Guide 04 · out now
The Brand
Partnership Guide
62 pages. What to charge, what usage rights are actually worth, and a real negotiation line by line.
Prices are in US dollars. If you’re in the EU or the UK, VAT is added at checkout at your country’s rate, and it’s collected and paid by the checkout, not by me.
Written from the other side of the table. Six years of sending the brief, arguing the fee, papering the contract and chasing the invoice.
Have a look inside
Four pages from the middle of it.
Not a mock-up.
Arrow keys move between them.
What’s in it
Five parts, in the order a deal actually happens.
Before anybody emails you
When gifted is worth taking, and when it’s unpaid work. A media kit written for the person who has to justify you to their boss.
Getting in front of them
A do and do-not table I built after three years of getting it wrong. Eight email templates, written out in full. And how to tell a real deal from a time-waster in ninety seconds.
The money
Pricing the content and the licence separately. Whitelisting, exclusivity, and the AI clause that didn’t exist two years ago. And getting paid, which isn’t the same thing as agreeing a fee.
The contract
The eight clauses that cause almost every argument. What good looks like in each one, termination and kill fees, and how to push back without losing the deal.
Saying it’s an ad
The UK rules and the US rules, from the regulators’ own pages, including the one word most creators use that the ASA advises against.
How you use it
Built to be done, not read.
Eight email templates written out in full, ready to adapt and send.
Tick items across nine checkpoints, run on your own contracts and inbox.
Tables: rate bands, usage multipliers, the eight clauses, and the negotiation.
Fillable fields if you type into it instead of printing it.
The bit that makes it different
A real negotiation, with the part where I was uncomfortable.
The hard part is what you type when the brand comes back lower.
Two pages in here walk through a real deal I ran with a fast-fashion brand.
The move that mattered was declining without countering. No new number, no explanation of my costs, no apology. Warm, short, finished. They came back higher.
I could only do that because I had other deals running. If that offer is your rent this month, take it. But get to a place where you can say no, because that’s where the money is.
What that deal actually moved
The opening offer was $5,000. It closed at $6,250. Four emails, about twenty minutes.
Nothing about the work changed. The only difference was that somebody asked.
Every figure in the guide has a source. Where that source is a company selling the thing it measures, the page says so. Where there’s no data, it says that too.
Honestly
Who it’s for, and who it isn’t.
Get it if
- Brands are emailing you and the rate question makes you panic
- You’ve never charged separately for usage rights
- A contract has landed and you don’t know which clauses matter
- You’re disclosing ads and want to know you’re doing it properly
Skip it if
- No brand has contacted you yet. Start with Getting On The Shortlist
- You want a done-for-you rate card built from your real numbers. That’s the $99 audit
- You want legal advice. I explain what these contracts say, and what I watched go wrong. It is not a substitute for a lawyer
- You want a guarantee that brands will say yes. Nobody can promise that
The list
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