Selah

Methodology

How Selah prices a brand deal

By Brandon Bedford · Last reviewed

The short version

  • A language model reads the brand’s brief. It never does the arithmetic.
  • Every amount comes from fixed formulas, the same ones printed on this page.
  • Usage rights are a monthly share of the content fee (15% organic, 40% paid, 75% whitelisting), scaled by the term.
  • Add-ons are priced at the top of the published range, a little above it on some terms, because Selah’s number is where a negotiation starts. Base rates sit at the published median, checked against what creators actually charge.

The model reads, the engine prices

When a creator pastes a brand’s email, Claude (by Anthropic) reads it and answers structural questions: which deliverables, which platforms, whether the content is mirrored or original, which pieces the usage rights cover, and for how long. It returns no amounts that reach the quote.

Selah’s own code then prices every line from the creator’s saved rates and the constants below, and writes the reply bullets from those figures. The division exists because models are unreliable at arithmetic: before usage rights moved server-side, the note beside the fee named the amount actually charged in 3 of 20 measured quotes.

Base rates

Inside the app, the base rate is the creator’s own: she sets a rate for each deliverable and every quote starts from it. Selah suggests rates at sign-up and publishes benchmarks by audience size, all from one set of figures:

  • A figure for each deliverable at 100,000 followers or subscribers, set against the median of 9 published 2026 rate guides.
  • Scaled by audience on a power curve (exponent 0.85), the shape those guides’ own tables follow: rates rise with following, but doubling your audience doesn’t double your fee.
  • Checked against the rates creators using Selah set for themselves. At 100K the Reel figure sits a little under the published median, because a creator with real deal history at that size quotes below it.
DeliverableAt 10KAt 100K
Instagram Reel$400$2,800
Instagram feed post$200$1,450
Instagram Story set$125$850
TikTok video$275$2,000
YouTube integration$475$3,300
YouTube dedicated video$950$6,600
Podcast mention$1,000$4,400
Blog post$1,250$5,500
Newsletter feature$700$3,200

Followers for Instagram and TikTok, subscribers for YouTube, blogs and newsletters, listeners for podcasts. Podcast, blog and newsletter rates have no published tier tables to check against, so they are Selah’s own figures. Every rate by audience is on the rates pages, each with the published range for that audience beside it. The guides publish tier bands rather than a figure per audience, so each band is read as running from its low figure to its high one on a log scale.

The usage rights formula

fee = (sum of covered pieces’ rates × monthly %) × term multiplier, rounded to the nearest $100, never below $100

In Korean won, Japanese yen and Indian rupees a step of 100 means nothing, so fees round to the amounts creators there quote in instead: ₩10,000 or ₩50,000 (minimum ₩150,000); ¥1,000 or ¥5,000 (minimum ¥15,000); ₹500 or ₹5,000 (minimum ₹8,500). Every other currency rounds as above.

Usage rightPer month
Organic15%
Paid usage40%
Whitelisting75%
Out-of-home50%
TermMultiplier
1 month1×
3 months1.33×
6 months1.75×
12 months2.25×

Worked example. Ninety days of paid usage on a $1,500 Reel: $1,500 × 40% = $600 a month, × 1.33 for three months, rounded: $800.

The rules around the formula:

  • Terms between brackets blend. Sixty days is 1.17×, not rounded to one bracket or the other. Under a month is priced as a month.
  • No term named: 90 days. When a brief asks for usage and names no term, Selah quotes 90 days and names the term in the reply, so it becomes the end date in the contract.
  • Each piece at its own rate. Rights on a TikTok are priced at her TikTok rate. Stories aren’t covered unless the brand says so. A mirrored cross-post, charged at 50% as content, is licensed at its platform’s full rate.
  • Two rights, one charge per piece. When a brief asks for two usage rights, the more valuable one is charged first. The second is charged only on pieces the first doesn’t already cover for at least as long.
  • Perpetual rights are declined, not sold. The quote is priced on a 12-month licence and her reply says she doesn’t license content in perpetuity. For a brand that insists, the reply names a buyout of 7.5× the monthly rate, in place of the 12-month fee: 300% of the content fee for paid usage, the top of the published 100–300% range. More on perpetual rights.
  • Out-of-home is a starting point. Billboards, print and TV start at 50% a month and are flagged for custom negotiation.

