Exposing my brand deal rates (how to know what to charge…)

Brand partnerships was my biggest revenue stream in 2023 coming in at just over $217,000 total. But this took years to build up to. And honestly the two hardest parts are one, getting the brand deal offers and two, knowing what to charge for them. In my episode where I broke down my five main income streams, I did go over some tips for how you can start attracting brand deals in those early days. So today I thought I would focus more on figuring out what you can charge for them because I know that's something that a lot of beginner creators struggle with. So today we're going to take some time to go over what your initial brand deal rates can be and how you can increase them over time. I'm going to share all my strategies for negotiation and pricing your content partnerships. So let's get into it. Welcome to the Creator Club podcast produced by CreatorLyMedia. I'm your host Katie. I'm a side hustle YouTuber, turned six figure entrepreneur who's obsessed with social media strategy and content creation. From making YouTube videos in my bedroom as a very cringy 12 year old, to building a social media marketing agency from the ground up in my early 20s, there have been a lot of struggles along my content creator journey. My mission with this podcast is to share the lessons that I've learned in the hopes that it will make your journey in growing as a creator a little easier and a lot more fun. And by the way, this club is open to everyone. Whether you have one or one million followers, you have a seat at this table. So let's dive in. Now one really significant component of figuring out what you should charge for your brand deal partnerships is having a good grasp on your social media metrics. Basically, if you don't know what reach you can offer brands, it's going to be really hard for you to figure out what value your content has to them. And as a content creator, my favorite platform for keeping track of all of my social media insights is the sponsor of the Creator Club podcast, Dash Hudson. Dash Hudson is a beautiful user friendly and fully customizable social media metrics app. You can create your own customized visual dashboards to surface the metrics that are most important to you. You can connect your YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and TikTok and see all of the most important social media metrics in one place. And a feature that I think is super cool, the Dash Hudson has is their vision AI tool. Basically vision can predict what content of yours is going to perform well before you even post it. So I can upload a reel that I'm thinking about posting and vision will give me a prediction based on my past contents performance of whether or not this one's going to be a banger. So this can be a really helpful tool for guiding your content strategy and making sure that you're getting the most bang for your buck out of your social media posting listeners of the Creator Club podcast can grab a 14 day free trial of Dash Hudson when you head over to dash Hudson dot com slash creator club. And thanks again to dash Hudson for making this podcast possible. Before we dive into the specifics, let's just go over some of the basic principles of pricing yourself when it comes to brand deals. And also I hope that you'll forgive my slightly croaky voice. I'm kind of getting over a cold right now. But we're going to get through it nonetheless. It's so important to recognize there is no cheat code or one size fits all formula when it comes to coming up with your prices for your brand deals. Each creator's rate is going to be unique to them. And it's going to be dependent on various factors, including audience demographics, the type of content that you make, and the deliverables that you're promising to the brand and whether you're offering things like ad usage or exclusivity throughout this whole process. It's really important to embrace experimentation and try to get over that fear of negotiation and know that it's going to be a learning curve. It's going to take time. It's going to take multiple brand deal opportunities where you negotiate your rates with someone before you truly figure out the proper rate you should be charging. And by proper rate, what I really mean is basically what's the highest amount that like the market is willing to pay you that you also feel good about charging that you feel like is worthwhile your time investment. So just because I am going to tell you what I charge for brand deals later on in the episode, that doesn't mean that you should just copy and paste my rates and start using them, even if we have the same exact number of subscribers or followers or whatever, because all of these specific factors are going to make a difference. So to illustrate this process of experimentation and figuring out your own rates, I thought it would be helpful to rewind the clock a little bit and tell you my own story of how I figured out what I should be charging for brand deals. All right. So let's go down memory lane back to 2018 when I officially went full time as a freelance videographer slash YouTuber. My very first brand deal offer came in and about I want to say like November or like maybe October of 2018 at the time I only had 2500 subscribers. And when I got this brand deal offer girl, I wasn't sure it was real. I was like, is this a scam? Because this is amazing. I was so excited. And of course, I was faced with the challenge of figuring out what I should charge the brand. Now, fortunately, because I came from a freelancing