A little guidance on charging for UGC..
I recently wrote an article on How To Become A UGC Creator and it’s getting a lot of hits, so I thought that I would follow up a few months on, with some advice on how to charge for UGC. Like all social media work, the UGC world is constantly evolving and expanding, and rates vary massively from creator to creator. Generally, people undercharge because they don’t know any better, or they’re happy to be paid a certain rate for the work involved. And then on the other end of the spectrum, I’m sure there’s also lots of creators that overcharge, because it’s not worth their time otherwise. And then you also have to factor in the brands who are hiring the creators, who’s budgets can so wildly vary. It’s a tricky one, because with all self-employed work, you’re always going to get people within the same industry that are charging different prices.
I feel I’m in a position to give a little more advice on charging for UGC work now, when I first started I was accepting as little as £100 for a single video, and now, I’m often making four figures per video. I have good equipment, including the latest iPhone, and a whole lot of experience creating content for myself and brands – so I charge what I’m worth, which is honestly what it’s really all about. I’ve spent the best part of the last 3+ years creating video content almost daily, and consistently working on the quality of my content, as well as my editing skills. I’ve actually even gone to the lengths of learning latte art this year, which is now getting me lots of milk/coffee work in, how good is that?!
What To Factor Into Your UGC Rates
I can’t sit here and tell you what to specifically charge for each video. I can only give you a rough idea, and that’s because there are so many things to factor in. Some of these include:
The Brief
How complex is the brief you’ve been given? You could be being asked to sit in front of your phone and discuss a singular topic which is pretty easy right? Or, you could be asked to go to the shop, buy a list of ingredients, cook a specific recipe, all whilst filming the entire thing. I’ve had some jobs where I’ve had to decorate my entire house which has taken all day! I would charge less for a simple brief, and charge more for a complex, more time-consuming one.
The Edit
Sometimes brands simply want the footage handing over as is, which is really straightforward. And sometimes, they want a really creatively edited and put together piece of content that takes hours to produce. Sometimes they can ask for multiple edits of a video, and sometimes they can ask for it in various formats. Again, I would charge less or more based on how much of my time this is going to take up.
Expenses
Brands can often expect you to go out and purchase items from their stores, or film things on location. Sometimes the stores or locations are miles away and mean that you have to not only take time out of your day to go, but have to use a car/fuel/public transport to get there. I would expect all of these costs to be reimbursed so I’d probably add it to my overall fee when giving my quote, or ask that expenses are an addition to the invoice.
What You Should Charge For UGC
If you’re a beginner to UGC work, I would focus on a few different things. The first task being your experience with creating and editing content, like nearly everything in life, you’ll get better at something the more that you practice. The second task that I would recommend focusing on, is your portfolio of work, so you may want to start off by charging low so that you can build this up. The last thing to factor in, is your brand connections – it’s taken me years and years of working in the content industry to build up my brand connections, so this is something that takes time and patience. Charging attractively cheap fees can help with these initial brand connections, whilst you’ll be building your portfolio alongside.
Beginner
As a complete beginner to content creation, if you’re struggling to get started, I would start with charging £50-£150 per video. This is really affordable pricing for marketing materials and lots of small brands will snap this up. Smaller brands can be great to work with whilst you get better at creating content and build up your portfolio. You can then gradually increase your rates over a period of time as you become more experienced.
Intermediate
If you’ve been creating content online for a while, and have a fair bit of experience, then I would charge around £400-£700 per video. This is a good benchmark if you’re getting regular work in, and will help to give you a stable and reliable income, without potentially losing out on all of the brand work that doesn’t have a larger budget.
Advanced
If you’ve already worked with lots of brands, have regular work coming your way and have good online engagement (which means you’re consistently putting out high quality content) then I would recommend charging between £800-£1500 per video. If you’re at this stage, you’ll just know, because you’ll be getting lots of brands in your inbox and you’ll likely be turning some work away. After you’ve hit this level, you can pretty much charge what you want within reason, you just have to figure out what aligns with your time and hourly rate.
VARIANTS TO PRICING
There’s always going to be variants to this pricing, like I mentioned before, different brands have different budgets. You may get emailed about a brief and a brand can’t afford your rates, but you lower them anyway because you really want the job/work. And sometimes, you accept a lower rate because you simply have bills to pay and a family to feed! But I really hope this helps if you’re a UGC creator and are struggling with what to charge. It’s a total learning curve and honestly, I’ve always winged it with my pricing and it’s pretty much worked out for me nearly every time.
It can vary so massively from job to job on what you charge, or receive as payment, and you can increase your rates literally, whenever you like. If you feel you’re being underpaid for the quality of your work and how much time you’re putting in, then charge more. It’s so important to understand and know your worth as a content creator, and it really is that simple. No, you won’t always get the job, but that’s real life and it’s okay. If you really really want a job but the brand doesn’t want to pay you enough, sometimes you just take it for the experience and being able to add that work to your portfolio. The main point to remember, is not letting brands walk all over you and massively underpay you, I always have a minimal limit and it’s good to have that in mind when negotiating.
Let me know if you’re a UGC creator or thinking about getting into it, and if this is helpful in any way? 🙂
