What to Charge to Put in Your Media Kit

What to Charge to Put in Your Media Kit

Brands ask "What's your rate?" for a reason. They're checking whether you know the answer — and whether you'll fold if they push back. A media kit with no pricing tells them exactly what they want to know: you're still figuring it out.

What you charge matters. But whether you show what you charge in your media kit is a separate decision, and it's one most creator advice skips entirely. This guide is about that decision — the pricing psychology behind it, how to format rates so they land as a floor and not a ceiling, and what to include so a brand reads your media kit and responds with a budget, not a negotiation tactic.

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The Short Answer: Should You Put Rates in Your Media Kit?

Yes. Showing rates removes a negotiation lever brands rely on. When a brand doesn't know your number, they can start low and watch you react. When they already know it, the conversation changes — they're deciding whether to move forward, not trying to anchor you below your worth.

Transparency works in your favor when the number is yours and you can defend it. The goal isn't to publish an immovable price list — it's to show up with a starting point that signals you're a professional who knows the market.

Here's a rough baseline for mid-tier creators before add-ons:

Published 2026 pricing guides, including Influee and Hootsuite, are sources for market rates.

These are base rates — add-ons not included. Usage rights, exclusivity, boosting, and link-in-bio placements all change the total, and those belong on your rate card too.

Build a rate card brands will respect →

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The Pricing Psychology of Showing Your Rates

Transparency shifts the power dynamic

When a brand reaches out and asks for your rate, they already have a budget in mind. Their goal is to land below it. "What's your rate?" is a bid opener, not genuine curiosity.

If you respond with a number, you've anchored the conversation. If you respond with "it depends" or ask them for their budget first, you've handed them the anchor. They'll tell you a number low enough that anything you say next feels like you're negotiating upward from their figure.

Putting rates in your media kit sidesteps that entirely. The brand knows your starting point before the conversation begins. That's not a weakness — it's positioning. You're not asking permission to charge that much. You've already stated it.

The "let's discuss" problem

Some creators leave pricing out of their media kit deliberately, reasoning that flexibility is an asset. The logic makes sense on its surface: if a brand sees a rate higher than their budget, they might not reach out at all.

The reality is different. Brands with real budgets aren't scared off by seeing a rate — they evaluate it. Brands who ghost when they see a number were probably never going to pay market rate anyway. Leaving pricing out doesn't expand your opportunities; it attracts underpaying brands and signals that you're open to whatever they're offering.

Creators who consistently under-earn are often the ones who "let's discuss" their way through every deal. Every conversation starts from zero. Every negotiation begins with the brand's number.

How brands read your rates

A rate in a media kit signals three things: you know the market, you've worked with brands before, and you're prepared for this to be a professional transaction. All three are things you want a brand to believe.

When your rate is presented cleanly — line items listed, add-ons defined, usage rights called out separately — a brand reads it as the work of someone who has done this before. When you produce your pricing only after they ask, and it's a single round number with nothing behind it, the follow-up question is always "can you do it for less?"

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What Rates to Include (and How to Format Them)

Start with your base rate by deliverable

Your base rate is the content fee: what you charge to create and post the content, before any additional rights or restrictions. List it by deliverable — one line per format.

For a mid-tier creator active on Instagram and TikTok, a rate card inside a media kit typically covers:

• Instagram Reel
• Instagram Feed Post
• Instagram Stories (set)
• TikTok Video
• YouTube Integration (if applicable)

Each deliverable gets its own line with a rate. Don't bundle them pre-emptively — brands come with specific asks, and you want each piece to have a visible number. Bundling before you know what they want leaves money in formats they were willing to pay for individually.

Frame your rates as starting points, not ultimatums

The most common fear about publishing rates is that a brand will take them as a hard ceiling. That fear assumes the wrong thing. Rates in a media kit are your starting point — they can go up based on deliverables, rights, and brand fit. They don't go down.

Language that helps: label the section "Base Rates" and include a note that usage rights, exclusivity, and other add-ons are priced separately. That framing tells the brand there's more to the total — it doesn't invite them to negotiate the base rate down.

Use tiered pricing only if it reflects real differences

Some creators publish tiered packages — a "starter" package, a "brand partnership" package, a "campaign" package. This can work, but only if the tiers represent genuinely different scopes of work. If the difference between tiers is mainly the price, brands see through it quickly.

The cleaner approach for a media kit is a simple rate card: base rates by deliverable, add-ons listed separately with their pricing logic. That's harder to cherry-pick than a package and easier for a brand to work with when building a campaign budget.