background, I was used to the idea of charging people for my video work. I made quotes for clients all the time for real estate, tour videos or promotional videos for their Facebook pages. I mean, it was 2018. Remember of Facebook, we were still doing that. So for this particular brand deal, I decided I was going to quote a rate the same way that I would if I was making this video for the brand as a client. So kind of based on my hourly rate, figuring out how many hours I thought that it would take me. I remember, of course, as a freelancer, that hourly rate also took into consideration like my equipment costs, my subscriptions for like Premiere Pro. And I remember thinking at the time, okay, I'll like increase this rate by like maybe like 10 15% to reflect the fact that I'm going to be posting it on my own account. And you know, they're going to have the benefit of my audience seeing it. So based on that, I charged about $800 for my very first brand deal, which honestly looking back, I'm a little bit surprised they agreed to pay me that much when my channel and my viewership was so small. Maybe it means I should be charging more now. Maybe I just got lucky back then. I don't know. But they did agree to it. And I think also like for that particular brand influencer marketing, they were kind of like new to it at the time. And I also had a very niche audience that was highly relevant to their offering. So it kind of made sense that they wanted to reach the type of people that watched my videos. So once I had that first brand deal in the bank, and I had that experience of a brand actually agreeing to a price that I quoted them, that kind of gave me the confidence to use that formula moving forward, thinking about how much time it was going to take me, my equipment costs, my subscription costs, and then also considering, you know, the extra benefit of my audience seeing it. Obviously, as time has gone on and my audience has grown, I realize that the primary benefit of my brand deals is actually the exposure that they gain from my audience. And so this whole concept of like an hourly rate is less relevant to the way that I price things now. But at the time, it was kind of how I wrapped my head around it. So as I continued on my journey of doing more and more brand deals, I started to implement new strategies that helped me to kind of increase this as a revenue stream. So for one thing, I started to learn that if I quoted a brand a certain rate, and they immediately agreed to that price, I kind of knew that I probably could have charged them more. And so based on that, I started increasing my rates until I started receiving a bit of pushback, right? And I would actually have people negotiating with me. I took that as a good sign that I was getting close to what I should actually be charging. Another big strategy that I implemented, especially in the past year or two, is I started doing three month long contracts with some of my recurring brand partners. So they would sign on to do say three YouTube videos in a quarter. So like one video per month, and you know, at a fixed rate. So I knew what I was going to be getting paid. I could project my income a little bit more. And then for the brand, it was like a guaranteed reliable creator that they could work with. And then part of the strategy, of course, and signing on for just a three month contract is once that three month contract is up, then you take that opportunity to negotiate for an increase on the basis that my audience is always growing. My viewership is always growing. The quality of content that I'm able to produce is always increasing. So you have that opportunity to kind of up that rate every three months if you want to. And I think another big factor in my growth when it comes to brand deals and becoming more confident with it is just acknowledging that it's okay to negotiate. I think in the past, I would get really nervous or like anxious when a brand would email me back saying that they wanted me to do it for a lower price. Like I felt like, oh, are they mad at me or whatever. But the truth is, that's just a very natural part of the process. And if you're not frequently having brands tried to negotiate with you, then that's probably a sign that you're way lowballing yourself. Brand Partnerships managers will just see it as their due diligence to at least try to negotiate with you or get a slightly better deal on behalf of their company in order to make their influencer marketing budget go further, get more results. So you can just anticipate that that's going to happen. So let's just say I was, you know, talking with a brand about doing a YouTube integration and I say to them, hey, you know what? Actually, like my rate this time around is going to be $3,500. Just as an example. And if they come back to me and say, hey, you know, since we're doing three videos together, would you be cool with doing it at $3,000 of video, making it $9,000 total, like, could we make that work? And then, you know, I can basically go back to them, either agreeing to it or I can take my chance and say, you know what? I'd really love to work with you and make it an easier decision for me if we could just meet in the middle. How would you feel about doing, you know, 3,250 as the rate per video? So try not to feel intimidated by these conversations. I know, especially if you're a people pleaser or you're not used to talking about money with people, it can feel really awkward to try to ask for more. You kind of just want to agree to people so that you can like get the conversation