How a rate card works
A creator prices each thing they can be asked to make: a feed post, a short video, a set of stories, a face-to-camera testimonial, an appearance at an event. The card lists those items with a starting price against each one. It is a quoting document, not a fixed tariff — most creators will move on it for a longer commitment, a simpler brief or a brand they already use.
The base price rarely covers everything. Extras sit behind it, and they are where the real cost difference lives: extra rounds of revisions, exclusivity that keeps the creator away from your competitors for an agreed period, permission to run the footage as a paid advert, and permission to keep running it after the campaign ends. Two creators with similar audiences can quote very different totals for what sounds like the same job because one has priced those extras in and the other has not.
Why a rate card matters
Without one you are negotiating in the dark, deal by deal, with no way to compare two creators or to forecast what a quarter of influencer marketing will cost. A card turns a vague conversation into line items you can put in a budget and defend to whoever signs it off.
It protects the creator too. A published price stops each new brand starting the conversation from zero, and it makes it obvious when a request has grown beyond what was agreed. That matters in Nepal, where a lot of creator work is still arranged informally over messages and the scope quietly expands after the money is settled.
Common mistakes with rate cards
The most common is treating follower count as the price. Audience size tells you almost nothing about whether those people buy from you; a smaller creator whose followers match your customer usually delivers more than a larger one whose audience is scattered across markets you do not sell in. Judge the price against the audience you actually want to reach.
The second is agreeing a price without agreeing usage rights. A post you cannot run as an advert, or cannot keep using after a month, is worth far less than one you can — and going back to buy those rights afterwards is always dearer than buying them upfront. The third is assuming free product replaces payment. Gifting works for some creators and insults others, and the ones worth hiring generally treat it as a discount, not a fee.
How to act on it
Ask for the card in writing before you brief, and read it as a scope document rather than a number. A card worth working from will state:
- each deliverable, with the format and rough length
- how many revisions are included, and what a further round costs
- whether you may run the content as paid media, and for how long
- any exclusivity period, and which category it covers
- the currency, the payment terms and who covers production costs
Then price the whole package against what you expect back — enquiries, sales, usable creative for your ad account — rather than against the cost of a single post. A dearer creator whose content you can run as an advert for a year is often the cheaper option once the footage starts working for you.