How to price a sponsored post
The deliverable is the small part. Usage rights and exclusivity are where the money is, and they are usually given away for nothing.
The short answer
Price a sponsored post from four things: what it costs you to produce, what the deliverables are, what usage rights the brand gets, and what exclusivity costs you in foregone work. Follower count is the input everyone uses and the one that predicts value worst.
The formula
production floor = hours x your hourly rate + direct costs
deliverable fee = what the content itself is worth to place
usage = additional fee for running it as paid advertising, by duration
exclusivity = income you forgo by not working with competitors
price = deliverable fee + usage + exclusivity, never below the production floor
The production floor is not a price, it is a refusal line. Quoting it means working for nothing, and going under it means paying a brand for the privilege of advertising them.
Worked example
One dedicated video plus two stories, six hours of work at $45 an hour, $60 of props, six months of paid usage, and six months of category exclusivity where you would normally have taken two deals worth $800 each:
production floor = 6 x 45 + 60 = 330
deliverable fee = 900
usage, 6 months paid = 900
exclusivity = 2 x 800 = 1,600
price = 900 + 900 + 1,600 = 3,400
brand's opening offer = 500
The opening offer of $500 clears the $330 production floor, which is why it feels acceptable. It pays nothing for six months of advertising rights and six months of not working with anyone else in the category.
Usage rights are a media buy
There is a large difference between a post that lives on your feed and a post the brand can run as a paid advertisement for a year. The second is a media asset, and agencies price it in multiples of the content fee rather than as an afterthought.
The clause is often short and easy to miss: perpetual, worldwide, all media. Perpetual means forever, and forever is not something to hand over inside a fee for one video.
Duration and channel are both negotiable. Six months of paid social is a very different grant from three years of everything, and brands are used to being asked.
Exclusivity is the most expensive line and the least noticed
A category exclusivity clause stops you working with competitors for a defined period, which means you are selling future income you have not yet been offered.
Price it by asking how many deals in that category you would realistically take in the window, and what they would pay. If the answer is two at $800, the exclusivity is worth $1,600 and a deal that does not cover it is a loss dressed as a win.
If you cannot estimate it, that is an argument for a shorter window rather than for ignoring the clause.
Why follower count prices so badly
Two accounts of the same size can convert completely differently. One has an audience that has bought things on their recommendation; the other grew from a video that travelled and has no particular relationship with the person who made it.
Brands that have run campaigns before know this, which is why sophisticated ones ask about saves, click-throughs and past campaign results rather than followers. If a brand is pricing you purely on audience size, they are usually inexperienced, and that cuts both ways.
What this leaves out
- Rates vary enormously by niche, geography and audience. The structure transfers; the numbers do not.
- Assumes you retain the content for your own channel. Buyouts where the brand takes it entirely are priced higher again.
- Excludes agency commission, which typically takes 15% to 20% and should be added on top rather than absorbed.
Common questions
- How much should I charge per follower?
- There is no reliable rate, and the ones circulating exist because a rate is easy to publish. Price from deliverables, usage and exclusivity instead, and use audience size only as a sanity check on whether your number is in the right region.
- Should I accept product instead of payment?
- Only if you wanted the product at its retail price and the work is genuinely small. Products cost the brand wholesale and are offered because they are cheap for them, not because they are generous.
- What if I have no idea what to charge?
- Start from the production floor so you never go under it, then add for usage and exclusivity as separate lines. Quoting three itemised numbers is also easier to defend than one large one, and it shows the brand what they are actually buying.
Spreadsheets that do this
The formulas above, already built and checked — so you fill in your numbers rather than the arithmetic.
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Last reviewed 22 August 2026