over with. But it's important that you take advantage of these opportunities. And I promise you, if someone's coming back to asking for just like a small discount, like, let's say your rate is $3,500, they ask for $3,000. If you come back and ask to meet in the middle, they're not going to be like, no, oh my god, this is so unreasonable. We're not going to work with you. Like, we're like, walking away. That's not going to happen, right? Like if they were willing to do $3,000, then like $3,200 is not that far off, right? So you don't have to worry about scaring people off just because you don't immediately agree to their rates. There is room to have these conversations. So that's been a bit of a look into my own journey of figuring out what my brand deal rates should be. So now let's take it back a minute and talk about specific advice for beginners. So if you're listening to this and you're in a position where you're just starting to get into the world of brand deals and you really don't know what you should be charging for say a YouTube integration or an Instagram reel. Let me talk you through what I would do if I was starting over again, trying to figure this out. So let's just say I'm talking to 2018 Katie who gets that exciting email about that first brand deal offer. This is what I would tell her to do. Start off when you get that first offer by quoting a reasonable rate that you would feel like it's worthwhile for you to make that Instagram reel or do that YouTube integration. It's really important that you choose a number that you feel like wow, I feel so grateful to be getting paid this. Because what you really don't want to set yourself up for is quoting a really low number in order to just get the brand to agree and then you end up feeling like oh my gosh, I've done all this work for like 50 bucks and I feel really ripped off. That's just a really bad way to start off a relationship with a brand and ultimately it's going to come across in the way that you deliver your content. Like if you don't seem enthusiastic about a brand that you're working with, your audience is going to be able to tell and not only is that not going to provide the results that the brand wants, but it's also going to erode that really, really crucial trust that you've built with your audience. So that's why I would really, really encourage you even if you would kind of feel more confident or feel better about throwing out a really low ball number for your first brand deal because you're scared to ask for more don't do it if you're going to end up feeling like you're overworked and underpaid because that just has like negative results all around. Okay, so let's say you throw the number out there maybe like me it's $800 maybe for you it's 500 maybe it's a thousand. You put that rate out there and that first brand that reaches out to you they immediately agree to it no negotiation. If that happens no problem you've already made the agreement so you're going to go forward and you're going to do that brand deal and you're going to add it to your portfolio for later. And a few you know weeks months whenever down the line when you get your next brand deal offer when they ask you for your rate you're going to go ahead and take that last number that you use maybe it's a thousand dollars and you're going to increase it by 20%. So this time around you're going to quote 1200. So let's say it happens again and company A that has just reached out to me and I quoted them $1200 they immediately agree to doing that. I'm going to put it in the back of my mind that for next time you know in a few days or weeks when company B reaches out I'm going to go ahead and increase my rate again. And then I'm going to see how they respond I'm going to start by doing these more comfortable you know maybe 20% increases each time engaging the response of the brand. And if I do this let's say somewhere between three to five times and every single time I'm having the brand come back to me saying like yeah of course sounds good let's move forward. That's going to be a good signal to me that like I am probably really lowballing myself because here I am like three or five times in a row increasing my rate consistently and I have yet to come across a brand that even wants to negotiate with me at all. So if you find yourself in this position I'm going to advise that your next step is to go ahead and double your rate. The reason why I advise doing it at this stage instead of earlier is like you definitely could just you know come in guns and blazing and start doubling your rate every single time from the beginning but in my experience a lot of creators are kind of too nervous to do that you kind of feel like oh my gosh I'm getting these brand deals I don't want to give up this opportunity I don't want to like scare them away by quoting a super high number so that's why those first three to five brand deals doing those 20% increases it helps you to build your confidence and start to figure out like what your rate should be and maybe after the second time you do that you have somebody respond asking to negotiate like maybe to do it for a little bit less that's a good sign that where you started out is like in the ballpark right but if you started it out like really really low and you're not hitting any resistance then you got to make a big jump or else you'll be doing 20% increases probably for a long time before you actually hit what you're like market value would be so when that next company reaches out you're going to quote them like $3,000 or $3,500 and just