The short answer
A UGC price has two parts, and beginners usually only charge one of them. Part one is the creation fee: your time filming and editing the video. Part two is the usage fee: what the brand pays for the right to use your content, especially as paid advertising, and for how long. Creation gets you paid once. Usage is where the real money hides, and it is the part most new creators hand over for free without realising it.
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Part one: the creation fee
This covers the work itself: scripting, filming, editing, and a reasonable round of revisions. Your creation fee should rise with your experience, your example portfolio, and your turnaround speed. It is the smaller half of a well-priced deal, and it is the only half most rate cards mention.
Part two: usage, the money beginners skip
Usage answers three questions:
- Where can the brand use it? Their organic socials only, or in paid ads too?
- How long? Three months of ad usage is a product. Perpetual usage is a much bigger product.
- Whose account? If the brand wants to run ads through your handle (whitelisting), that is another lever again.
Paid-ad usage is valuable because your video is now a working salesperson for the brand. Price it that way: a percentage on top of the creation fee for a set term is a common structure, and perpetual or paid usage should never be a free add-on.
My numbers, honestly labelled
My last three paid brand deals were $2,000 to $2,500 each. The top of that range was $2,500 for a single reel including perpetual usage, and that detail matters: the usage was priced into the deal, not thrown in. I had about a year and a half of UGC experience and roughly 12,000 followers at the time. These are my results, not a guarantee of yours, and your first deals will likely be smaller. The structure matters more than the starting number: charge for creation, charge for usage, and let both grow.
Other levers that move a price
- Exclusivity: if a brand wants you off-limits to competitors, that costs extra
- Rush delivery: faster costs more, everywhere in life
- Raw footage: handing over unedited files is a separate deliverable
- Extra hooks or versions: each variant is more work and more value
The sentence to remember
When a brand asks "can we also run it as an ad, forever, for the same price?" the answer is a friendly no, plus a number for what that would cost. You are not being difficult. You are being a business, which is what they are.
Learning to land the deals in the first place? Read this next: How to Land Your First UGC Brand Deals
Want the full rate structure?
My UGC Starter Kit lays out the pricing framework I use, the pitch templates, and the contract and invoice basics that keep you from learning these lessons the expensive way: The UGC Starter Kit
Frequently asked questions
What is usage in UGC pricing?
Usage is the brand's right to use your content beyond receiving the file: posting it on their channels, and especially running it as paid advertising, for an agreed length of time. It is priced separately from creating the video.
Should you charge for raw footage?
Yes. Raw footage lets the brand re-edit your work into new ads without you, so it is a separate deliverable with its own price.
How do UGC creators raise their rates?
By stacking proof: a stronger portfolio, deals that performed, faster turnaround, and clean usage pricing. Rates usually rise deal by deal, not all at once.
What if a brand says there is no budget?
Shrink the scope, not the price of everything. Fewer deliverables, shorter usage, no exclusivity. If the budget is truly zero, it is a portfolio piece at most, once, and then you move on.