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Add-Ons and Usage Rights: Price These Separately

Add-ons are where most creators leave money on the table.

A brand deal rarely covers just the content. When a brand sends a brief, they usually want some combination of the content itself, the right to reuse it, possibly the right to run it as an ad, and sometimes a period of exclusivity. Each of those is a separate line item. None of them should be folded silently into your base rate.

The add-ons that belong on your rate card:

Usage rights. The right to reuse your content after posting — for their website, email, or organic social. Typically priced as a percentage of your content fee per month. Paid usage (running your content as an ad from their account) costs more. Whitelisting or Spark Code access — running ads from your account — costs more still.

For reference: organic usage rights run 15% of your content fee monthly. Paid usage runs 40% monthly. Whitelisting runs 75% monthly. The longer the term, the more the total.

Exclusivity. If a brand wants you to avoid competitor partnerships for a defined period, that restriction on your income has a price. A 30-day exclusivity window typically adds 30% of your content fee. Longer terms cost more.

Link in bio. A link in bio is high-conversion real estate. Brands often ask for it casually, as if it's included. Price it as 10–15% of your rate per month it's in place. See the full breakdown in the link in bio pricing guide.

Boosting rights. Ad code access, Spark Codes, whitelisting — the brand's ability to run paid ads using your content or your account. This is one of the most undercharged line items in brand deals. When a brand runs a paid ad from your account, your name and face appear on their ad. That's not included in your content fee. It's a separate right, priced accordingly. Full details in the ad boosting rights guide.

Your media kit doesn't need to list every possible scenario — it needs to make clear that add-ons exist and that they're priced separately. That alone changes how brands approach you.

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A Worked Example: What a Rate Card Inside a Media Kit Looks Like

The line items come together like this for a lifestyle creator at 100K followers on a typical brand deal.

Without the add-ons, she might have quoted $2,800 and called it done. The full deal, priced correctly, is a materially different number — and every one of those line items is something a brand would have been willing to pay if she'd named it.

The rate card in her media kit doesn't need to pre-price every scenario. It needs to show the base rates clearly and note that usage rights, exclusivity, and boosting are separate. Then, when a brand reaches out with a specific brief, the deal gets priced from those building blocks.

Selah builds that breakdown from the brand's brief automatically — paste the message, get the line items, including every add-on the brief mentions. That's the rate card in practice.

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How Omitting Rates Costs You

Creators who leave pricing out of their media kits tend to let the first offer anchor every negotiation. They spend the deal working up from a number they didn't choose.

Creators who show rates up front get different first offers. Not always higher, but brands who are serious about the partnership respond to a stated rate with a real budget conversation. The brands running low anchors don't send that first email.

The race-to-the-bottom problem in creator pricing is partly a transparency problem. When no one publishes rates, everyone negotiates blind, and the advantage goes to the side that negotiates more often — the brands.

Publishing rates, even as starting points, changes the floor. It tells the brand what the market looks like from the creator's side. And if you're doing this right, your rate card reflects the full scope of what they're asking for — content fee, usage, exclusivity, and all.

That's what your media kit should do: show up before the conversation starts and set the terms of it.

Build a rate card brands will respect →

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Frequently Asked Questions

Will showing my rates in a media kit scare off brands?

Brands with real budgets aren't scared by published rates — they evaluate them. Brands who disappear when they see a number were unlikely to pay market rate regardless. Showing your rates filters for the right conversations, not fewer of them.

Should I show a single rate or a range?

A single base rate per deliverable is cleaner and easier for brands to work with. If you have flexibility based on brand size or campaign length, note that add-ons and deal scope affect the total — but don't publish a range that invites a brand to negotiate toward the low end.

What if a brand's budget is below my listed rate?

That's a conversation you can have — scope adjustments, fewer deliverables, shorter usage terms. The point of a stated rate is not that it's non-negotiable in every direction, but that it establishes where you start. You negotiate from your number, not theirs.

Do I need to list every add-on with its price?

Not necessarily. Your rate card should show base rates by deliverable and note that usage rights, exclusivity, and boosting are priced separately. The specific add-on fees can be quoted once you see the brand's brief and know exactly what they're asking for.

What's the difference between a media kit and a rate card?

A media kit is the full document — audience demographics, engagement data, past partnerships, platform stats, and pricing. A rate card is specifically the pricing section of that kit. Selah builds the rate card: a formatted, line-item breakdown of what you charge, ready to include in your media kit or send on its own.