How to Get More Brand Deals as a Creator

You've nailed down content creation, now you need to grow your income, and for creators, that means more brand deals.

There are two ways to get brand deals: inbound (brands come to you) and outbound (you reach out to brands proactively). Some of what we'll cover applies to both. Some is specific to one or the other. Most creators only ever work one side of this. Working both is where things change.

Inbound: Being Findable and Responsive

Make your email public

Brands scroll social media profiles, and if they like your stuff, the first thing they look for is your bio for your email. Make sure your email is visible, on your profile, or in your link-in-bio tool.

Check your DMs, and your message requests

Besides email, this is the second channel people use to get in touch with you. Always check your DMs, and also your message requests. Some platforms require the brand to follow you before DMing, so those messages land in requests instead of your main inbox. If you're not checking requests, you're probably missing out on a lot of deals.

Check your spam folder

We have seen hundreds of times, opening up a creator's inbox, going to the spam folder and seeing three brand deal inquiries just sitting there, and have been for weeks. Check your spam folder every single day, period.

This alone has probably killed more deals than creators realize.

The collab isn't over when the video goes up

After a week or two has passed, email the brand again. Send the video link you created together, share the wins. Very often you can collaborate with the brand again, if not immediately, they'll consider you first for the next campaign they run in a month.

Very rarely does a brand do one collab only, especially with a creator they enjoy working with.

Build a pipeline

You need a simple pipeline, think of it as a simple CSV (Excel table) for tracking, for all inquiries you've received, brands you've reached out to and are currently in conversation with.

This is a sales process, sales are made when there's a process and a system behind them.

Follow up with brands consistently, once a week, while you're not getting a reply back from them. People forget. They get tons of emails. It's your job to keep this top of mind for them, and to keep yourself top of mind.

You're the one getting paid, so it's your job to chase them.

If you're still not hearing back from a brand, open their company LinkedIn page, check the People tab, and find other colleagues working there. DM them too, something short like: "Hey, was chatting with [name] a week ago regarding a paid collab, wanted to connect with you too in case they're slammed with work and can't get back to me."

You are a business. The content is the marketing, but the backend system operations is what actually gets your cashflow growing.

Outbound: Finding the Deals Yourself

Define your ICP (it has two layers)

ICP means Ideal Customer Persona. In the creator world, that ideal persona is whoever your audience's interests ideally overlap with.

You need to define this, since it later impacts who we are reaching out to and what we are saying to them. ICP actually splits into two layers:

• Company ICP, what kind of brand fits your audience
• Role ICP, who inside that company you actually need to contact. You don't want to contact a software engineer, he is not responsible for brand collabs inside the company.

For smaller companies, the decision-maker is usually the founder, owner, or CEO. For mid and larger companies, it's typically a marketer responsible for this: an influencer marketing manager, creator partnerships manager, head of marketing, paid media manager, and so on.

Build the list

You need a list of brands, the right people working on those brands, and their valid email addresses.

How do you build these lists? Typically in B2B databases like Apollo and Clay. Free tiers usually let you build small lists, if you need more, you need to be on a paid plan.

You don't need a big list to get started with, 100 leads is enough.

Reach out with a sequence, not a single email

When starting to proactively contact brands, do a sequence of emails, not just one. A three-touch sequence is usually enough: the first email, plus two follow-ups (first follow-up on day 3, second follow-up on day 7).

The copy needs to be short, 80 to 100 words. It needs your handle in there so the brand can quickly check your socials. It needs to be friendly and relationship-oriented. Don't ask for a brand deal in the first email, just ask whether they'll be open to exploring a collab.

Soft CTAs like this work very well (CTA means Call to Action and is the last sentence of your email, typically prompting an action from the receiving party).

Avoid spam-trigger words in the copy, things like "awesome," "opportunity," "chance," and others like them. Check Google for a list of commonly used spam words.

Once they reply, work it like inbound

Same process as inbound: follow up once a week until a deal is closed. Of course, if you're in active back-and-forth communication, you can exchange emails even multiple times a day.

Negotiation

Know who you're negotiating with

Research the company deeply, when was the company established, how many employees does it have, how much yearly revenue it does. All of these factors dictate the size of the company and consequently their readiness to explore higher paying collabs.

This is usually public information, and AI tools can pull it for you with a simple prompt.

Then, research the person you're speaking with. Is it the founder? An influencer manager? Different people have different work goals and personal desires.

A founder might be more open to exploring things. An influencer manager usually has a target to hit, and if they don't hit it, they might get punished for it. Try to understand what drives the person you're talking to. That shapes your entire approach, including how aggressive you can be with your rate asks.

