How to Price Your Brand Deals: A Creator's Rate-Setting Guide

Why Guessing Your Rate Is Costing You Work

Most creators price their first few brand deals the same way: they pick a number that feels big enough not to be embarrassing, then hope the brand does not push back. It works, until it doesn't. Either the brand says yes instantly (a sign you priced too low) or they vanish without a reply (a sign you priced blind, with nothing to back the number up).

Pricing brand deals well is not about memorising a formula. It is about understanding what a brand is actually paying for, and being able to explain your number in one sentence if they ask.

You Are Not Pricing In A Vacuum

It helps to remember how much company you have. Across Lifestyle & Everyday Living alone there are more than 464 creators active on Get Blogged right now, with a further 138 in Travel & Tourism, 86 in Fitness & Training, 83 in Food & Recipes, 82 in Beauty & Skincare and 79 in Fashion & Style. Brands browsing any of these niches are comparing you against dozens, sometimes hundreds, of other creators with a similar audience size.

That is not a reason to undercut everyone else. It is a reason to have a rate that is consistent, explainable and tied to what you actually deliver, rather than a number you adjust on the spot depending on how the conversation is going.

The Five Things That Actually Move Your Rate

Strip away the guesswork and every brand deal is priced on the same five levers. Learn these and you can price almost any brief with confidence.

Format. A single Instagram Story costs less than a long-form blog post with photography, which costs less than a bundled campaign across three platforms. Price the format, not a flat "collaboration fee".
Usage rights. Organic-only content (it lives on your channel, nobody else touches it) is the cheapest. Paid usage, where the brand runs your content as an ad, costs more. Whitelisting or full usage rights, where the brand can use it indefinitely across their own channels, costs more again.
Exclusivity. If a brand wants you to avoid working with competitors for a set period, that is a separate line item, not a favour.
Niche demand. Some niches convert better than others for certain brands, and scarcity matters. A well-established creator in a smaller, high-trust niche can often charge more than a much larger account in a saturated one.
Turnaround. Rush briefs with a 48-hour deadline are worth more than briefs with a three-week runway. Say so.

Build A Rate Card Before You Need One

The single biggest upgrade you can make to your pricing is writing it down before a brand asks. A simple rate card removes the improvisation, and improvisation is where underpricing happens.

Keep it short: a base rate per format (single post, story set, blog post, video), then clear add-ons for usage rights, exclusivity and rush turnaround. Round numbers. No ranges. A brand reading "£350 for one Instagram Reel, organic use only" knows exactly what they are getting and can say yes without a back-and-forth.

Review it every few months as your audience and engagement grow, and do not be afraid to raise it. A rate card that never changes is a rate card that has fallen behind your actual value.

Common Pricing Mistakes That Are Easy To Fix

Discounting to "get the relationship started". The first rate a brand pays is the rate they expect going forward. Discount the deliverable, not the rate.
Leaving usage rights undefined. If the contract does not say how long and where the brand can use your content, assume they will use it everywhere, forever, for the price of a single post.
Quoting a single number for a multi-part brief. Break the brief into its parts and price each one. It is easier to defend and easier for the brand to trim if their budget is tight.
Never asking for the brief before quoting. A rate without a brief is a guess. Ask what the brand wants delivered, by when, and how they intend to use it, then price against that.

Put A Number On It, Then Hold It

You do not need a marketing degree to price brand deals well. You need a rate card, a clear grasp of the five pricing levers, and the confidence to hold your number when a brand pushes back. That confidence gets easier every time you can point to a clear reason for the figure you have quoted.

If you are ready to put your rate card in front of real briefs, create your free Get Blogged profile and start receiving campaign briefs from brands looking for creators in your niche.