see what happens my general rule of thumb is that if you're in a position where about half of the time you're getting a bit of pushback or some asking for negotiation that's probably a good sign that you're in the sweet spot that you know like half of companies are happy to agree to your rate right away half of companies want to negotiate you down like a little bit then that's a good sign that you're you're probably in a reasonable spot and don't forget that continual adjustments are really important because not only is the landscape changing and like the market value is always changing and evolving but also your audience is going to continue to grow over time and your viewership is going to continue to grow over time the quality of your content will keep getting better so you want to make sure that you continue to increase your rates to reflect that another thing that's really important to remember when it comes to pricing yourself is that different brands are going to value your content differently so I've done a lot of talking about figuring out what your market value is with the market value of your content and your reach and your audience is but it's important to acknowledge that that's going to be different depending on who you're asking so to use my own content as an example obviously I make a lot of content on my youtube channel on my instagram here on this podcast about social media tips and tricks it's for content creators it's for online entrepreneurs that's my primary audience that's what I do so when a brand reaches out to me whose primary audience is content creators or online entrepreneurs my reach my content is worth a lot to them like sponsoring my content is worth more to them than anybody else because their exact ideal customer is who is watching my videos whereas on the other hand maybe lifestyle brands for instant people that are selling clothes or makeup or skincare my content and my audience is not going to be worth as much to them because that's not what I tend to talk about I don't necessarily have an audience that is really geared towards purchasing makeup or skincare or clothes or at the very least I don't have a track record of selling that kind of stuff to my audience right so the point is even though I might be able to charge like three grand for a youtube integration to a brand that very specifically wants to reach content creators a beauty brand a fashion brand home decor brand it might not be worth three thousand dollars to them because they're not going to see as effective of conversions people actually going ahead and buying from them because the audience fit just isn't quite as good so keep that in mind as you are figuring out your rates negotiating with different brands realistically you are going to have like different rates that you're charging different brands all the time so like I said later we're going to talk about what my actual rates are right now that's not necessarily what I charge for each individual youtube video in fact almost all the brands that I work with have like slightly different just like incremental differences in the rates that I'm charging because of you know maybe when they started working with me I just haven't like increased it yet since our last contract or potentially the brand to audience fit is just not quite as perfect as it is for somebody else and so yeah they're all going to be at like slightly different amounts and that's okay one last thing that I wanted to mention before I truly do expose myself to you and tell you all of my prices the rate that are in my current media kit I think another really crucial thing when it comes to building up your rates being confident in what you're going to charge people is putting together a portfolio of past brand partnerships this is a really great way of showing future brands that you might want to work with the success stories of ways that you worked with other brands in the past and how well it went and all of the clicks you were able to get for them all the sales you were able to make this is why I'd really advise that as you start to do more more brand partnerships make sure that you're following up and getting stats about them if you at all can so in a lot of cases you know brands sometimes will ask for you know screenshots of like your Instagram insights or your youtube insights on a particular video though to be honest with you that's something that I do a lot because for a lot of brands they're more focused on like awareness really than like specific individual conversions but nonetheless sometimes brands might ask you for those numbers and you can share them with them but at the same time I would ask brands if they can share with you the metrics they've collected because a lot of times brands will give you a UTM link or a trackable link so that they will be able to see how many clicks you generated say from the link in your youtube description or the link in you know your Instagram bio but you might not necessarily have automatic access to see those stats that's something that you're probably going to have to reach out and ask the brand about so even though it can feel nerve wracking at least it has to me over the years it is important to try and reach out and ask about those numbers so that you can add you know this information to your media kits so you have some portfolio pieces that you can say here's a real I posted here's the results that it garnered for this brand okay now speaking of media kits it's time to finally walk you through mine and tell you about what my current rates are for