though both are “a post”.
Two: distribution. Your community. It’s the only piece most people price, usually off follower count, which is the worst available signal. What gets paid for is people seeing the content and reacting to it, not a number sitting on your profile.
Three: usage rights. The brand’s ability to take your content and run it outside your account: on their feed, their website, their paid media. This is the piece most often given away and the one worth most. A video of yours running as a Meta ad for six months returns far more to the brand than the original post, and it usually gets thrown in “as part of the deal”.
Four: exclusivity. Not working with competitors for a period. That’s a restriction on your business, so it’s a cost to you: if you say yes, it gets priced separately with a written end date.
Turning that into a number
There’s no universal formula, and be wary of anyone selling you one. But there’s an order that works:
- Start from your floor. What you need for the piece to be worth making, counting your real production hours. That number doesn’t get negotiated down; if the budget won’t reach it, the deliverable shrinks instead.
- Add distribution based on your account’s real engagement, not your follower count. If two formats perform very differently for you, price them differently.
- Add a percentage for usage rights, scaled to the term and the channels. Without a defined term there’s no possible price: “forever and everywhere” is a content buyout, not a partnership.
- Add exclusivity if they ask for it, bounded by category and by time.
- Round up and get it in writing.
What to say when they ask your rate before telling you anything
Nothing, yet. It is completely reasonable to answer with two questions before naming a number:
What deliverables do you have in mind, and for what dates? Will the content run outside my account? If so, on which channels and for how long?
With that you can quote. Without it, any number you give is wrong: either you left usage rights out, or you priced a three-month campaign like a single story.
Three mistakes that cost real money
Pricing per follower. It’s convenient and it’s a bad measure. A twenty-thousand-person account whose community replies sells more than a two-hundred-thousand one that scrolls past, and brands that have been at this a while already know it.
Giving away usage rights. If the content is going to end up in an ad, that’s a second sale. Put it in the agreement.
Accepting “we’ll pay you in product”. It can make sense when the product is expensive and you were genuinely going to buy it. It stops making sense when it covers less than your production hours, or when it turns up instead of a fee that was already discussed.
What changes inside a network
This is exactly what Venture180 takes off your plate. Each campaign’s terms — deliverables, dates, usage rights, exclusivity and payment — get negotiated and written down before you shoot anything, and you can turn it down without losing your place in the network.
But it’s still worth being able to read the proposal. A creator who understands what they’re selling negotiates better, even when they don’t have to.