What to charge for UGC.

The question I get asked more than any other, usually in a DM, usually at 11pm: "what should I actually charge?" Here's the answer I wish someone had given me before my first deal.

Quick honesty first. There is no official rate card for UGC. Anyone who tells you there's one correct number is selling you something. What there is, after enough deals, is a set of ranges that brands in the UK will nod at without flinching, and a set of add-ons most creators forget to charge for at all. That second part is where most of the money hides.

Start with a per-video number

Price per video, not per hour. Brands don't care how long it took you, they care what lands in their content folder. As a rough map:

• Just starting, first handful of deals: around £100 a video. Low enough that a brand will take a punt on you, high enough that you're not working for postage.
• Getting booked regularly: £150 to £200. You have a portfolio, you deliver on time, you don't need hand-holding. Charge like it.
• Experienced, brands come to you: £250 and up. At this point your rate is set by demand, not by a blog post.

Multi-video deals get a small per-video discount, not a big one. Three videos is not three times the shooting but it's close, and the edit definitely is. Knock a bit off per video and stop there.

If you want to skip the maths, I built a free rate calculator that puts these pieces together for you. Ten seconds, no signup.

Usage rights are where the money is

This is the section to read twice. When a brand posts your video on their own page, that's organic use, and it's normally included in your fee. When they put ad spend behind it, run it as a paid ad, whitelist it through your account, that's a different product, and it's licensed separately.

Why? Because a paid ad with your face on it can run for months, doing the job their ad agency would have charged thousands for. If they want that, lovely. It costs more.

The clean way to structure it: 30 days of paid usage included, then a per-video fee for longer windows. Something in the shape of £75 extra for three months, £110 for six, £150 for a year, scaling up with your level. A brand asking for "usage in perpetuity" for free is asking you to hand over the most valuable part of the deal for nothing. Say no politely and quote them properly.

The extras nobody prices

Three more things that should be line items, not favours:

• Extra hooks. Same video, different opening lines so the brand can A/B test. Cheap for you to film, genuinely valuable to them. £25 to £30 per hook.
• Raw footage. Once they have your rushes they can re-cut forever. If they want the raws, that's £60 to £75 on the invoice.
• Voiceover only. Reading their script over their visuals is still work, still your voice, still worth £75 to £100.

What actually moves your rate up

Not follower count. UGC lives on the brand's channels, not yours, so your audience size mostly doesn't matter. What does: a portfolio of work that looks like it sells things, clean audio, delivering when you said you would, and being easy to work with over email. Brands rebook the creator who made their life easy. That's the entire game.

Niche helps too. If you can film cars, or kitchens, or fitness convincingly, and there's proof on your page, you can charge above the map for those briefs.

Mistakes that keep rates low

The ones I made, so you don't have to. Accepting "gifted" product as payment past your first two or three practice deals. Quoting a number over voice notes and hoping they remember it the same way you do. Sending rates as a plain list in an email, which reads like a beginner even when the numbers aren't. And the big one, not asking what the content is for before quoting. "It's for our socials" and "it's for our paid campaign" are two different jobs with two different prices.

Put it on paper

Whatever numbers you settle on, how you present them changes what brands are willing to pay. A rate card that looks like a brand deck signals that you take the work seriously, and people negotiate less with someone who looks organised. That's exactly why I made my rate card template, the same structure I use myself, with suggested rates for every level built in.

Anchor high, be sound to work with, and put your prices somewhere they look deliberate. The rest compounds.