all of the different brand partnerships that I offer but once again I want to give a bit of a disclaimer and say just because this is the rate that I list in my media kit does it mean that's exactly what I'm charging for any given brand deal that you've seen on my youtube channel lately or on my Instagram because like I said these numbers are going to vary based on brand to audience fit maybe you know I give them a bit of a discount if we're doing multiple videos together maybe I charge a little bit more if they're looking for usage or exclusivity or maybe they need me to do it on a faster timeline so I'm increasing the rate for the sake of it being you know like a rush order essentially so just know that like you can't necessarily map these numbers on to individual youtube videos and be like oh yeah I know that X company paid Katie you know X or Y because it is on a very case by case basis but this is what my media kit says and this is where I tend to start my negotiations with new brands that come to me okay so currently I am asking $3,000 for a youtube integration my rate for a sponsored series of Instagram stories which is usually two to three frames including a link sticker is $750 an Instagram feed post or an Instagram reel my rate is currently $2,000 and for a TikTok post it to my account my current rate is $750 and finally for a showdown on my email list I'm currently asking $500 and that's to an email list of about 25,000 people with an average open rate of like about 40% so that is basically where I'm kind of starting my conversations with brands these days right around those numbers you can go and like check out my youtube channel and my Instagram to see what my stats are looking like if you're curious to compare for yourself it's kind of scary to be transparent about these numbers because money is such like a sensitive topic but I just know like I would have benefited so much from hearing this from another creator when I was trying to figure out what I should be charging so hopefully this can give you some sense of it though hopefully you've also gotten the idea from the whole rest of the episode that this is so dependent on your specific niche your audience the brands that you're working with and all of that so hopefully I've been able to give you a bit of a guide to even determining your own rates and you know you can see what mine are and how I've landed at them to wrap this whole episode up I just want to leave you with a piece of encouragement and that is in 2022 my total brand deal revenue for the year was about $1,000 and $1,000 and 2023 ended up being just over $2,000 and $1,000 which is kind of crazy that it was like basically exactly $100K more but I still can't wrap my head around that and the encouragement piece is like my channel my YouTube channel which is my primary driver for my brand deal revenue that's how I make the most of it it really didn't grow that crazy much in that time it really was just slow and steady growth continuing to slowly gain subscribers to slowly get more views it's not like I went viral or anything wild happened that allowed for that $100,000 increase it truly was me continuing to build relationships with my brand partners increasing my rate slowly over time and like a reasonable way with my existing partners and looking for opportunities to work with them in other capacities as well as like a YouTube video like pairing and Instagram real with it and Instagram story or getting the podcast sponsored all these things so don't feel like just if your growth is stagnant like if you're not seeing your contact go viral right now or if your follow account is increasing a ton that doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to increase your brand deal revenue because if you're creative and strategic with it you 100% can increase your brand deal revenue quite a bit without having to have a huge jump in you know followers or subscribers at the end of the day it truly is just really difficult to put a price tag on your content because for a lot of us creators it's so close to our heart right like it's our art the way that we connect with our communities but hopefully this guide was able to give you a sense of where you can get started and once again it is so important to have a clear picture of what your metrics are because that is really going to help you when it comes to determining what your brand deal rates should be and if you want to do that you should check out Dash Hudson because it's the best way to analyze all of your social media metrics across platforms and you can check it out at dashhudson.com/creatorclub as always thank you so much for listening thank you for tolerating my nasally voice and the sunshine creeping in on this video I hope you found it helpful always feel free to reach out to me on instagram @katistechli i love to chat with you there and i will catch you in the next episode bye thanks so much for listening to the creator club podcast this show is produced by creatorly media a social media and content marketing agency by creators for creators if you want professional help growing your social media platforms or creating your content come visit us at creatorlymedia.com or @creatorlymedia on instagram if you've listened this far into the episode we want to know who you are seriously thank you so much for listening screenshot your podcast app and share it to your instagram story tagging @creatorlymedia or @katistechli so that we can chat again thanks for listening and remember to keep on creating we'll catch you next time [BLANK_AUDIO]