How to price your first brand deal (without undercharging)

The single most expensive mistake new creators make is naming a number too quickly. A brand emails, asks "what's your rate?", and the panic-reply is almost always too low. Here is how to set a rate you can defend — and stop leaving money on the table.

Start from a baseline, not a guess

The rough industry baseline for a dedicated YouTube integration is $15–$25 per 1,000 views the video is expected to get. So a video that reliably pulls 50,000 views is a $750–$1,250 integration before any adjustments.

That range is a starting point, not a law. Treat it as the floor you negotiate up from, never the ceiling.

Adjust for the things that actually matter

A flat per-view number ignores everything that makes your audience valuable. Adjust the baseline for:

• Niche. Finance, B2B and tech audiences convert at far higher rates than general entertainment. A 20,000-view finance channel can out-earn a 200,000-view meme channel.
• Engagement. Comments, click-through and watch time tell a brand whether your audience listens. High engagement justifies a premium.
• Deliverables. A 60-second integration is not the same as a full dedicated video, plus a pinned comment, plus a link in the description for 12 months. Price each piece.
• Usage rights. If the brand wants to run your clip as a paid ad, that is a separate licence — charge for it. (See the contract clauses that quietly cost creators money.)

Never give the first number off the top of your head

When a brand asks your rate, the right answer is a question: what are the deliverables, the timeline, and the usage rights? You cannot price what you cannot see. Buying yourself a day to put together a real quote costs you nothing and signals you are a professional.

This is also where a media kit earns its keep — it puts your real reach and engagement in front of the brand before you ever talk numbers, so the conversation starts from value, not from "how cheap can we get this."

Quote a package, not a single video

Brands rarely want one video. Offer tiers — a single integration, a two-video bundle, a quarterly partnership — and the mid-tier becomes the obvious choice. Bundles raise your total deal size and lock in repeat revenue, which is worth far more than a one-off.

Track what you actually charged

The fastest way to get better at pricing is to remember what worked. Log every quote, every counter, and every closed rate so your next negotiation starts from data instead of memory. Caelo's brand-deal CRM tracks each deal from first email to paid, so you can see your real average rate climb over time — and know exactly when you have room to ask for more.