Speak their language: ROAS

Brands run brand deals to make sales and money. They're borrowing your audience for their product and paying you for it, that's why the language they speak is ROAS: return on ad spend.

Essentially, how much did I pay versus what did I get back in return. When you talk with brands, you're framing the collab around ROI for them.

Come with stats ready: how many people you've reached in a region, what your audience's interests are. Always try to align your audience's interests with the brand's audience. A guitar pedal brand will pay more to collab with a creator whose audience is into guitars and music, because they expect to actually sell pedals to that audience.

Rates

Let the brand name their budget first

Don't anchor first if you don't have to. Whoever names a number first gives away leverage. We've seen creators much more often lowball themselves and lose leverage further along in the negotiation.

Rates change from deal to deal, have a benchmark, but keep an open mind

Rates really depend, deal to deal. They also depend on platform, TikTok tends to be the weakest for brands in terms of ROAS, Instagram sits in the middle, YouTube tends to see the highest ROAS. It's worth having a benchmark in mind for yourself, say, what is your ask for a TikTok integrated video, but always keep an open mind on top of that benchmark.

Here's why: some brands you work with are going to have a very strong audience overlap with your audience. The guitar pedal brand example from before, they'd be willing to pay three times your regular rate purely because the overlap is that strong. And if a brand's worked with you once already, paid you $1,000 for a TikTok integrated video and got $3,000 in pedal sales out of it, they're going to want to pour more money in next time.

The point is: each time you negotiate, try to understand what the brand is actually selling, and what kind of impact your video or post would realistically have for them.

Understand what the brand is actually betting on

This gets a little more complex, but it's not complicated once you see it play out.

Say a mobile game app is trying to acquire new players and offers you $1,000 for a TikTok integrated video. You typically get around 250,000 views on your shorts, with a 10% engagement rate, roughly 25,000 people. What they're actually betting on is that the video drives, say, 1,000 new app downloads, each costing them $1. If a $1 install later earns them $3 over time, that's a 3x win for them. Understanding that math is what lets you frame your rate around their ROI, not just your view count.

Other times, there's no clean, direct sales line to draw, and those are the harder ones to price. A brand like Coca-Cola paying a creator $5,000 for a video isn't expecting the creator to sell a single bottle from it. What they're paying for is brand awareness, and for some larger brands, awareness is genuinely what they need, even though they already have their own sales channels. These deals are harder to benchmark, but understanding why the brand is paying gets you most of the way there.

Benchmark against your own past negotiations, and don't be scared to ask for more

Always benchmark against rates you've actually received before, and always push to get more than last time. Brands are going to lowball you first, most of the time, don't be scared to counter high if you're confident you're worth it. We've had situations where a brand opened at $20 for a video, we countered at $1,500, and landed at $800. You never really know until you push.

Rates are also shaped by a few other levers: whether you're granting ad authorization (whitelisting), whether there's a gift involved alongside the payment, and whether there's an affiliate structure attached to the deal. Format, deliverables, ad rights, contract length, and how long content stays pinned to your bio all move the number too.

Handling Objections

"We only do gifted collabs"

"I understand, but at the level of reach with [X] views and [Y] followers, plus the audience quality and overlap with yours, I believe a paid collab is more suitable here. I'm open to a hybrid collab where I'd receive a gift but also get paid, perhaps a rate smaller than my usual one. This first post is a test, for me and for you, on whether my audience will love your product and whether I can provide ROI for you. Would you be open to reconsidering and exploring the hybrid partnership?"

"Your rates are too high"

"My rates reflect my audience's reach and quality, plus its ability to drive ROI for you. Let's do one collab and get more data, and if this works for your brand, we can discuss volume-based, longer-term discounted rates. Open to exploring this?"

FAQ

How do creators get brand deals? Two ways: inbound (brands find you) and outbound (you find them). Most creators only work one side.

What should I put in my bio to get more brand deals? A visible email address. Brands look for it first, before they ever DM you.

How much should a creator charge for a brand deal? There's no fixed rate. It depends on format, deliverables, rights, and contract length, brand deals are a bit of a black box.

What's the difference between a gifted and a paid collab? A gifted collab pays in product, not cash. If your reach and audience quality justify more, propose a hybrid: part gift, part paid, framed as a test campaign for both sides.

How do you find brands to reach out to? B2B databases like Apollo and Clay, filtered by your ICP, both the company and the specific role of the person who can say yes.

How often should you follow up with a brand? Once a week, until you get a real answer. Most non-replies are inbox overwhelm, not rejection.