PortalBunnyHow much to charge for a sponsored LinkedIn post.
There is no market rate. Anyone who gives you one number is guessing — and the number is not the part that breaks anyway. We spent the autumn asking creators, freelancers and the brand managers who hire them where a paid collaboration actually falls apart. Price came up constantly, but almost never as “they offered too little”. It came up as “we never agreed what the price covered”.
Written from our own conversations. Named quotes appear only where the person gave permission; everything else is reported as a pattern, without names.
PortalBunny is in its pilot.
How a deal works on the How it works page; how we differ from other platforms on Compare.
Four things set the price.
Everything else is noise. Answer these four in writing and you can defend any figure you name.
01The audience you can show, not the one you have
A buyer is not paying for followers. They are paying for the part of your audience they can verify before the money moves: who follows you, what those people do for a living, and how a comparable post of yours actually performed. A screenshot of one good week is not that.
02What exactly is delivered
One post is not one deliverable. Is it the post alone, or the post plus your replies in the comments for a day? Is a repost from your company page included? Does the brand get the raw file? Most arguments we heard were about this line, not about the figure above it.
03How long it stays up, and who may reuse it
A post that stays live for a week and a post that stays live forever are two different products. So is a post the brand may run as an ad. This is the most frequently forgotten line, and it is the one that silently doubles the value of what you handed over.
04How many revisions are inside the price
Write the number. Two rounds, three rounds, whatever you decide — but written, before you start. The danger is not the count. It is the absence of one.
What goes wrong after the number is named.
The same four failures came back from people who had never met each other, in five countries.
01The brief says something nobody can check
“Make it feel premium”, “SEO-optimised”, “on-brand” — none of these can be verified, so a disagreement about them has no resolution except whoever is more stubborn. A requirement that can be checked looks like this: mention the free trial, link to this page, use this phrase, include the ad label.
02Approval has no deadline
One ghostwriter put it plainly: founders sometimes take weeks to approve, and the work sits finished and unpaid in the meantime. A draft step without a time limit is not a safeguard. It is a waiting room.
03The price was per thing, and the thing changed
If you price per word, per day or per asset, say what happens when the count moves. A figure calculated from a count is still a fixed price — as long as the count is agreed before anyone starts.
04Scope grows because refusing is awkward
This was the most useful thing anyone told us, and it came up independently more than once: scope does not grow because of the contract. It grows because refusing a client costs more than quietly doing the extra work. That is why a number written down before the start is worth more than a higher number agreed in a chat. It removes the moment where saying no is the expensive option.
Five lines that produce a price you can defend.
One. Write the deliverable as a single sentence a stranger could check: “one sponsored post on my LinkedIn profile, live for at least seven days, brand tagged, ad label included”.
Two. Add the usage line. May the brand boost it, reuse it, or put it on their own page? Each of those is a separate yes.
Three. Add the revisions line. A number, not “a few”.
Four. Price the whole sentence, not the post — your time, your audience, the rights you are handing over, and the fact that the post stays attached to your name long after the campaign is forgotten.
Five. Agree it before anything is made. Terms first, work second. Every creator we spoke to who had been burned described that order in reverse.
The questions that follow.
01Should I ask a brand to pay before I start?
Asking a brand-new client for a deposit inside a contract often scares small clients away — a freelance journalist and UGC creator in the UK told us exactly that, and gave us permission to say so. Several other creators described their real defence: a watermark, or a low-resolution file, held back until the money arrives. That is a workaround for a missing agreement, and it costs you the first impression of your own work. The useful move is not a bigger demand. It is removing the step where money has to be asked for at all.
02Is 50/50 normal?
In Germany, creators told us clients are cautious about paying everything up front and 50/50 is the habit — not a dealbreaker, a habit. In India, whether an advance is normal depends entirely on the client. There is no single answer, which is precisely why it has to be written down per deal.
03Do I charge more if they want to run it as an ad?
Yes, and as a separate line. Paid amplification is a different use of the same work, and if it is not written down before publication it is usually assumed to be free.
04What happens after I name the price?
This is the part PortalBunny is built for. The buyer pays when the deal starts. Your share waits on your own Stripe account and reaches your bank after the buyer approves the post and the agreed live period ends. If you do not deliver, the buyer gets a full refund. One fee of 8%, paid by the buyer on top of your price, so you keep the price you named. A completed deal stays on record for both sides, which is what the next brand looks at instead of your follower count. How a deal works, in detail.
Want to be in the first deals?
Applications for creators and brands are open on the home page. Everything on this page comes from conversations with creators, freelancers, studios and the brand and agency managers who hire them, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany and India, between September and November 2026.