What to charge for a sponsored post

Why every rate card you find online is wrong

Search this question and you get tables: so many pounds per thousand followers, tiered by platform. They are all different from each other, none of them cite where the number came from, and most are published by companies selling something to creators.

The reason they disagree is that they are pricing the wrong thing. Follower count is a proxy for reach, reach is a proxy for attention, and attention is a proxy for what the brand actually wants, which is someone taking an action. Every step of that chain varies by an order of magnitude between accounts of identical size.

The useful version of this question is not "what is the rate" but "what am I selling, and what does it cost me to sell it".

The four things that move the price more than follower count

In a real negotiation, these change the number far more than your audience size does. Most creators price the post and give the rest away.

• Usage rights. A post that lives on your grid is one thing. A brand that wants to run it as a paid advert, on their channels, for six months, is buying media — and that is a separate, larger fee. If the contract says the brand may use the content in paid media, you are not being paid for a post, you are being paid for an advert, and adverts cost more.
• Exclusivity. Agreeing not to work with a competing brand for three months means turning down unknown future work. That has a price, and the length and the definition of "competing" both matter. "No other drinks brands" is very different from "no other oat milk brands".
• Whitelisting or ad allowlisting. Letting a brand run ads from your handle puts your name on copy you did not write, to an audience you did not choose. Price it well above the post, or decline it.
• Volume and timing. A three-post package is worth a discount; a rush job over a bank holiday is worth a premium. Both are normal and both are negotiable.

A method that survives contact with a real brief

Work out your floor first, because you cannot negotiate without one. Add up the hours the deliverable actually takes — concept, shoot, edit, captions, revisions, posting, replying to comments — and multiply by what your time is worth. Add hard costs: props, travel, a studio, a second pair of hands. That total is the number below which the job costs you money.

Then add for the four factors above, each priced separately and named separately on the invoice. Naming them separately is the point: it turns "that seems like a lot" into a conversation about which line the brand wants to remove, and usually they remove the usage rights rather than the fee.

Finally, sense-check against what the brand is replacing. If they would otherwise pay an agency to produce and a media budget to distribute, you are cheaper than both. That framing is more persuasive than any follower count.

What to do when they ask for your rate first

Ask for the brief before you give a number, every time. Deliverables, usage, exclusivity and timeline are all unknown until you have it, and a number given without them is either too low or withdrawn later — both of which are worse than a short delay.

If they insist, give a range tied to scope: one figure for organic-only, a higher one with paid usage. That answers the question honestly while making it obvious that the scope drives the price.