How much can I charge as an influencer for a brand deal?

Follower count is left out of the table on purpose. The brand pays for the post being seen, and the views in your analytics show how often that happens more precisely than your follower count does.

No law sets prices for brand deals. For usage rights, though, German copyright law sets a frame: if the contract names no amount, fair remuneration counts as agreed. If the agreed fee is not fair, you can ask for the contract to be changed (§ 32(1) UrhG). Fair means what, at the time the contract is made, is customary and reasonable for the type and scope of use, in particular its duration, frequency, extent and timing (§ 32(2) UrhG).

This applies to protected works and, accordingly, to photos that are not protected as photographic works (§ 72 UrhG). For simple videos that are not protected as cinematographic works, § 95 UrhG refers only to certain provisions, and § 32 is not among them. That makes it all the more important to put the price for usage in the contract.

So list the use item by item in your offer: which channel, how long, as an ad or not, exclusive or not. If the types of use are not named individually, the purpose of the contract decides how far the rights extend (§ 31(5) UrhG). A vague offer leaves room for dispute about what the price covers.

All figures in this example are assumptions, not market rates. Plug in your own numbers.

1. Find your views: take the median of your last ten reels, the middle value. One viral video barely skews it. Let’s say it is 18,000 views.
2. Route 1, CPM: work out your price per 1,000 views from past deals, using only the fee for the post itself, without surcharges. If you were paid €450 for a reel with 15,000 views, that is 450 ÷ 15,000 × 1,000 = €30. For the new reel: 18,000 ÷ 1,000 × €30 = €540. If you haven’t had a paid deal yet, you won’t have this figure. Use route 2 for now and ask the brand what budget it has in mind.
3. Route 2, effort: concept and coordination 3 hours, shoot 4 hours, edit 2 hours, approval and posting 1 hour, 10 hours in total. Your hourly rate also has to cover equipment, insurance and weeks without bookings, say €60. That is €600, plus €40 for props: €640.
4. Base price: take the higher of the two figures, so €640. Below that, either your time or your reach goes unpaid. If the effort figure is far above the CPM figure, the post may not pay off for the brand. In that case, cut the effort, for example with a simpler format, rather than your hourly rate.
5. Surcharges: the brand wants to run the reel as an ad from its own account for three months, an assumed 50% surcharge, so €320. Add four weeks of exclusivity in its category, an assumed 20%, so €128. That makes €1,088, rounded up to €1,090 net in the offer.
6. VAT: let’s say you charge VAT, so you don’t use the Kleinunternehmer scheme for small businesses, the brand is based in Germany and 19% applies to the whole job. Then €207.10 is added, and the invoice comes to €1,297.10. As a Kleinunternehmer, you invoice €1,090 without VAT.

State in your offer that the price is net. If you charge VAT and the brand is based in Germany, VAT is added to your fee, and according to the tax authorities in Hesse and Bavaria it is almost always 19% (§ 12(1) UStG). For a brand entitled to deduct input VAT, your net price is what counts in the end, because it can reclaim the VAT shown as input tax (§ 15(1) UStG).

Two cases are different. For granting rights under the German Copyright Act, the law sets 7% (§ 12(2) no. 7(c) UStG). According to the VAT Application Decree, this only applies if granting the rights is the essential content of your service, and what the invoice calls the service is not decisive (section 12.7(1)). If the brand runs its business from abroad, your service is generally supplied there (§ 3a(2) UStG), and no German VAT goes on the invoice. Check with your tax adviser which of this applies to your job.

As a Kleinunternehmer (§ 19(1) UStG: turnover of no more than €25,000 in the previous year and no more than €100,000 in the current year), you don’t charge VAT. In the year you start, the €25,000 limit applies, not the €100,000 one, according to the Federal Ministry of Finance. Your price is then the final amount, and the invoice has to state that the small business exemption applies (§ 34a UStDV). If you show VAT on your invoice to the brand anyway, you owe that amount to the tax office, since 2025 under § 14c(1) UStG.

The Künstlersozialabgabe (artists’ social levy) is not your cost. According to the Künstlersozialkasse (KSK), the fee for advertising with photos, videos or texts you create yourself is part of the levy base (FAQ, question 24). The levy is 4.9% in 2026 and 5.0% in 2027. It is paid by your contractual partner if that partner is liable (question 13). With a direct contract, that is the brand, for example as a company that advertises itself and whose payments for work commissioned from self-employed artists and writers add up to more than €1,000 in a calendar year (§ 24(2) KSVG). According to the KSK, payments to a GmbH (limited company) don’t count (question 12). If you invoice a liable brand directly as a sole trader, it would pay an extra €53.41 in 2026 on the €1,090 net from the example. The KSK also says the brand may not deduct the levy from your fee (question 14).

Clarify beforehand: is your agency’s commission share included in the price or added on top? If you calculate with your base price and the agency takes its cut out of it, you receive less than you planned.

1. Let’s say your agency keeps 20% of the fee, and you want the €1,090 from the example to reach you.
2. Then the offer to the brand has to be €1,090 ÷ 0.8 = €1,362.50 net.
3. If the agency goes into the negotiation with €1,090 instead, you keep €1,090 × 0.8 = €872.

A fee and a storefront don’t rule each other out. In your wyrld storefront you show products you use yourself. To add one, you paste the link to a product: wyrld recognises the brand, name and variant, looks for the same item in over 90,000 partner shops and creates the affiliate link for each offer it finds. You don’t sign up with any network yourself. Your community sees the offers with prices side by side and buys directly from the shop, at no extra cost. Depending on the shop, you earn per click, per sale or both. Your dashboard tracks clicks and commission per product. That shows you how your community responds to a brand’s products before you talk price with that brand. Earnings are settled at the start of the following month with a self-billing credit note (Gutschrift), Kleinunternehmer included, so you don’t write an invoice. wyrld is free for creators.

Through wyrld Boost, brands also pay for campaigns that run across many creators at once. Unlike the fixed fee in the worked example, pay there depends on results: the brand puts up a budget and sets the KPIs in advance, the metrics the payout is based on, such as purchases, clicks, watch time or reach. The pool goes to the creators taking part according to the figures they reach. You upload watch time and reach from your own stats. For each campaign, the brand decides which shops people buy from. You decide for yourself if you take part in a campaign, and you label campaign videos as advertising.

wyrld’s creator terms do not require exclusivity, so you can use your storefront alongside other programmes. If a brand asks for exclusivity in its category, ask the brand if that also covers links to other brands’ products in your storefront, and price the surcharge accordingly. If you work with an agency, it gets its own dashboard on wyrld, opens your storefront from there, maintains it with you and sees the same numbers as you. wyrld deducts an agreed commission share of between 0 and 100% from your earnings at the monthly settlement. So it is not paid on top, and your agency receives its own credit note for it.