The answer to how much to charge for a brand deal is not one number. It is a base fee for the content, plus separate prices for every extra right the brand wants: paid ad usage, whitelisting and exclusivity. Quote it as line items and you stop giving those rights away by accident.
Everything below uses made-up numbers to show the method. They are not market rates. Your base fee should come from your own audience, your past deals and what the work takes you.
What goes into a brand deal rate?
Think of four pieces. The base fee covers the work itself: concepting, shooting, editing and posting one piece of content. Usage covers the brand reusing your video in its own channels or in paid ads. Whitelisting covers the brand running ads through your handle. Exclusivity covers you agreeing not to work with competitors for a set time.
Most new creators quote only the first piece. The brand then asks for the other three in the contract, and because nobody priced them, they come free.
What does a line-item quote look like?
Here is an illustrative quote for one Reel with a skincare brand. The base fee is $1,000. A 30-day paid ad usage license is $400. Thirty days of whitelisting is $300. Sixty days of exclusivity in the skincare category is $250. The total is $1,950.
Notice that the base fee is about half the total. That is normal when a brand wants real rights. If you had quoted $1,000 flat and the brand ran your video as an ad for 30 days and ran it through your handle, you would have done $700 of work for nothing. If they also wanted exclusivity and you never said so, it is up to $950 across usage, whitelisting and exclusivity.
The labels matter more than the amounts. When the brand sees four lines, it can say yes to two and drop two, and you still know what you are selling. When it sees one number, the only move is to haggle on the total.
How do you price usage, whitelisting and exclusivity?
We do not have a source for a standard percentage, so we will not pretend there is one. Use a simple logic instead. Usage and whitelisting get more expensive the longer they run and the more places they run. Exclusivity gets more expensive the wider the category and the longer the window, because every competitor you turn down is money you could have made.
Our opinion: never agree to perpetual usage or open-ended exclusivity for a one-time flat fee. If a brand needs rights forever, the price should reflect that, or the term should be written with an end date. A contract without end dates is a free license.
What should you say when a brand pushes back?
Keep it short and keep the scope as the lever, not your worth. Try: "Happy to work with your budget. Here is what I can do at that number: the Reel plus organic posting, no paid usage and no exclusivity. If you want ads or exclusivity, those are priced separately."
That reply offers a smaller deal instead of a discount on the same deal. You keep the base fee, and the brand decides which rights are worth paying for.
What do the FTC rules say about sponsored posts?
Pricing is only half the job. The FTC's Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers says it is your responsibility to make disclosures and not to rely on others to do it for you. Free or discounted products count as a material connection too, so a gifted-product post needs a disclosure.
On placement, the guide says to make the disclosure hard to miss and not to bury it in a group of hashtags or links. For video, it says the disclosure should be in the video and not just in the description. It names "ad," "advertisement" and "sponsored" as clear terms, and warns that unclear ones like "collab" or "spon" are not enough. We read that as: say it out loud and put it on screen, not only in the caption. The page is general guidance, not legal advice.
What should you do this week?
Open your last brand deal and list every right the brand got beyond the post itself. Put a price next to each one, even if you never charged for it. That list is the start of your next quote.
Then write your base fee and your three add-ons in a short template you can paste into an email. Pair it with a current media kit: our media kit checklist covers what to include.
If you are building the business side of being a creator more broadly, our Full Time Creator playbook ($97) walks through it start to finish. And if you want hooks for your next sponsored Reel, the free 30 hooks signup is on our guides page.