Should you send a creator free product instead of paying them?

Say you sell loose-leaf tea, and you've picked a creator whose account is mostly slow mornings in the same kitchen. The number came back higher than the budget you set for them. Somebody on the call says what everyone is thinking: it's a tin of tea. Send them one and see what happens.

You can. The market has two names for it, gifting and product seeding, and it's a real way brands work with creators. What to settle before the box goes out is what you get for it, and the honest version of that answer starts with what you don't.

What are you actually sending?

An arrangement of its own, not a discount on a paid collaboration.

A paid collaboration has a fixed fee in it, and the fee is what the other side of the agreement is priced against. Take the fee out and there's nothing holding that other side up. Nothing is owed.

That isn't a risk sitting around the edges of the arrangement. It is the arrangement. They can open the box, drink the tea for a month, and never mention you, and no agreement has been broken. You sent a tin of tea to somebody who now has a tin of tea.

For the tea: one tin, out the door, and no video on the other end of it. That's a complete description of what you've committed to.

What was the fee carrying?

The fee was never buying goodwill. It was buying the right to require, and what it could require is specific. Each of these sits inside a paid collaboration, and each one leaves when the fee does.

That it happens, and when. A paid collaboration has a date in it because both sides agreed to one, and the fee is what they agreed against. With nothing to agree against, there's a delivery date and nothing after it.

That it follows the brief. The brief tells a creator what the message is and where the boundaries are. Send one with no fee behind it and you've sent a suggestion.

That you can ask for a change. Asking a creator to change something is a round you bought. Without the fee there's no round to call, so whatever goes up is what you get unless they choose to change it.

That you can use it afterward. Usage rights are their own purchase inside the fee. Nothing about the send grants them, so unless you asked and they agreed, the video stays where they put it and doesn't move onto your page or into paid media.

Those are the common ones and not the whole set. What you'd settle before a shoot has more of them.

So write two lists. First what you wanted from this creator, then which of those items the fee was carrying. If the second list is empty, the fee would have been buying things you weren't going to use.

For the tea: the want list has one item, which is whether they'd talk about it. None of the asks above is on it. A fee could have bought you a post; it couldn't have bought you the answer to that.

Did you attach an ask, or not?

Two different sends get called the same thing, and you pick which one you're doing when you write the message that goes with the box.

You asked for something. A post, a mention, a photo, a sentence about what they thought. The ask is real and there's no fee standing behind it, so it's a request they can decline or leave alone.

You asked for nothing. The box arrives with what the product is and why you thought of this person, and that's the end of it.

Neither one is the better one. They are different sends with different things on the other end, and the way to tell which you did is to read what you wrote. If a sentence in it names something you want back, you asked. If no sentence does, you didn't, whatever you were hoping while you packed it.

The hoping is the part to watch. An unasked question doesn't turn into an ask because it was strongly felt, and it doesn't go away either. It can come back later as disappointment you can't fairly put on anyone, because the cause is a question you never put.

For the tea: your note says we make this, and your morning videos made us think you'd like it. That's the second one. Nobody asked for anything.

What still applies when nothing is owed?

One obligation doesn't leave with the fee.

If they post about the tea, the fact that you gave it to them is a material connection between the two of you. The FTC's guidance for influencers is that a material connection between a creator and a brand should be disclosed clearly, and that the disclosure sits where people will actually notice and understand it. Receiving a product for free is one of the ways that connection arises, and none of it turns on whether money moved.

• Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers

Read it yourself, and if the stakes are real, ask a lawyer rather than us.

The connection exists the moment they have the tea. Raise it afterward and you're asking a person to edit a post you didn't buy. Raise it on the way out and it's one line in the message, sitting next to what the product is. How they write it is theirs.

For the tea: the note ends by asking them to say the tea was a gift if they post. That isn't an ask. It names nothing you get back, only a condition on a post they may never make.

What do you settle before the box ships?

Two things, and both are cheaper to decide now than on the day somebody asks whether the tea was wasted.

The silence, when it comes, can read as a failure. No agreement was broken, so nothing failed in that sense. But the send didn't answer the question you sent it to answer, and those are two different things to be disappointed about. You'll be separating them at a bad moment unless you've done it already.

So settle two things while the box is still on the desk.

Whether this is a cost you're willing to have spent. Would you sign it off again with nothing to show for it? If that's a no, what you need is an output you can count on, and an output you can count on is a purchase with a fee on it. The question goes back to what you'd pay.

What would earn a second box. Name it now: a post, a reply to your message, a photo somebody forwards you from a group chat. It doesn't have to be a video. It has to be something you named before you had a result in front of you.

For the tea: the tin is a yes. What earns a second box is any reply at all, including one saying they didn't like it.

What does the send tell you?

What you learn depends on which of the two sends you made, so the fork from three sections back is doing the work here.

A video went up. They put this product in front of their audience with no fee attached. That's one data point about this person, worth more than none and less than a pattern. It is not a forecast. It doesn't tell you what the same person would make from a brief with a fee attached, and it doesn't tell you what that video would do behind paid media. Those are separate purchases answering separate questions.

Nothing went up, and you had asked. Your ask went out and nothing came back. You don't know why, and from where you're sitting the reasons don't come apart. The tin is in a cupboard. The message got buried. They liked it and never thought to film it. What you do know is that this ask, in this form, from you, didn't get taken up, and that is as much about the ask as about the person.

Nothing went up, and you hadn't asked. There's less here, and it's worth saying so. Nothing was declined, because nothing was put. What the tin bought you is the price of finding out this way, and that price is what you weigh against asking with a fee behind it next time.

Reading any of the three as a verdict on the product is the one thing the send can't support.

For the tea: nobody asked, so nothing was declined. What you're left holding is what an unpaid send from you costs, and a question about whether the next one carries a fee.

Frequently asked questions

They wrote back asking for a fee. Is that a no?

It's an answer to a different question. They've told you the work has a price, which puts you in the conversation you'd have been in if you'd started there, and the tea stops being the subject. Take that up or don't. It isn't a counter to a number you named, because you didn't name one. It's a price on the thing you asked for, and that's where the other conversation starts.

We already run paid campaigns with this creator. Does sending them something change that?

Only if you don't say which one the box belongs to. Inside an open agreement, an unexplained product has an obvious place to be filed, and it may well get filed there. Say what it is when it goes out: a thing you sent because you thought of them, or a thing the agreement already covers. Whether to work with someone again is its own decision, and an unlabeled box shouldn't be what makes it.

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