Part 1 - Establishing a Rate Card

During the course of your career, you may be asked the following:

“What would it cost to have you come in and speak to my team?”

“How much does it cost to sponsor you?”

“What do you charge for a social media post?”

“Do you do pro-bono or offer discounts?”

As you begin to establish yourself as a professional athlete, talent, speaker or author, it’s important to set your business rate card to help you navigate the deal landscape.

Your rate card is meant to serve as a baseline for you, which can be increased over time. These rates will give your team opportunities to pitch you at a professional fee that is worth your time and market value, while also leaving room to add on special things if the customer has a larger budget to work with.

Either way, you'll be able to rest easy knowing that you're being compensated fairly for your time and removes the guessing.

A rate card should cover most things including year long sponsorship deals, single day appearances and even one off social media posts. This will help you be prepared to vet deals that are worth sharing with your team and deals that just aren’t “real” opportunities.

This is meant to provide some baselines as well as take much of the guessing out of "what's my rate" or "how much do we charge for this?" and increase transparency.

Secret Negotiating Tip: Some athletes eventually get tired of the one off social posts as it can take value away from your more longer term partners who pay fair rates to work with you.

My general rule of thumb is for anything that's a 1-time paid social, a minimum rate should be $1,000 to $1,500 for 1 post and you have the right to take it down after 30 days. This is very standard across the industry.

If they come back to you with, "Well we work with other influencers with larger followings who charge less blah blah blah🙄"

You simply reply with this, "My value is higher because I bring 5x higher engagement and I have the attention of a fast growing niche market within my sport" Boom. Mic Drop.

Next week we will share a sample rate card template which will cover all types of appearances, deals and social media rates you can’t expect to encounter as an athlete. Stay tuned for part 2!