How to track brand deal income
The most valuable thing in the log is the deals you turned down, because they are the only record of what your market really pays.
The short answer
Log every offer, including the ones you decline, with the deliverables, the usage and exclusivity terms, the hours it took and what was paid. Without the declined offers you cannot see your own market, and without the hours you cannot tell a good deal from a large one.
The formula
effective rate = fee / hours spent
hours = filming + editing + revisions + admin + calls
net fee = fee - agency commission - production costs - tax reserve
Revisions and calls are the hours creators forget, and they are the hours that separate an easy brand from a difficult one at the same fee.
Worked example
Two deals that look very different on the invoice:
Deal A: 1,200 fee · 9 hours including 3 rounds of revisions
effective rate = 1,200 / 9 = 133.33 an hour
Deal B: 700 fee · 3 hours, no revisions, brief approved first time
effective rate = 700 / 3 = 233.33 an hour
Deal A pays $500 more and is worth $100 an hour less. Ranked by fee you would take A every time, and after ten of them you would be busy, tired and wondering where the year went.
Why the declined offers are the important ones
Accepted deals only tell you what you agreed to, which is a number you already influenced. Declined offers tell you what brands opened at, across the whole range, and that is your actual market.
After eight or ten entries the median opening offer becomes visible, and negotiating from a known median rather than from a feeling changes the conversation completely. It also stops the pattern where a quiet month makes a bad offer look reasonable.
The fields that earn their place
Brand, date, deliverables, fee, usage granted, exclusivity window, hours, and outcome including declined. Nine columns, and every one of them gets used.
Usage and exclusivity matter later as much as at the time. A creator who cannot remember which categories they are locked out of, and until when, will eventually accept a deal they are not free to take.
Payment terms and the date actually paid, which is how you find out that a brand paying well at 90 days is worse for you than one paying less at 14.
What the log shows after a year
Which brands come back, and at what number. Repeat clients are the closest thing to leverage a solo creator has, and they are invisible without a record.
Which categories pay best per hour rather than per deal, which is usually not the one you expected.
And how much unpaid work sits inside the paid work: pitches, calls that went nowhere, briefs rewritten twice. Most creators find this is a fifth of their working time, and having the number is the first step to charging for it.
What this leaves out
- Assumes you can estimate hours honestly. Tracking them for one month usually corrects a surprising amount of guessing.
- Excludes affiliate and platform revenue, which have different economics and are better tracked separately.
- Tax treatment of gifted product varies by jurisdiction and is frequently not zero.
Common questions
- What should I record about a deal I turned down?
- The brand, what they asked for, what they offered, and why you said no. The last field is the one that pays off, because a year later you will not remember whether it was the money, the terms or the timing.
- Should I share my rates publicly?
- Usually not, because it caps you at your published number and removes any room to price for usage and exclusivity. Sharing them privately with other creators in your niche is a different matter and is how most people find out they are underpriced.
- How do I know if my rates are too low?
- If almost every brand accepts your first number without negotiating, they are too low. A healthy rate gets pushback some of the time, and never being pushed back on is information, not a compliment.
Spreadsheets that do this
The formulas above, already built and checked — so you fill in your numbers rather than the arithmetic.
Related guides
Last reviewed 22 August 2026