Price the work, not the follower count
Follower count is the laziest possible pricing input, and brands increasingly know it. What you are actually selling is a package: your production time, your creative judgement, your audience's trust and the usage the brand gets. A 60 second video that takes a day to script, shoot and edit is a day of skilled work regardless of whether 3,000 or 30,000 people follow you.
Start from an honest hourly floor: what your time must earn for the collaboration to make sense. Then count the real hours a brief demands, including reading it properly, product familiarisation, reshoots and revision rounds. That number, not a follower multiplier, is your baseline.
The factors that legitimately move a rate
Once you have a baseline, adjust it for the things that genuinely change the value of the job.
- Scope: number of videos, formats, lengths and whether raw footage is included
- Usage rights: organic posting on your profile is one price; paid ads usage or licensing is another conversation entirely
- Exclusivity: any window where you cannot work with competing brands deserves compensation
- Turnaround: rush deadlines compress your other work and can justify a premium
- Engagement quality: a small audience that acts on your recommendations is worth more per view than a large passive one
How pricing works inside the Club
NanoBuzz campaigns arrive with the fee or barter value already stated in the invitation, because brands set budgets per campaign and creator tier upfront. Your pricing skill still matters twice. First, when judging an invitation: knowing your floor tells you instantly whether an offer respects your work. Second, when a brief has negotiation room: a grounded counter based on scope reads as professional, a random higher number does not.
Knowing your numbers also protects you outside the Club, in direct brand deals where nobody states terms upfront. Our Academy guide on pricing collaborations goes deeper, with worked examples for nano and micro tiers.
Common pricing mistakes to retire
Working for exposure is the classic, but subtler mistakes cost more over time: not charging for usage rights, accepting exclusivity for free, quoting before reading the full brief, and never raising rates as your craft improves. Every one of these is fixable the moment you treat pricing as part of the job rather than an awkward afterthought.
FAQ
Should I publish a rate card?
Have one ready, but treat it as a starting grid, not a menu. Rate cards anchor conversations and filter out unserious inquiries; specific briefs still deserve specific quotes once you know scope, usage and deadlines.
How do I price a barter offer?
Convert it to an hourly rate: product value divided by realistic hours of work. If that rate would embarrass you in cash, the barter is underpriced, unless the product itself is something you genuinely wanted.
What if a brand says my rate is too high?
Ask which part of the scope to trim rather than dropping the price for identical work. Fewer deliverables, shorter usage, no exclusivity: scope moves with price. Cutting your rate while keeping full scope teaches the market your first number was fiction.
Do rates differ between TikTok, Instagram and YouTube?
Often, because production effort and content lifespan differ. A polished YouTube video usually demands more hours than a TikTok, and formats with longer shelf life can justify more for usage. Price the effort and the value, not the logo of the platform.
Does NanoBuzz take a cut of my fee?
No. The Club never charges creators a commission, membership fee or subscription. The fee stated in your invitation and e-contract is the amount the campaign pays you.