How to price your UGC work without underselling or scaring brands off

Pricing is the part of UGC work that nobody teaches and everyone gets wrong at first. Charge too little and you end up doing studio-quality work for pocket money until you resent it. Quote too high with nothing to back it up and the brand quietly moves on. The goal is a number you can say out loud without flinching, and that a brand can say yes to without feeling cheated.

Here is a way to think about it that is clearer than guessing.

Price the work, not just the video

A common mistake is pricing a single deliverable as if it is the whole job. The video is the visible part. The job also includes the brief read, the script, the shoot, the editing, and the revision rounds. When you quote, you are quoting all of it. If your number only accounts for shoot day, every revision round is eroding a rate you already set too low.

Build your rate from a few clear inputs

Rather than pulling a number from the air, stack it up:

• A base rate for one finished video at your current quality. This is your floor.
• Add-ons for extra deliverables: additional cuts, extra platforms, more aspect ratios, additional hooks for testing.
• Usage for how the brand will use it. A video used organically for thirty days is one price. The same video run as paid ads for a year is worth more, because it is doing more for them.
• Revisions beyond the standard two or three rounds, so scope creep does not quietly become free labor.

You do not have to itemize all of this to the brand. You build your number this way so you understand what you are actually agreeing to.

Usage is where creators leave money behind

This is the single most underpriced part of UGC. New creators hand over a video for a flat fee and watch it run as a paid ad for a year. The content is the same either way, but how much value it generates is wildly different. Always ask how the brand intends to use the content and for how long, and price longer or paid usage accordingly. Charging for usage is not greedy. It is matching your price to the value you are creating.

Hold the line on revision rounds

State your included rounds up front, two or three is standard, and what happens beyond that. This protects your rate from the slow bleed of "just one more change," and it tends to make brands give cleaner feedback when they know rounds are finite.

Raise your rate as your work gets better

Your first rate is not your forever rate. As your portfolio grows and your work gets sharper, your number should climb. The creators who stay underpriced are usually the ones who set a rate early and never revisited it.

The brands worth working with are not looking for the cheapest creator. They are looking for someone who delivers good work, communicates clearly, and prices like a professional. A confident, well-reasoned number signals all three, and a tool like Comeld, where the brief, drafts and feedback stay in one organized place, makes it far easier to look like the professional your rate says you are.