One campaign, from my files
$2,000, against a published band of $7,000 to $20,000.
The creator had 552,000 Instagram followers. The brief was a fast fashion campaign. The fee I agreed was $2,000, and it was not a bad negotiation.
Every published rate table would put a creator that size somewhere between $7,000 and $20,000 for a feed post. She got under a third of the floor of that range. If you only have the table, the only conclusion available to you is that she was taken advantage of.
She was not. I know what else was on the table that week, and $2,000 was the number the category supports. Fast fashion sits at or below the bottom of every published band, and it does that consistently, across brands, across creator sizes, across years.
This matters more than it sounds. A creator who thinks she is being underpaid by a brand is in a different negotiation from a creator who understands she is being paid correctly by a category. The first one gets angry and loses the deal. The second one either takes it with her eyes open or spends her energy on a different category.
The five fees I publish
78K paid $700. 120K paid $2,000. 333K paid $2,000. 410K paid $1,000. 552K paid $2,000. All five are on the work page.
Every one of them is below the published band for that size. Three of them are the same number across creators of 120K, 333K and 552K.
Five deals out of my own records. Not a benchmark.
From my own records
Five campaigns, ordered by creator size.
Why the category pays what it pays
Four reasons, and none of them is that they think you are worthless.
The margin on the product is thin and the volume is enormous
A brand selling a $12 top does not have the same money per unit as a brand selling a $180 serum. It makes it back on volume, which means marketing has to be cheap per impression or the model does not work.
This is arithmetic, not disrespect. The same brand will happily spend a great deal in total. It just will not spend it on one creator.
They are buying quantity, not any particular person
Premium beauty books a creator because it wants that creator. Fast fashion books thirty creators because it wants thirty posts, and it is largely indifferent to which thirty.
That is the whole difference in leverage. You are not irreplaceable to them, and pretending otherwise in a negotiation is how creators lose deals they wanted.
The product is the fee, or half of it
Gifted, or part gifted, is normal in this category in a way it is not in tech. If you accept product as part of the value, agree the cash portion as a separate number and in writing.
And gifted is not free work. In most places the value of what you receive is taxable to you. Check that where you live rather than assuming.
The turnaround is short and the usage is often long
Fast fashion moves in weeks. The brief arrives late and the post is due soon, which is precisely when a creator agrees to terms she would have argued about with more time.
Read the usage clause hardest in the category that pays least. A low fee attached to a long licence is the worst deal shape there is.
Where the categories sit
The category moves your fee more than your follower count does.
Roughly where each category falls against the published band for your size. This is the order I saw them fall in over six years of agreeing these fees, not a table anybody publishes.
| Category | What it usually means | Against the band |
|---|---|---|
| Tech, electronics, finance, apps | Longer approval, tighter brief, better paperwork | Top |
| Premium beauty | Pays well, reuses content heavily, so watch the licence | Upper half |
| Mid and premium fashion | Most published rate tables are quietly written from here | Middle |
| Travel and hospitality | Often part paid in stay or experience. Split the cash out | Middle |
| Food and drink | High volume, small fees, usually short usage | Lower half |
| Fast fashion | Quantity buying. Product often forms part of the value | At or below the floor |
The order comes from my own records across six years and roughly three hundred brands. The bands themselves are published market ranges. Neither is a guarantee of what any particular brand will pay you.
When to take it anyway
There are three good reasons to say yes to a low fee, and one bad one.
The first good reason is that you need the work in your portfolio and this brand is a name a better paying brand will recognise. That is real. A media kit with two recognisable campaigns in it opens doors that a media kit with none does not.
The second is that the usage is short and clean. A small fee for a thirty day organic licence is a small deal. A small fee for perpetual worldwide rights is not a small deal, it is a large deal at a small price, and those are two completely different things wearing the same number.
The third is that there is more behind it. A lower fee for a first campaign with a real prospect of a retainer can beat a higher one off. Ask directly whether this is a test, and whether there is a second wave. They will usually tell you.
The bad reason is exposure. Not because exposure is worthless, but because it is unpriceable and unenforceable, and because a brand offering it in place of money is telling you exactly how it values the work. If you would not do it for free, do not do it for exposure.
And if you do come down, get something for it. Fewer deliverables, a shorter licence, a credit, an introduction. Coming down for nothing teaches the brand what your number really is.
Where this comes from
Where the numbers on this page come from.
The five fees and the order the categories fall in are mine, out of six years of agreeing these deals between the brand and the creator. They are my records, not a market study, and I have not extrapolated them into one.
The published bands they are set against are market ranges. Everything else is linked below.
- The work page on this site Ongoing. The five campaign fees, with the creator sizes attached.
- The rate bands on this site 2026. The published market bands each fee is compared against, tier by tier.
- CreatorIQ and influencers.club, State of Creators 2026 August 2026. Context for how unusual it is to earn well from this work at all. 5,095 creators, 67% under $10,000 a year.
What to do with it
Know the category before you name a number.
The band for your size is on the rate bands page, and the calculator runs the multipliers and the usage on top of it.
If the offer is already in your inbox, the offer check asks the seven questions that decide whether it is worth taking.
The list
What brands are actually paying.
Rate breakdowns, pitch teardowns, and when a brand comes to me looking for creators, that goes out here first. The free guide arrives the moment you sign up.
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