How to Get Brand Deals as a Small Creator

To get brand deals, package your audience into a media kit, set a real rate, and pitch brands whose customers already watch or read you, instead of waiting to be discovered. You do not need a huge following. You need a specific audience a brand wants to reach, proof you actually reach them, and a price they can approve. A 4,000-subscriber creator with a sharp niche closes more deals than a 40,000-follower generalist, because the small one is easy to say yes to.

Most creators wait for brand deals to arrive in the DMs. A few do, usually after you already have momentum. The reliable way, the one that works from your first thousand followers, is to treat it like the sales job it is: know your audience, price your work, and reach out to the companies who should already be paying to be in front of your people.

What brands actually pay for

A brand deal is a marketing buy, not a favor. The company is spending a marketing budget and answering to someone who wants a return. That means they care about three things, in this order: does your audience match their customer, can they trust the numbers, and can they justify the price. Nail those and the size of your following matters far less than creators assume.

Build a media kit before you pitch anyone

The media kit is the document that answers a brand's first question before they have to ask it. Keep it to one page or one screen: who you are in a sentence, your audience size and demographics, your engagement number, the formats you offer, and a rate for each. Lead with the audience, because that is what a brand scans for first. Do not bury it under a logo and a mission statement.

The mistake is making the kit about you. The brand does not care that you started the channel in your bedroom. They care that 60 percent of your audience is US-based, 25 to 34, and shops your category. Put that at the top. If you want the full structure, our guide on how to make a media kit walks through each section, and you can build one that stays current automatically on the media kit page.

Set a rate you can defend

Naming a price scares creators more than any other part. Leaving it out is worse: it moves your pitch to the bottom of the pile because now the brand has to do work to figure out whether they can even consider you. A number lets them route your pitch to whoever can approve that number.

Price on your format and your reach. Video integrations often run in the ballpark of $20 to $50 per thousand views for a dedicated segment, podcast host reads run about $25 to $40 per thousand downloads, and newsletter placements price by open rate. If you are small but sharply targeted, charge a flat fee that reflects the audience quality rather than the headcount. These are typical ranges, not guarantees, and your niche moves them a lot. Live streaming prices on concurrent viewers instead of views, which is why gaming sponsorships use a different formula entirely. Our breakdown of how much to charge for a sponsorship works through it by audience size.

How do you get brand deals as a small creator?

Pick a tight niche, show your engagement rate rather than your follower count, and pitch small and mid-size brands who cannot afford the big creators. Small creators win on trust and targeting: a 3,000-person audience that actually buys your category is a better deal for a niche brand than a celebrity with a scattered following. Lead your pitch with the engagement number and the audience fit, name a flat rate, and offer to start with one piece so the brand can test you cheaply.

Do not wait until some magic follower count. Brands run creator campaigns at every tier, and the micro tier (roughly 1,000 to 100,000 followers) often delivers the best cost per result because the audience trusts a smaller creator more. If you can name your audience in one specific sentence, you are ready to pitch.

Where to find brands that pay

Start with the brands already paying creators like you. Look at who sponsors comparable channels, podcasts and newsletters in your niche, because those companies have a budget line and a habit of saying yes. Note the products you genuinely use, since a real recommendation converts and the pitch writes itself. Then widen to companies whose customer is clearly your audience, even if they have not run creator deals yet.

The other route is to be findable. When your audience and your rate card are listed publicly, brands searching your niche can find you and open the conversation already knowing the price. That is the idea behind listing yourself where brands look: instead of sending a hundred cold pitches, you let companies who want your exact audience come to you. You can list your audience and get found by brands and pair it with a live rate card they can book from.

Write a pitch a marketing manager can forward

Keep the first message short: three or four sentences. Open with the audience fit in one line, give your key number, name the format and the rate, and end with a single clear next step. No life story, no attachment heavier than a one-page kit. The test is whether the person reading it could forward it to their boss without having to explain anything.

Here is the shape that works: "You sell running shoes to beginners. My channel reaches about 8,000 US runners per video, most training for a first race, and my last gear recommendation drove 340 clicks. I run dedicated integrations at $600. Would a one-video test in July work for you?" That is specific, it names a price, and it asks for a small yes.

Keep the whole deal and track what you earn

Agencies and some platforms take 15 to 30 percent of a brand deal. On a marketplace with flat membership and 0 percent commission, a $2,000 deal pays you $2,000 and the brand pays you directly. Over a year of deals, that cut is real money, and it is money you keep for doing the same work.

