It can be really frustrating when you feel that brands are only willing to offer you gifted products as a creator. You might be seeing so many creators as your scroll Tiktok or Instagram with yet another “paid partnership” label and be thinking “what am I doing wrong?”

Well, here’s a little secret as a creator with over 200,000 followers across social platforms and almost 6 years experience running a content creator business: you need to put yourself out there.

Over 75% of my partnerships last year were outbound – as in, I was the one who either emailed and pitched or applied for the campaign via an influencer platform.

This is the biggest mistake I see new creators or influencers make – that you aren’t getting brand deals because YOU are not seeking them out, emailing and pitching the brands, or applying to the campaigns out there.

I hate to break it to ya, but you gotta own it! If you’re going to sit around and wait for a brand to email you saying they’re going to pay you $5,000 for 2 video posts and some stories, you might be waiting a long while!

Every successful creator with a booming partnership biz does their own outreach or applications to campaigns and agencies and doesn’t just wait for the opportunities to maybe come into their inbox.

SO – I’m here to help you have this too.

Here are 5 reasons why you aren’t getting paid brand deals (YET!) as a creator or influencer and actionable tips on what to do to ACTUALLY land paid partnerships as a micro-influencer, creator, and UGC creator.

1. You don’t even ask about budget

Once you are in talks with a brand, you need to ASK if there is a budget for whatever they are asking for! Obviously, a company wants to pay the least amount possible and get free advertising or content!! I’ve found a lot of times if you do get an inbound, they’ll sort of leave it open/unclear about a budget, and all it takes is a simple

“what is the budget available for X deliverables?”

The worst you’re going to get is a NO – and almost always always every brand I’ve had a NO from still wanted to work together somehow or we found a later date when there WAS budget (so yes if you still wanted that thing for free anways, you can still accept it as a gift lol).

But next time, just try asking!

2. You don’t have content samples aligned with the Brand

You need to have content that is similar to what the brand is looking for. If I want to work with a tourism board, I need to have content already made that shows travel experiences, hotels, and destinations if they want to consider me.

So think about now the industries of the brands you want to work with.

Take a look at your content.

Does it align?

If not, start working on some that will!

You need to tailor your content samples around to what the brand is – you need to show them content aligned with their industry! Showing a cool video of me walking in an airport with a cool transition to me in the hotel room isn’t really going to convince a skincare brand I can create what they need (and what they will pay me for!).

3. You only have 1 Media Kit

I have multiple media kits for each industry I work with (this isn’t crazy time consuming, I just use my same template and change out the content samples and some details/stats!).  If I am pitching a baby brand, I send them my media kit that has my family/baby content.  If I am pitching a hotel, I send them my media kit with tourism content.

4. You don’t offer what they need

Being able to offer different deliverable types will open the door to various partnerships. Not EVERY brand and business is solely focused on reaching more potential customers through sponsored posts this second. They might really need more of their own content to share, or maybe they find better conversions through posts on stories. You not only want to see where they are at and what their needs are, but be able to offer a variety of options to work with you.

5. You don’t fit their budget

A ‘NO’ isn’t always a NO, it just might be a ‘NOT YET’. Smaller brands have smaller budgets to work with creators (but creators are the best bang for their buck when it comes to content creation!). Your best strategy is to offer different packages at different price points so you can begin a working relationship with the brand. They might only be able to pay $200 for 2 UGC videos right now, but if you crush it and they love working with you, they will come back and figure out how to allocate more budget towards working with you.

I don’t want you to spend hours trying to figure out how to drum up a new media kit, or figuring out how to successfully pitch a brand or find the email to contact them, so I made it easy for you with The Collaboration Kit. It’s got your media kit template (legit it’s the one I use that’s landed me thousands of dollars in collabs this year!), pitch templates (again, the ones I use), invoice template and a Collaboration Platform Vault of all the platforms you can join to start applying for collabs NOW.

And if you’re ready to step up your game and take your business as a creator seriously, join my FREE Masterclass training below.

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I’d love to invite you to my completely FREE training to grow and make money using Instagram.

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