How to decide what to pay a TikTok creator

A chili crisp brand is putting a new heat level on shelves before the holidays. Two creators on your shortlist have written back. One of them has already sent a number; with the other, you'd be naming yours.

So you look it up. What comes back are lists, and the lists are sorted by how many followers an account has.

You can't put a price on a creator. You can only put one on a job.

What this guide covers

• Why can't you look up what a creator charges?
• So what is the number attached to?
• Which parts did you leave for them to fill in?
• Two numbers that look nothing alike — what makes them comparable?
• The number came back higher than the budget. What moves?
• Should you say your number first?
• What isn't in the fee?
• Frequently asked questions

Why can't you look up what a creator charges?

Because every one of those lists was priced without reference to your terms.

A list keyed to an account is pricing one part of the job as though it were the whole job. It's the pricing version of starting a shortlist from the one sentence your campaign has to land rather than from the numbers on a profile.

Watch what follows. Take this campaign twice — the video posted on their account and that's the end of it, then the same video also running as paid ads through the holidays — and you have no basis to expect the same number twice. Nobody's opinion changed in between. The second job has something in it the first one didn't.

That isn't a market observation, and it doesn't need one. It comes straight out of what the number is stuck to.

So what is the number attached to?

A job with parts, and you already have the parts. There's the video itself — what it is, what it has to carry. And there are the four things you settle before anyone shoots anything: whose account it posts on, whether you can put money behind it and whose handle it runs under, how long the reuse lasts, and how many rounds of changes you get.

We've argued those four get settled early, and priced against the campaign rather than against one file you happen to like. Each one has a setting, and the number follows the settings you picked.

The ads question holds two purchases, worth keeping apart while you're pricing. Running the video as paid media from your own account is usage rights. Running the ads through their handle instead is whitelisting, a separate permission, and what it buys is the same claim coming from them rather than from you.

Neither is the original post on their account. That one is the posting question, and once you've settled it as a post, it doesn't need a second ad permission stacked on top.

For the chili crisp: the video posts on their account, not on yours. You want it running as paid ads from the brand account, and the media plan doesn't need anyone's name on it but yours. The reuse runs through the holiday weeks. Two rounds of changes. That's the four, all of them yours, all of them decided before anybody says a number.

Three of the things above are ways of putting the video in front of people: the post on their account, your own account running it as an ad, and their handle running it. Want all three and ask for two, and you've priced a job you're not doing.

Which parts did you leave for them to fill in?

A number that comes back has already answered every term you left blank — some version of it, or the bare video with the rest still unbought. What counts as blank is what you sent them, not what you decided. Unless they ask you outright, which of those happened isn't visible from your side.

So here's the check, and it works on any number you're holding: finish the sentence "this is the price of ___" using only what both of you have said. If the sentence runs out before you get to a job, you're not looking at a price yet.

For the chili crisp: the message that went out named the video, said it was paid, and gave the on-shelf dates. Nothing in it mentioned ads. A number came back anyway, and behind it is a job you can't see, which may or may not be the one on your media plan. Finishing that sentence takes one more message. Send it before the video exists.

Book a demo →

Two numbers that look nothing alike — what makes them comparable?

Nothing yet, and that's the answer.

Say one number covers a video on their account and nothing after it, and another covers a video you keep running as paid media into next quarter. Those aren't two prices for one thing. They're two purchases, and the bigger number may be the smaller ask.

Don't adjust either number to make them line up; you'd be inventing the adjustment. Write the job out once, the way you'd want it from either of them, and ask both.

For the chili crisp: one job, and it's the message you already owed one of them. The video on their account, brand-account ads through the holiday weeks, two rounds. Send it to both and read what comes back.

Whatever gap survives that is finally a comparison — two people answering the same question, read alongside everything else you know about them.

The number came back higher than the budget. What moves?

Two things can, and they're not the same move.

You can ask for the same job for less. Be clear about what that is: nothing about the job changed, so nothing about the job says what it should now cost. You've asked them to sell what they were selling, cheaper.

Or you can buy less. Give a term back and the job is smaller, which means the number has something to answer to again.

The second is the one you can reason about, because every term you hand back is a thing you no longer have.

The ads question splits in two here. Give back the ads through their handle and you keep your own account running the video, having given up the version where the claim comes from them. Give back the usage rights altogether and you've bought a video that lives on their account and nowhere else. Shorten the reuse window and the ads stop when it stops. Give back a round of changes and you have one less pass at the ways the things your brief settled could come back wrong. The posting question isn't among them, because a video nobody posts isn't a smaller job. It's a different one.

No one of them is cheap to give back in every campaign. They give up different things, and which loss you can absorb is a question about this campaign.

For the chili crisp: both numbers came back against that job, and the one you'd rather take is over what you have. You never bought the ads through their handle, and giving back the usage rights outright would leave the campaign with no ads at all — so two candidates are left. Give back a round of changes and you're trusting the brief to have covered what matters, which is a risk you can read today by rereading the brief. Shorten the reuse window to the launch week and the holiday weeks lose their ads, which is most of what the video was for.

Should you say your number first?

Ask whether the job is written down yet.

If it is, and the video and the four terms are all decided, your number is a statement about what you're buying, and it goes out attached to the job.

If it isn't, a number does the job's work for it. You've put a price on something you haven't written, and now what you ask for has to fit inside it.

Which is why a first message sent before the offer exists carries no number — it says the job is paid, so they know there's something to answer about, and stops short of a number.

For the chili crisp: the four terms came off the media plan and the launch calendar before anyone was contacted. By the time you name a number, there's already a job to attach it to.

Book a demo →

What isn't in the fee?

Three costs that live somewhere else on the same budget. Name them now and they don't turn up later as surprises.

The money behind the ads. Buying the right to run the video as paid media is buying permission. What you put behind it is its own budget row, and that row doesn't shrink because the fee grew.

The product, and getting it to them. Somebody pays for the jars and somebody pays the shipping.

Work past the rounds you agreed. A note that arrives after the last round is a new ask, and it goes back to the same table the first number came from.

For the chili crisp: the ad money is a row on the media plan, not part of the fee. You send the jars and cover the shipping. Anything after the second round is a new ask, and you'd price it when it arrives.

Not one of those has an owner you can look up. They're costs you decide and write down, line by line, and either answer can work. The only bad version is the one nobody made.

Frequently asked questions

We agreed a number, then the campaign moved. Does it stand?

Depends what moved. The number was attached to a job, so put the change next to the job and see whether it touched it.

Your launch slipping while everything they hand over stays identical is your calendar changing, not the job. But if the slip runs the video past the end of the reuse window you bought, or the media plan grows to want their handle on it, you're asking for something you didn't buy. You're back at the conversation you had the first time, about a job with a different term in it.

If the chili crisp launch slipped a week, the reuse you bought still covers the holiday weeks, so nothing they hand over changed — say that in the message. Push it to January and the ads run past what you bought, and you're asking for a different job.

We've worked with them before. Do we start from last time's number?

Put the two jobs side by side before you let the earlier number do any work.

The risk here is on your side of the table. A number you remember is attached to a job you ran, and it feels like a price for this creator because it's the only one you've got. Change any of the four terms and it's anchoring you to the price of something else.

If the chili crisp brand had run one of them before, that campaign had no ads behind it and this one does. The earlier number priced a job that didn't include them.

See what this looks like for your brand

Got a number in front of you and nothing to check it against? We'll go through the job with you.

Reach out and negotiate with creators through automated emails.

Book a demo →

Or email us: business@popow.ai