Every week someone asks for a rate card. Every week we don’t send one.
Not because we’re being cagey. Because a rate card prices your campaign before anyone has asked the only question that matters: who is your buyer, and which creator’s audience is already made of them?
The problem with menu pricing
A rate card says a mid-tier creator is worth $X, a macro is worth $Y, and a dedicated video is $Z on top. That framing quietly assumes every audience of the same size is worth the same money. It isn’t.
A 300k-subscriber cleaning channel where 70% of viewers own their home is a different asset from a 300k-subscriber prank channel where the audience is fourteen years old. Same follower count, wildly different buyers, and the gap between the two isn’t a line item — it’s the whole campaign.
What we do instead
We start from your product and your margins, then work backwards:
- Who is the buyer? Not a persona sheet. A specific person, in a specific room, solving a specific problem your product solves.
- Which creators already have that person in their audience? This is the vetting work — engagement, comment quality, past sponsor fit, whether their reviews actually change what viewers buy.
- What does a placement with them cost, and what does it need to return? We negotiate against a number we can defend, not a rate card the creator can Google.
The output is a shortlist with a price attached to each name and a written reason why. If the math doesn’t work, we say so before you spend anything.
Why it usually costs less
Brands who come from menu-priced agencies often expect our number to be higher. It’s usually lower — sometimes by a lot — because we’re not paying a premium for size we don’t need. Two well-matched mid-tier creators will outperform one macro whose audience is thirty percent your buyer, and they’ll cost a third of the price.
That’s the trade a rate card can’t make for you. So we don’t publish one.
Curious what the math looks like for your product? Start a Proof Run.