What to charge as a UGC creator

What the market actually pays

Most rate-card articles publish asking prices, which run well above what campaigns settle at. These are transaction figures instead, from marketplaces reporting what was actually paid. They are in US dollars.

The useful takeaway is the shape rather than any single number. The overwhelming majority of individual collaborations are small. A working UGC income is built from volume and repeat clients, not from one large invoice, and pricing yourself as though every job should be a large invoice is how people talk themselves out of the work.

Building your rate

Start from time rather than from what you saw someone charge. Add up the realistic hours: understanding the brief, setting up, filming, re-filming the take that did not work, editing, exporting versions, and the admin around the invoice. For most single UGC videos that is three to five hours once you are practised, and considerably more the first few times.

Decide what an hour of your skilled time is worth, multiply, and then sanity-check it against the market figures above. If your number lands far above them you need either samples that justify it or a narrower niche where fewer people can do what you do. If it lands far below, you have forgotten the unpaid hours.

Then set a floor and hold it. The floor is the number below which you would rather do something else with the day. Its job is to stop you accepting work that leaves you resentful, which is the fastest route out of this line of work.

What to charge extra for

This section is worth more than your base rate. Almost every underpaid UGC job is underpaid because these were bundled in silently.

• Additional hooks. Three different openings to the same video is three pieces of work, not one.
• Additional aspect ratios. Nine-by-sixteen, one-by-one and four-by-five each need their own export and often their own reframe.
• Paid usage. Running your face in advertising is a separate licence from posting on the brand’s page. Price it by window.
• Whitelisting. The brand running ads from your handle. Separate again, and higher.
• Exclusivity. Not working with a competitor for a period. Price by category width and duration.
• Rush. Anything under seventy-two hours displaces other work.
• Raw footage. Cheap to agree at the start, expensive to hand over later. Decide deliberately.
• Revisions beyond the agreed number. Two rounds included, further rounds quoted.
• Product you must buy. Reimbursed on top of the fee, not absorbed into it.

When to raise your rate

Three honest signals. You are turning work away because your calendar is full. A brand has re-booked you three times, which means they have compared you to alternatives and chosen you. Or your last five quotes were all accepted immediately with no discussion, which usually means you are under the market.

Raise it on new enquiries first, not on existing clients mid-project. Tell returning clients before their next booking rather than on the invoice.

When a brand pushes back

Assume good faith and ask what their budget is. Small brands frequently are not trying to squeeze you; they genuinely have fifteen hundred dollars for the quarter and no idea what that buys. Once you know the number you can shape a job that fits it: fewer videos, fewer versions, a shorter usage window.

What not to do is quietly absorb scope to protect the price. That teaches the client that the extras are free, and you will be doing it on every job afterwards.