I Handed My Rate Card to the Internet for 24 Hours — and the Numbers Stunned Me

I've been doing this full-time for six years, and if there's one question I get asked constantly — at brunch, in my DMs, at my nephew's birthday party — it's some version of "So what does a brand actually pay you for that post?"

I always dodge it. Not because I'm hiding something scandalous, but because the honest answer is complicated, and "it depends" makes me sound like a lawyer. So last month, I decided to flip the script. Instead of telling people what I charge, I asked them what they'd pay. For one day, my Instagram story was a giant open negotiation. Anyone could slide into my inbox with a number.

The Rules of the Experiment

I kept it simple. I posted a mock brief — a hypothetical sponsored Reel for a skincare brand, two stories, usage rights for 30 days. Then I asked my followers to reply with what they thought was a fair rate. No multiple choice, no anchoring, just a blank box.

The responses came in fast. Within three hours I had over 400 replies, and by the end of the day, more than 900. I logged every single number into a spreadsheet like the mildly unhinged business owner I am.

What People Actually Said

Here's where it got interesting. The responses clustered into three very distinct groups.

The lowballers came in around $50 to $200. Most of them, I suspect, were thinking of what they'd pay a friend with a nice camera — which, honestly, is a fair frame of reference if you've never seen the business side of this industry. A few were clearly joking ($11.50, my personal favorite), but most were sincere.

The middle group — the biggest cluster, around 40% of responses — landed between $500 and $2,500. These felt like guesses from people who follow creator economy content. They knew there was a real business here; they just weren't sure how big it was.

And then there were the high-end guesses: $10,000 to $25,000. A handful of people, mostly other creators and a few marketing folks who recognized my handle, guessed essentially exactly what I'd quote a brand for that exact deliverable. One person was within $200 of my actual rate card. I gasped out loud at my kitchen table.

The Gap Is the Whole Story

When I averaged it out, the median guess came in somewhere around $1,800. My actual rate for that package? Roughly five times that.

Before anyone gets upset on my behalf — nobody was being cheap on purpose. What the experiment revealed isn't that audiences undervalue creators. It's that audiences see the product (a Reel, a story, a photo) while brands pay for the infrastructure: the years of audience-building, the trust I've earned, the conversion data, the fact that when I recommend something, people actually buy it.

A sponsored post isn't a video. It's access to a room I spent six years filling.

Why I'm Telling You My Business

I went back and forth on publishing the numbers. Talking openly about money still feels taboo, especially for women, and especially when your income is public-adjacent. But the whole reason I started this site was to pull back the curtain on a career that looks effortless from the outside.

The real takeaway for any aspiring creators reading this: people will guess low. Brands will too, at first. Your job isn't to get angry about it — it's to know your number, back it up with data, and hold the line politely. The first number on the table is never the last number.

And if you were one of the 900 people who sent me a rate? Thank you. You taught me more in one day than a year of industry panels ever did. Next experiment: I let my bookkeeper negotiate. God help us all.