Rates · for creators

UGC Pricing by Deliverable in 2026: A Worked Rate Card

August 27, 2026 · 7 min read

Price the deliverable, not the deal. A finished edited video, the raw unedited footage, an extra hook variation, and a revision are four different pieces of work. Bundling them into one number hides which part you are actually being paid for.

The fix is a rate card. Set one base number for your core video. Then add fractions of that base for everything else a brand might ask for.

There is no published market average here. Asking rates vary too much by niche, platform and experience for one number to mean anything, and this guide will not invent one. What follows is the pieces every rate card needs, the logic for pricing each, and one fully worked example so you can see the structure.

Start with your base deliverable

Pick the single thing you make most often. For most creators that is one finished, edited, platform-ready video: one round of light edits, delivered as a file or posted once. Set a base rate for exactly that.

Every other line on the card is defined relative to this number, so get it right first. Base it on what you would take for that job alone, independent of how well any post ends up performing.

If your base changes — your account grows, your niche shifts, a specific brand pays more per view — the rest of the card should move with it. Do not reprice line by line.

Raw, unedited footage

Raw footage is a separate deliverable from an edited post. The brand is asking for something you would not otherwise produce: unedited clips they can cut themselves, often for their own paid ads. It takes filming time and coordination, but skips your editing time. It is neither free nor the same price as the finished video.

A common structure: price raw footage as an addition on top of the edited video, if both are wanted. Or price it as its own lower base, if raw footage is the only thing requested — filming without editing is genuinely less work than filming and editing both. Which structure you use should match how much of your job, for you personally, is editing versus filming.

Hooks and variations

A hook variation is a second, or third, opening to the same underlying video. Brands usually want this so they can test which one performs best as an ad. This is real, distinct work, layered on top of a video you already built. It might be a new opening line, a new on-screen setup, or a reshoot of the first few seconds.

Price each additional variation as its own line item. It should be smaller than the base video, since most of the work, the body of the video, is not repeated. But it is not token either, since a hook variation done properly is a real filming and editing task. Decide up front how many variations are included in the base price, if any, and charge per variation past that.

Revisions

Decide, before the deal starts, how many rounds of revision are included in the base price, and what happens past that. One included round of minor edits is standard. Unlimited revisions are not. An open-ended promise on a fixed-price job is the single thing most likely to make a deal unprofitable, no matter how well you priced everything else.

State this plainly in the deal terms, rather than leaving it implicit. For example: one round of revisions included, additional rounds billed per round. Define what counts as a revision versus a new deliverable — a brand asking for an entirely different concept, after approving the first one, is not a revision.

Usage rights and whitelisting sit on top, not inside

None of the above includes the brand's right to run your content as a paid ad. It does not include keeping it on their own channels long-term, or whitelisting it through their ad account. Those are usage rights, priced separately again — usually as a multiple of your base rate, tied to how long the usage lasts and how exclusive it is.

That is its own full topic, so it gets a full guide rather than a paragraph here. The short version: price the content first, then price the rights to use it, as two separate lines.

A worked rate card

Here is one way this comes together, using a $300 base rate for a single edited video as the anchor. The dollar figures are illustrative — swap in your own base, and the ratios still show the structure.

Writing it down changes the negotiation

A rate card, even a one-page personal one, changes the negotiation. It turns 'what is this worth' into a menu of what you actually need. Brands often ask for more than they need, because asking is free. A line-itemed card makes the cost of each addition visible, which tends to trim requests down to what is actually useful.

It also protects you from scope creep after the deal is agreed. Say a revision request clearly falls outside the included round. Or a brand asks for a hook variation that was never priced in. Either way, you have a number to point to, instead of negotiating from scratch mid-project.

If a deal mixes a flat line-item price with a CPM on the main video, keep a record of both. A brand deal with several rate types in one agreement is easy to lose track of by the time payment is due.

In Sway9, the CPM piece of a deal like this can be set up as its own campaign, with its own rate. What the video is earning, as views come in, stays attached to the deal — not living only in an old message thread.

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