The Hidden Costs of Free Products as a Content Creator

A Free [Product/Meal/Experience] Isn't Free

Let's say a brand just messaged you offering a free product or experience for coverage. Depending on how long you've been in the industry, you may be itching to say yes, because partnerships, however big or small, do not come every day for the vast majority of content creators- myself included.

There are many reasons why you may want to say yes, and we have to admit that we can't really argue against them. You are a customer of the brand and love their products. It is a great fit for your channels. And, for some, you simply don't want to (or can't) pay for the product outright. We get it, content creation is expensive, and a comped product or experience is one way to alleviate the burden and help you continue creating content. We've been there.

The problem we have with taking a free product is that you are effectively giving your time (and marketing) to a brand, and that time is often worth way more than the value that is received in return. I consider most forms of this to be lost revenue, and many creators likely don't understand just how fast that adds up.

A brand may justify this as “hey, come to our event. It's only 90 minutes, we'll give you and 50 other creators select cocktails from our new menu, and you can get great content for your feed!” On the surface, this hosted invite may sound great. Who doesn't love free drinks? But when you stop to think about it, that hosted experience ends up being very expensive for you in the long run, all for a $15 drink. That's a problem.

So let's break that down with an example.

How Much a Freebie Costs You as a Creator

I generally value my base time at $50/hr, as I've historically earned this amount running my sites through all monetization opportunities, averaged out over a 40-hour work week. Some years it is higher, others it is lower, but this is generally what I earn working on my sites full-time.

I use this figure when determining whether a campaign is appropriate for my business or not. Now, on paid campaigns, I often quote far higher than this figure, for reasons we'll get to later, but this amount should be kept in mind as a floor for analysis purposes for comps. Simply put, every hour I'm working on a free/hosted opportunity, I may not make that money back, meaning I have to work more later to cover.

So how much time is actually involved in a partnership? As it turns out, a lot. (And I should note, these are true for both free and paid campaigns.)

There is the time to respond to emails and negotiate the opportunity. I've had some inquiries turn around in as little as five minutes (“hey, you free tonight? yep, see you!”), and others that take hours of time thinking about it, crafting a response, and replying to follow-up questions. Yes, even “free” opportunities often involve a lot of back and forth, often when I have to tell brands that no, I don't provide guaranteed deliverables and cannot agree to posting two Reels for a cocktail, and, no, you also don't have universal rights to my media because you comped me a round.

In fact, I often spend way more time negotiating with someone for a hosted experience or nominal ad package, say a $25 event listing, than I do for a campaign at 100x the price. Why is that simple listing $25? Because I often spend an hour replying to the most random questions about it, whereas the larger campaign quote just receives a “send a contract” approval immediately.

Cost to me: $4 to $100 or more per partnership.

There is the time to enjoy whatever the experience may be– driving to a location, being present, or whatever other requirement takes time out of my day. I've had experiences that take as little as 30 minutes, such as reviewing a bottle of wine on my wine blog that was mailed to my doorstep, to multi-day experiences where I drive several states away and I'm away from my office completely.

Every minute spent doing something for a hosted partnership is one less minute you could be working on something else, and that means potentially sacrificing income.

Cost to me: $25 to $2,000 or more per partnership.

There is the time to create the final content you will share. Here, we don't mean just taking images and video (because that is often lumped into the previous point about enjoying the comp in question), but rather all the time that is required after the fact. Editing images, cutting a Reel, writing a blog post, crafting social media copy, replying to comments, etc. I can edit images and video fairly quickly, I'll admit, but articles and other more involved deliverables add up, and can take an hour up to several days for larger deliverable lists.

Cost to me: $50 to $400 or more per partnership.

There is lost income for giving away media rights. This doesn't happen all of the time, but we're seeing more and more “media night” invites that require us to hand over universal rights to our media without additional compensation.

Cost to me: $100 per image/video or more.

There is the time to create a performance report and follow up after the fact. I'm also pretty fast here, but you generally could be spending anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or longer finding all of your metrics to send back to a brand (unless you use a comprehensive software which, as we'll discuss in a second, also comes with a cost).

Cost to me: $8 to $50 or more per partnership.

And, while we're on the topic of hidden expenses, there are also soft costs you'll incur solely by existing as a content creator. Think of things like gas consumed, wear and tear on your vehicle, tolls, parking fees, photo editing software subscriptions, food and beverage costs, gratuity (tip your server even if comped, please!), hosting fees, plugin costs, other misc. subscriptions, equipment depreciation, internet and phone bills, and so much more.

That 90-minute drive on a toll road to get to a comped experience? Well, you'll likely be paying $100 or more on vehicle expenses and tolls alone just to get there (not to mention a few flat tires over the years), and I generally have about $500/month in subscription costs I have to cover no matter what I do purely because I exist in this field.

Cost to me: $2 to $100 or more per partnership, although I'll admit this one is highly variable and hard to pin down.

This is what we refer to as the cost to you for every campaign you accept- and these accrue whether you're being paid or are only comped. Perhaps not all of these apply to every experience, and some are only a monetary representation of the value of your time. But in business, time is money, so I view them as the same.

Adding these up, even the quickest of projects may result in me providing upwards of $100 of my time and expenses simply to take part in any hosted exchange, and more involved ones could be $250, $500, $3,000, or more.

When I quote for a paid campaign, I absolutely cover all of this in my rates. When I accept a comp, I am eating the cost (or, more appropriately, working more at another time to make up for it), and that's a problem- especially when you get 40+ hours a week of comped inquiries as I sometimes do.

