How To Raise Your Content Rates

If you rely on your skills as a content creator to make some or all of your income, knowing how and when to raise your content rates is critical. 

Let's look at a few key factors in the process.

How Content Creators Make Money

There are dozens of different ways you can make money as a content creator. Creators who make it to full-time status, where their content is sustaining their livelihood and they don't need another job, do it a number of different ways. 

In some cases, content creators make the money entirely through the actual consumption of their primary content. Like musicians who make enough money from their streaming royalties and occasional performances to just be all-in on music. Or livestreaming creators who stream regularly and consistently to a dedicated base of a few hundred or more concurrent viewers. Or full-time actors. 

But there are also tons of creators who piece together enough income from as few as three to more than 20 potential revenue streams. These creators often cobble together a nice living $5,000-10,000 at a time. But the reality is, just about any creator who gets successful enough in one primary medium is going to expand their business to include others. 

For instance, a popular YouTube channel may start by seeing a bulk of its money coming from the YouTube ad share for their views and on-platform monetization like memberships. But likely before they ever get to that point they're also already incorporating things like affiliate links, sponsors for their videos, merch, memberships off the platform, and more. 

The rates creators get for some revenue streams are out of their hands. Sure, you can adjust your content variables to try to earn more — like making longer YouTube videos that target traditionally higher CPM audiences — but ultimately you can't go negotiate what you should be paid per monetized view. 

However, when it comes to things like working with brands or offering your services for hire, you often have the ability to negotiate and steer the ship. 

The Philosophy Behind Setting Your Content Rates

Before we talk about how and when to raise your rates, let's look at some good starting points for creators. It can be really difficult to know where to start, especially considering so much of what creators do comes down to their specific skillset and what the other party needs. 

Traps To Avoid

There are a few "traps" you'll want to avoid when you think about the philosophy behind setting your rates. The first is you typically want to shy away from explicitly setting an hourly rate. That's not to say you shouldn't consider how much your time is worth internally — but you shouldn't price your projects on how long it takes you, because ultimately the faster and better you get, the more it actually hurts your bottom line.

The flip side of this, of course, is you don't want to be stuck spending 8 hours on something you're going to get paid $100 for. It's a bit of trial and error and knowing your own craft, but pretty soon you'll be able to both account for your time and avoid limiting your prices based on it. 

A second trap to avoid is the "grateful just to be nominated" mindset. In other words, don't let the fact that you're being paid to make stuff cloud your judgment on its worth. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who will try to take advantage of the idea that your work is "fun" in order to try to pay you less to do it. 

Yes, there are strategic considerations from time to time. Like if you have an opportunity to worth with a brand you've always wanted to work with but they can only pay 75 percent of your budget. That's a judgment call for you. But certainly try to avoid this, "Aw shucks, you want to work with little ol' me?" mentality. You deserve to be paid what you're worth! You're not lucky for the opportunity, you earned it. 

A last philosophy is to avoid setting your rates to low or play this game of cat and mouse about budget. If you're worried your number will scare a client off, pitch your number anyway. If they really want to work with you but can't afford it, they'll let you know. If they ghost you, they weren't going to be a good partner anyway. 

Conversely, set your rates at least 20 percent higher than your initial instinct. First, this protects you from a potential project that ends up being more than you originally thought (though there are other ways to avoid that). Second, it gives you a little wiggle room if a client comes back saying it's too steep. It also helps you avoid that FOMO mindset that comes with people not wanting to name their price. The, "What if I could've gotten more?" mindset.

Price yourself what you deserve and trust that even if a brand maybe was willing to pay you more than the number you threw out, you're playing the long game here. Those gigs often turn into more work and you're often able to negotiate up from there. 

When To Raise Your Content Rates

Alright, so now you feel like it's time to get paid more for doing what you do best. How exactly will you know? Well, there are a few ways.

First of all, when more work is coming to you than you have time for, you know it's time to charge more. As fulfilling as it may be to have offers and opportunities coming in left and right, it's not sustainable and it quickly becomes a problem. 

