🇬🇧 English · 6 min read · April 8, 2026

How to charge for usage rights as a UGC creator

If you've ever delivered a UGC video and seen it pop up six months later as a paid Instagram ad, congratulations — you've been giving away free media buys. The brand ran your face as a paid placement and pocketed the difference between what they paid you and what they would have paid an actor or a stock library.

This is the single biggest pricing mistake creators make. The fix is not to charge more for the video itself. The fix is to price the usage rights separately. Done right, it doubles your invoice without scaring the brand off.

What "usage rights" actually means

Usage rights = the license that controls where, how, and for how long the brand can use the content you created. Without an explicit clause, most jurisdictions default to "the brand can use it however they want, forever." That's the worst possible outcome for you.

The five variables that matter:

• Channels: the brand's own organic socials only? Paid ads too? Their website? Out-of-home billboards?
• Platforms: Instagram only? TikTok? YouTube? Meta paid ads? TikTok Spark Ads?
• Territory: Sweden only? Nordics? Europe? Worldwide?
• Duration: 30 days? 3 months? 6 months? Perpetual?
• Whitelisting: can the brand run paid ads through your handle as the publisher? (this is a separate, premium-priced ask)

The pricing formula (with real numbers)

Start with your base creation fee — what it costs to write, film, edit, and deliver the asset. Then apply usage multipliers on top.

For a single UGC video with my own real ranges:

• Base creation fee: 3,500 SEK — your time + skill, no usage rights included
• + Organic only, brand's own socials, 90 days: +1,000 SEK
• + Add paid ads on Meta + TikTok, 90 days: +3,000 SEK
• + Extend to 6 months total: +2,000 SEK
• + Whitelisting (run as you, the creator, on Spark Ads): +4,000 SEK
• + Worldwide instead of Nordics: +2,000 SEK

That's 15,500 SEK total for a single video instead of 3,500 SEK. The math is the same as for a freelance photographer licensing a stock photo — the asset costs one thing, the right to use it costs more.

How to talk about it without scaring the brand

The objection you'll hear: "But our budget is X." The reframe is to make rights an optional add-on, not a take-it-or-leave-it bundle. Send a quote with two columns:

• Option A: Base creation only. You own the file, share it on your own socials. Brand can repost organically with credit.
• Option B: Creation + 6-month paid usage rights, Nordics, Meta + TikTok. (priced higher)

Brands almost always go for Option B because their internal media-buying team understands that buying usage is way cheaper than producing new content from scratch. You just have to put the option in front of them.

Track every right or you'll lose money

Once you start selling rights, you suddenly have a calendar of expiry dates to track. Brand X's 90 days expires April 12. Brand Y's perpetual whitelisting from January is still running. Brand Z is overdue and you should send a renewal invoice.

Doing this in a spreadsheet is how creators lose thousands of kronor a year. We built Kontra exactly for this reason — every invoice and contract you create can have usage rights attached, and Kontra tracks the expiry, alerts you 14 days out, and lets you send a renewal invoice with one click.

Free during early access. Sign up at usekontra.com.

The TL;DR

• Never quote a UGC video without an explicit usage rights clause.
• Default to organic-only with a clear duration.
• Price extensions, paid-ad use, and whitelisting as add-ons.
• Track expiry dates so you can sell renewals.
• Get the contract signed before you start filming.

If you take only one thing from this post: stop quoting a flat fee. Quote a base + rights. Your invoices will double. Your work will not.

Want to track usage rights automatically? Try Kontra free. We send you alerts before rights expire so you never leave a renewal on the table.