Everything else on a quote

Rush, delivery inside a week
+50% of the content fee
Exclusivity
30% of the content fee for 30 days, on the usage term curve
Link in bio
10–15% of the rate, per month
Collab post on the brand’s account
20% of the content fee
Same video mirrored to another platform
50% of that platform’s rate
Revision rounds included
1
Each extra revision round
15% of the content fee
Reshoot, part of a delivered piece
35% of that piece’s fee
Reshoot, full redo or changed brief
100% of that piece’s fee

Revisions and reshoots

  • One round is included. Creator-side guides say a creator prices one round into her rate; contracts written by brands usually cap revisions at two. Selah quotes at the creator’s end of that gap, and a creator can raise the number in Settings. Sources: Creators Agency, Popfly, Influee.
  • A round past the included ones is 15% of the content fee. Published guides put it at 10–15%, and Selah takes the top. If a creator has set her own flat rate per round, her rate is used instead.
  • A reshoot is new filming, so it’s priced as new work. Reshooting part of a piece on the same brief is 35% of that piece’s fee, the top of the published 25–35%. Redoing the whole piece, or changing the brief, is a new deliverable at the full fee. Edits to what is already filmed (music, captions, trims, colour) are revisions, not reshoots.
  • The evidence here is thin. The revision and reshoot percentages come from one creator-side agency guide (Creators Agency) and one creator-side lawyer’s example. No source publishes what creators actually charged, and flat per-round fees in other guides range from $50 to $500 without scaling to the deal. That is why Selah states the sources beside the figures.

Selah next to the published ranges

Every figure is a share of the content fee over the whole term.

Add-onPublishedSelah
Paid usage, 30 daysUGCBloom, Launchpoint20–50%40%
Paid usage, 90 daysUGCBloom30–45%53%
Paid usage, 6 monthsLaunchpoint50–100%70%
Paid usage, 12 monthsUGCBloom70–100%90%
Whitelisting, 30 daysUGCBloom, InfluencerFee25–50%75%
Whitelisting, 90 daysUGCBloom, InfluencerFee75–100%100%
Organic, 30 daysUGCBloom, Launchpoint0–25%15%
Organic, 12 monthsUGCBloom20–35%34%
Rush, under a weekLaunchpoint25–50%50%
Extra revision round, eachCreators Agency, Selene the Lawyer10–15%15%
Reshoot of part of a pieceCreators Agency25–35%35%
Exclusivity, 30 daysLaunchpoint15–30%30%
Exclusivity, 90 daysLaunchpoint15–30%40%
Perpetual buyoutLaunchpoint, UGCBloom100–300%300% paid, 563% whitelisting

Whitelisting on Instagram runs higher, 50–100% for 30 days. No source prices out-of-home as a percentage; it’s usually one flat campaign fee.

Why Selah prices at the top of the range

  • Most published ranges come from the buying side. Agencies, platforms and brand guides write them. A creator’s first number is where the negotiation starts, and it only moves down from there.
  • Whitelisting puts ads under her name. The brand controls the targeting and the spend, but the ad runs from her handle and the comments land on her profile.
  • The brand’s ad spend has no ceiling. Her fee does. A usage fee is her only share of what the content earns once it becomes ad creative.

The top of the range, not double it. Until September 2026 Selah charged 75% a month for paid usage and 100% for whitelisting, roughly double the published figures. A number that reads as inflated gets discounted, so both came down to the top of the band. Two terms still sit a little above it, as the table shows: 90 days of paid usage, and 30 days of whitelisting outside Instagram.

Sources

What changed

September 2026
Instagram, TikTok and YouTube base rates recalibrated against 9 published rate guides. The old curve ran 1.5–2.2× the market under 25K followers and 50–70% of it from 100K up; small-creator rates came down, and larger-creator Reel, Story and TikTok rates went up.
September 2026
Exclusivity moved from a flat $500 a month to 30% of the content fee on the usage term curve, and perpetual requests now carry a 7.5× buyout in place of pricing at the 12-month cap.
September 2026
Paid usage lowered from 75% to 40% a month and whitelisting from 100% to 75%, the top of the published range.
September 2026
A brief asking for two usage rights is priced as two lines, with the second charged only where the first doesn’t already cover it.
September 2026
Terms between the 1, 3, 6 and 12-month brackets blend between them instead of snapping to the nearest.

Run the numbers yourself.

The influencer rate calculator and the usage rights calculator use this exact math, and the demo prices a whole brief.

Price a real offer, no login needed →