As the deals start landing, the admin side becomes the thing that trips creators up: different brands, different rates, different payment dates, some paid by bank transfer and some by platform. It helps to keep track of what each deal actually pays in one place, so you know your real income, what you are owed, and which brands are worth going back to next quarter. Treating your creator income like a business is what turns a few one-off deals into a repeatable revenue line.

Deliver so they come back

The first deal is the hardest. The second deal from the same brand is the easiest money in the business, and it only happens if you deliver well the first time. Hit the deadline, follow the brief, disclose the partnership clearly the way the FTC expects, and send a short wrap note afterward with what the post did: views, clicks, code redemptions if you have them. Almost no creator sends that note. The ones who do get renewed, because they hand the brand the exact proof it needs to fund the next campaign.

How many followers do you need to get brand deals?

There is no follower minimum. Brands routinely pay creators with 1,000 to 10,000 followers, because a small audience that trusts you converts better than a large one that scrolls past. What brands screen for is engagement rate, audience location and niche fit. A 3,000-follower account whose audience is 80% US and clearly interested in one topic is an easier buy than a 100,000-follower account nobody engages with.

The practical floor is whatever it takes to show a real number. If you can say "my last five posts averaged 4,200 views and 6% engagement, and 78% of my audience is in the US", you have enough to pitch. Below roughly 1,000 followers, expect product-only or affiliate offers first and treat those as the on-ramp to paid deals.

How to get brand deals with no followers

Start with affiliate programs and product-seeding offers, which have no follower requirement, then convert proven results into a paid rate. Sign up for affiliate networks in your niche, post genuinely useful content about products you already use, and track the clicks and conversions you generate. A creator who can show a brand 200 tracked clicks and 11 sales has leverage that follower count alone never provides.

The other route is doing the work brands cannot do themselves: user-generated content. Many brands buy video content from creators to run as their own ads, and they care about how good the video is, not how many people follow you. That work pays $150 to $500 per video for beginners and does not require an audience at all.

How to get brand deals on Instagram

Switch to a professional account so brands can see your insights, put your niche and contact email in your bio, and post consistently in one recognizable lane. Then pitch directly rather than waiting: find brands whose customer matches your audience, contact the marketing or influencer manager on LinkedIn, and lead with your reach, engagement rate and US audience share. Instagram deals are usually priced per post or per Reel plus story frames.

Two things raise Instagram rates more than follower count: saves and shares, which signal that content is worth keeping, and paid usage rights, where the brand runs your post as an ad. Charge separately for usage, typically 20% to 50% of the content fee for 30 days, because that is a media buy on top of the content.

How to get brand deals on TikTok

Join the TikTok Creator Marketplace once eligible, keep a consistent niche so the algorithm and brands both understand who you reach, and pitch brands whose products fit content you already make. TikTok deals are priced per video and often include a whitelisting or Spark Ads option, where the brand promotes your video from its own account. Rates for creators with 10,000 to 50,000 followers commonly run $200 to $1,000 per video.

TikTok rewards a proven format over a large following. If one of your videos performed well, pitch that exact format to a brand as a template rather than offering a generic post. Brands buy a repeatable result, and "this format got 240,000 views, I will make the same thing with your product" is the strongest pitch on the platform.

How much do brand deals pay?

A widely used baseline is $100 per 10,000 followers or views for a single post, adjusted up or down by engagement, niche and format. In practice, nano creators (1,000 to 10,000 followers) commonly see $50 to $500 per post, mid-tier creators (50,000 to 250,000) see $1,000 to $5,000, and dedicated YouTube integrations or podcast reads price higher because they take longer to produce and hold attention.

Niche moves the number more than size. Finance, B2B software, legal and health audiences carry far higher rates than general lifestyle, because the brand's customer is worth more. Usage rights, exclusivity and turnaround speed are all separately billable, and creators who itemize them earn substantially more than creators quoting one flat number. There is a full breakdown in our guide to influencer sponsorship rates.

Do you need a media kit to get brand deals?

You do not need one to get your first deal, but you will close faster with one. A media kit answers the questions a brand would otherwise have to email you for: who your audience is, how many there are, where they live, what you charge and what formats you offer. It removes a round trip, and it makes you look like someone who has done this before.

Keep it to one page. Audience numbers, demographics, engagement, two or three content examples, your formats with rates, and contact details. Update the numbers monthly, because a media kit with stale figures is worse than none at all. Our guide on how to make a media kit covers each section.

Next steps

Write your one-sentence audience description, build a one-page media kit, set a rate for your main format, and make a list of ten brands whose customer is already in your audience. Pitch three this week. When you want brands to find you instead of chasing them, put your audience and rates in a live media kit and get listed where sponsors are looking.