The first step to raising your rate is to not even entertain anything that comes in below it. You can either choose to give them the opportunity to meet your rate, or simple move on and tell them you're going to pass. Either way, it's actually pretty liberating the moment you start turning down work.

Give Yourself A Raise

But that's not the only time to raise your rate. You should also think about your content rate the way you may think about a traditional job. In most industries, salaried employees can expect to get a raise after they've put in a good amount of time and shown they are meeting expectations. Companies give raises because they want to make sure employees know they're valued (and because companies know it actually ultimately costs more to try to start over with a new hire than give a raise to a good existing one). 

You should see increasing your rates as giving yourself a raise, in a way. You are almost certainly a better creator than you were a year, six months, or maybe even three months ago. Reward your growth by commanding more for what you do. People (and companies) burn out when they get in a "race to the bottom," a term meaning people just keep lowering their prices to be cheaper than a competitor until it's not even sustainable anymore. Don't set that precedent for yourself, and don't worry about losing out to somebody who will "do it for less." Because there almost always will be somebody who will do it for less (and the person who hires them will get what they pay for). 

Lastly, the world can be an expensive place — and it's getting more expensive. You are not exempt from needing to increase your rates when the rest of the world also increases theirs. If life in your area got 15 percent more expensive in the last two years, guess what? You need to account for that some way. It doesn't always mean raising your rates is the only way to do it, but it's always a completely reasonable option. 

How To Raise Your Rates

Alright, so how do you actually raise your content rates? The first thing you need to do is make sure they're reflected on your rate sheet. Unless you don't have a rate sheet. Then the first thing you need to do is create a rate sheet. 

Even if it's just for internal purposes, writing down what you charge for what and when you change it is incredibly helpful. If your rate sheet goes out to different clients during your pitch, try to get in the habit of listing the rate sheet for the month or quarter of the year you're in, that way there's already a sense of impermanence to what's on the sheet. So something like "Jane Doe's Content Rates — Spring 2025" reflects the reality that these are not set in stone. 

How Much Should I Raise Them By?

How do you decide how much to raise them by? That's going to be up to you and your individual circumstances. But when in doubt, a 10 percent increase is a fairly standard place to start. You can be as meticulous or as sweeping as you want, meaning you can raise everything across the board the same way, or you can institute a more specific pattern for dealing with your rates.

Just make sure the raises make sense when viewed as a whole. (As in, probably don't increase your price for a sponsored video by 10 percent and double your price for a package of two sponsored videos; you want your pricing to feel logical).

Communication Is Key

Next, consider any recurring partners you have and send them a note letting them know when your pricing change is going in effect. You don't really need to "defend" the increases with a reason in your email, but something as simple as, "To keep up with increases in demand and costs of doing business, we are instituting some rate changes." Again, nobody knows how you communicate with your audience and customers better than you, so this is very much a personal preference.

It's best to give everybody at least a week or two, and it's best to not make this price change in the middle of negotiating a new deal. Certainly don't try to make it after you've already agreed to work for a client. (If there are issues with that particular client and you need to address the compensation for them, that's a different topic). 

You don't have to email everybody you've ever worked with — just anybody you expect to have a somewhat consistent, ongoing relationship with.

If you have a website, "link in bio," or other type place where your work appears, make sure to get that updated as well. You want to do this all on the same day if you can. 

Lastly, start getting really good at replying to inbound requests with your new rate. If somebody comes at you with a pitch of $100 for a video, you can kindly tell them your rates start at $200 but that you need to see the brief to know for sure (this is why having a rate sheet as helpful — you're not constantly going back and forth about whether something is "worth it" for you at the time). 

If you produced a song for somebody for $1,000 last year and they email you looking to work again, make sure it's stated up front your rates have increased to $1,150 or whatever it may be. Even if five years have passed, people will assume the price is the same if you don't tell them it isn't. But as long as you're clear with your communication, it doesn't have to be a painful or awkward situation. 

Remember, you can and should increase your rates with time and experience. It's a healthy and expected way to run a business that makes sure you are in the best position to keep doing your best work.