Usage rights and whitelisting: what should creators charge?

By Mel, founder Updated 9 November 2026

Twenty years as a celebrity photographer, then built some of the biggest humour pages on Facebook. Every deal and every dispute goes through him.

Short answer

Organic usage lets a brand share your content on its own channels; paid usage lets it put ad spend behind it, either from its own account or from yours through whitelisting, such as Meta partnership ads or TikTok Spark Ads. Charge for paid usage separately and by time: Influencer Marketing Hub benchmarks whitelisting at 20% to 30% of your base fee per month. Always set an end date, the platforms and the countries.

What's the difference between organic and paid usage?

Organic usage means the brand shares your content on its own channels without paying to promote it: a repost on its Instagram, a clip on its website. Paid usage means the brand puts ad spend behind it, so it reaches people who follow neither of you. Paid usage is worth more because the brand is using your face as an ad.

Types of usage and how we'd price them
Type	What the brand gets	Whose handle	How we'd price it
Organic repost	Shares your post on its own channels, unpaid	The brand's	Can sit in the base fee if it's limited to named channels and a set window
Paid usage	Your content in its ads	The brand's	Extra, per month
Whitelisting (partnership ads, Spark Ads)	Ads run from your account	Yours	Extra, per month, at the top of the paid range
Full buyout	The content outright, usually forever	Either	A large one-off fee, if you agree at all

What is whitelisting?

Whitelisting means letting a brand run ads through your account, so the ad shows your name and photo rather than the brand's logo. Brands pay for it because the ad looks like it comes from you. Each platform has its own version.

Meta partnership ads (Facebook and Instagram). Meta describes branded content as an organic post with a "Paid partnership" label, and partnership ads as the brand putting ad spend behind that content, shown with an "Ad" label. You give the brand permission in the app, so check exactly what you're granting and for how long.
TikTok Spark Ads. You generate a code for a post in its Ad settings and choose how long the authorisation lasts: 7, 30, 60 or 365 days. TikTok notes a code can only be deleted once every ad using that post has been deleted in Ads Manager.

Our rule: the permission you grant in the app should never run longer than the contract. If the deal is 30 days of paid usage, don't hand over a 365-day Spark code.

How much should I charge for usage rights?

There's no official rate. The clearest published benchmarks come from Influencer Marketing Hub:

Usage rights pricing benchmarks
What the brand wants	Benchmark
Whitelisting for paid social	20% to 30% of your base fee per month
Spark Ads or dark posts	Closer to 30%
Paid usage for 1 to 3 months	Base fee plus 20% to 30% of base per extra month
Extending a 6 to 12 month licence	Plus 10% of base per month beyond the included period
Raw footage	25% to 50% above standard usage fees
Each extra region	Often plus 10% to 20%
Category exclusivity	15% to 30% premium on total fees

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, Whitelisting vs Full Buyout.

A worked example using their formula (base fee, times 25%, times months): a $1,000 post with 3 months of whitelisting adds $750, so the quote is $1,750. The maths is the same in pounds.

Usage is now part of most deals. In Kolect's 2026 data, 80.4% of single-post collaborations included paid-usage, whitelisting or ad-code rights, and the median fee for those deals ($500) was the same as for organic-only ones, though Kolect says the organic-only group was too small to compare reliably. Our take: a lot of brands are getting usage thrown in for free. Don't let them.

How long should usage rights last?

As short as the campaign needs. We'd start at 30 days for paid usage and go to 90 for a bigger campaign; in the deals we do, 90 days of paid media is typical. Six to twelve months is a licence and should be priced as one. Anything "in perpetuity" is a buyout.

Always pin down four things: how long, which platforms, which countries, and whether it's organic, paid or whitelisted. If any of those is missing, assume the brand will read it as unlimited.

Do ads using my content still need an "Ad" label?

If they run from your handle, yes. Meta's partnership ads show with an "Ad" label. For posts on your own account, the ASA expects a clear "Ad" label upfront in the UK, and the FTC says US disclosures in a video belong in the video, not only the description. The ASA notes that on a brand's own channels it's often already clear the content is advertising.

What should the usage clause in a contract say?

Type: organic, paid, whitelisted, or a mix.
Length: a start and end date, in days or months.
Platforms: named, not "all media".
Countries: named.
Edits: whether the brand can cut, crop or add text to your content.
Raw footage: excluded unless it's priced.
Extensions: the price to extend, agreed now.
After the end date: ads come down and in-app permissions are removed.

For the rest of the contract, see our brand deal contract red flags.

How we do it at TBC

Your content stays yours. Brands get defined, time-limited usage, written into each deal, and nothing is open-ended. When brands book through our brands page, we tell them up front that 90 days of paid media is typical, so usage is a line on the quote, not a favour.

Our parent company, TBC Viral Media, runs creator campaigns and paid social for brands, so we know how usage looks from the other side of the table too.

Usage is priced and time-limited in writing, every time.
Exclusivity is limited to the brand's category, for its campaign window.
We work through official agency access on Facebook and Instagram, which you approve and can remove. We never ask for passwords.
You're paid within five business days of the brand paying us, and you see every invoice.

Questions creators ask

What's the difference between whitelisting and usage rights?

Usage rights let a brand use your content, organically or in its own ads. Whitelisting lets it run ads from your account, under your name. Whitelisting is a kind of paid usage and is usually priced at the top of the range.

How much should I charge for whitelisting?

Influencer Marketing Hub's benchmark is 20% to 30% of your base fee per month, closer to 30% for Spark Ads. Price it per month, with an end date.

How long does a TikTok Spark Ads code last?

You choose when you generate it: 7, 30, 60 or 365 days. Match it to the contract.

Should I agree to perpetual usage?

Only as a buyout, priced as one. Otherwise, cut it back to a fixed window.

Are usage rights included in my fee?

Only if you say so. Put usage on its own line so the brand can see what it's paying for.

Want someone to price this for you?

Four questions, under a minute. Mel reads every application himself and writes back either way, usually within a working day.

Apply as a creator

Sources

Updated 9 November 2026. Outside figures are from the sources below; everything about TBC is from our own terms.