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Action Toolkit
Playbook 20From 'Does $200 Sound Okay?' to a Written Rate Card

Price Your First Sponsorship

The first brand email arrives before you feel ready, and whoever names a number first without data loses. Set your prices from your own audience math before the negotiation starts.

What you end up holding

“Compute your integration and dedicated rates, set a walk-away floor, and price usage rights as the separate product they are.”

The workflow — 3 steps

  1. 1

    Turn your average views and niche CPM into three written prices.

    Use the honest ten-video average — brands will check it against Social Blade.

    Open Creator Rate Card →
  2. 2

    Set the walk-away floor and decide it while nobody is offering anything.

    The floor exists so a mid-negotiation Tuesday with rent due can't set it for you.

    Open Creator Rate Card →
  3. 3

    Check what the deal is worth against the hours it will actually take.

    An integration with three revision rounds and a usage grab can pay less than your day rate.

    Open What Should I Charge? →
The evidence

Anchoring in Negotiation

“Estimates are biased toward the first value presented, even when that value is known to be arbitrary.”

— Kahneman & Tversky, anchoring studies (1974 onward)

The first number spoken in a negotiation drags the outcome toward itself. A creator with no rate card negotiates against the brand's anchor; a written card makes your number the anchor instead.

The older idea

The Worker Deserves Wages

“The labourer deserves his wages.”

— Hebrew and Christian scripture (Luke 10:7)

Charging properly for work is not greed — it is the ancient, ordinary dignity of labour. Undercharging does not make you generous; it makes the value of the work invisible, including to you.

Go deeper on this

A playbook ends in a document. These journeys change what you can do — same subject, more of it.