When, exactly, are you supposed to make money if you're giving all your time away for a comp?

Still, when you think of things this way, you may start to see things from a different perspective. Would you give up $100 of your time and other associated expenses to try a $15 cocktail that a bar selected for you at a media preview event, when that time could be spent doing literally anything else? What about if you had to put down $15 for parking just to enjoy that “free” drink? Well, when I think of it that way, I'm really not so sure.

The goal is to have hosted products and experiences work for your brand and make revenue, naturally. But when the offers become sillier and sillier, like allocating several hours of time for one cocktail and a separate bar bill on the back end, sometimes it certainly feels easier to do things on your own terms and your own dime just to cut out the nonsense.

But we can keep going further, because it can get worse. A lot worse.

Your Brand Reputation and Endorsements Have a Cost, Too

Now we have to move on to an aspect of being a content creator where the costs to you are a bit more abstract, and that is along the lines of how much you value your reputation.

In my opinion, every partnership, whether it is comped or paid, comes with an intangible brand cost. This goes beyond the time to do the work, as discussed above, and is more about the price of your endorsement and its impact on your reputation in the eyes of your readers.

Some partnerships are, I'll admit, perfect fits with little impact as noted at the start of this article. If I'm happy to endorse the brand, often because I'm already a paying customer and just so happened to get a partnership offer for extra marketing, there is little risk to me in this regard. A perfect fit is a perfect fit.

But there are other scenarios where a partnership can go sideways and cost you in the long run. Are you endorsing a brand that has a notoriously bad reputation? Is it a company you don't actually like, other than the fact that they're offering you money or a free meal? Are you making wild claims that anyone who pays attention knows to be patently false (e.g. “this [store] is the best in the city!” when it clearly isn't)? Are you legally disclosing the relationship? These are very real things that may result in a hit to your brand image in the long run.

I have heard countless stories of creators who have earned bad reputations because they are hawking terrible products left and right, often without partnership disclosures, and it becomes a turn-off to those who pay attention- not just to readers, but also to other brands that may be observing and may be considering you for a paid campaign.

You can lose followers. You can get hate mail. You can get blacklisted. I can go on. Conversely, honesty can win you a lot of credibility. I posted negative opinions on a popular local restaurant, which was trending because every content creator in the city was hosted and posted glowing reviews (often without disclosure of the relationship, although I paid as a regular guest), and my top comment was something along the lines of “Finally someone said it. Instagram lied to me.” Yep, it sure did.

Are those risks worth it for money? I'll be honest, I think the answer for a lot of creators is maybe. I think everyone has a price, some with more zeroes after the one than others. Are those risks worth it for a comped product or experience? I don't think so, for most products at least. (I don't think any travel blogger is going to turn their nose up over a comped trip to Antarctica, just saying.)

And if you're thinking, “well, this one hosted experience won't have too much of an impact” or “if I say yes now, it may start a relationship where they may pay one day in the future,” think about what happens when you take this one, and then another tomorrow to keep the relationship going, and then another the next day, and all of a sudden your feed is one run-on commercial of comped products because you now just say yes to everything thrown your way.

That is a slippery slope that is hard to return from, and people absolutely do pay attention.

So, who do you care about more- your readers, or what PR firm is going to give you your next comp?

When Comped Partnerships Make Sense

Now, this article does read a bit like I am spreading doom and gloom on the comped product realm of influencer marketing, but I will say that some freebies have their place- really!

I generally have two rules in place when evaluating whether a comped product or experience is worth it, and one of two major boxes must be checked (ideally, both).

First, I will consider a hosted scenario if the overall value exceeds the cost to me as a creator. You want to provide a $1,000 product, and it will only cost $500 of my time for what I would ultimately provide in return? Well, we can keep that conversation going a bit further, because you're offering me a value proposition now that ultimately saves me time and money- assuming I'm interested and can retain editorial control at least.

This doesn't mean it is a guaranteed yes, but it isn't a guaranteed no. Let's talk more.

Second, if the opportunity is something that will help me grow my brand, or I see a pathway to make money from my content as part of that, I am willing to eat some of these upfront costs to me as well.

Are you a brand offering me something new in my quest to do everything in my city? Well, that's interesting, and I can probably make money off of that. Are you inviting me out to try your new menu every month for five years in a row after I said yes once? Please, please stop. Are you a winery offering me an editorial wine bottle review with a grape I've never tried? Well, that's also interesting and is in line with my brand goals while also saving me money. Do you have an affiliate program where I can make commission on sale? I'm listening.

What I can't say amongst all of this is how others may interpret these near endless scenarios. Personally, I don't think any creator, big or small, should underestimate their value.

My $50/hour rate as a full-time content creator isn't the same rate as someone starting out, and that's fine. But you still should value your time greater than $0/hour (start with minimum wage, if you must- if you worked in the marketing department for the brand, you'd at least make minimum wage, if not more). What I view as a good value proposition for my brand may not be a good value proposition for someone else, and I really can't argue much insofar as you are not selling yourself short.

This isn't meant to be an end all, be all judgment call here. Everyone is going to be different.

But what I want to challenge everyone to think about is how much that free product or experience is actually costing you, and use that as your guide on whether or not the opportunity is actually worth it. You'll be surprised at how many really aren't when you start to think about it this way.

Who knows? If you pitch a paid campaign, they may say yes, while everyone else ends up working for free. This happens more than you think!

What are your requirements for taking a comped product or hosted experience in content creation? Comment below to share!