Complete without the AI section at the end. Use it on paper if you like.

Step 1 — Your base rate

From the market research this guide uses throughout:

Pick a number in your band. If you have never quoted before, take the middle of the beginner band rather than the bottom — the bottom is where you go to win a job you didn't want at a price you'll resent.

BASE = ________

Step 2 — Scope the job

You cannot price what you haven't scoped. Answer all six before you calculate.

If any row is blank, go back and ask. A quote given on an unscoped brief is a guess you can't raise later.

Step 3 — The levers

Work down. Every figure below is illustrative — a starting shape to test, not a market rate. Ask other creators in your category and adjust.

Production subtotal

BASE × number of deliverables                       = ________
  less volume discount (illustrative: 10–20% at 3+) = ________
                                        PRODUCTION  = ________

Keep the discount modest. Your cost per piece falls less than a client will suggest, and a steep volume discount sets your per-piece rate for every future quote.

Rights

Priced as a percentage of production, because a broader grant is worth more on a bigger job.

Organic only, 3 months            illustrative:  +0%
Organic, 12 months                illustrative: +10–25%
Paid amplification, 3 months      illustrative: +25–50%
Paid amplification, 12 months     illustrative: +50–100%
Whitelisting (ads from your handle)          price separately, always
Perpetuity                        price as if forever, because it is
                                              RIGHTS = ________

This is the line that decides whether the job was worth doing. Section 2 of the teaching explains why: a brand running your video as a paid ad for a year has bought something worth far more than the production fee, and they only pay for it if you put it on the quote.

Exclusivity

No exclusivity                                     +0%
Named competitors, ____ months     illustrative: +10–30%
Whole category                     illustrative: +30%+ and ask for a shorter term
                                       EXCLUSIVITY = ________

Add-ons

Rush turnaround                    illustrative: +25–50%
Raw footage handover               price separately, never a courtesy
Extra revision rounds              per round or hourly, agreed up front
Additional formats/crops           per deliverable
                                          ADD-ONS = ________

Step 4 — The quote

PRODUCTION   ________
RIGHTS       ________
EXCLUSIVITY  ________
ADD-ONS      ________
─────────────────────
TOTAL        ________

Itemise it when you send it. Not because they need the arithmetic, but because a visible rights line is a rights line they have to think about. Bury it in a single number and you've priced it without ever discussing it.

Step 5 — Sanity checks

• Would you be pleased or resentful doing this job at this price? Resentment at the quote stage becomes a bad job later.
• Have you heard "no" recently? If never, you're under-priced.
• Is the rights line at least visible? If it's zero, confirm that's genuinely organic-only, in writing.
• Does perpetuity appear anywhere? Price it as forever or negotiate it out.

6Worked example — illustrative

Beginner, mid-band                       BASE = $100
3 videos                                        $300
  less 15% volume                              −$45
                             PRODUCTION       = $255
Paid amplification, 6 months, +40%             $102
                                 RIGHTS       = $102
No exclusivity                                    $0
Raw footage requested                           $75
                                TOTAL         = $432

The same job quoted as "3 videos at $100" is $300, and the brand still runs the ads. That gap is the entire content of Section 2.

⎯⎯ AI section ⎯⎯

Everything above works without this. Blueprint §3.2 records the verdict here as AI leverage: genuine, because pricing a specific brief involves judgement-per-case that has to be redone every time.

What it's good for: reasoning about this niche and this rights scenario, and producing a starting number you then defend in your own words.

What it is not: an authority on market rates. It has no access to what your market actually pays. It is doing arithmetic and structured reasoning on figures you supplied.

7A brief you can reuse

Help me price a UGC job. Work from my numbers only — do not introduce
market rates from anywhere else.

MY BASE RATE
  [YOUR NUMBER] per video, because [why you're in that band]

THE BRIEF
  Deliverables:   [N pieces, format, length]
  Where it runs:  [organic / paid / both]
  Duration:       [months, or perpetuity]
  Territory:      [markets]
  Exclusivity:    [none, or which competitors and how long]
  Revisions:      [rounds included]
  Turnaround:     [dates]
  Extras:         [raw footage, additional crops, anything else]

WHAT I WANT BACK
  1. An itemised quote: production, rights, exclusivity, add-ons, total.
  2. For each line, one sentence on why it's priced that way — in language
     I could say out loud to the client.
  3. Anything in this brief I haven't priced but should have.
  4. Any question the brief leaves unanswered that I should ask before
     quoting.

Do not invent a market rate. Do not tell me what other creators charge.
Use my base rate as given.

Point 3 is the one that earns its place. The most common beginner error isn't mispricing a line, it's not noticing a line exists — and an unpriced grant is the one that hurts.

Point 4 catches the other one: quoting against an incomplete brief.

8Two rules

Never let it set your base rate. That's yours, from the market, adjusted by what happens when you quote. If you ask it what to charge, you'll get a plausible number with nothing behind it.

Re-run it when a client pushes back. "They want perpetuity instead of 12 months — reprice and tell me what to say" is thirty seconds and it stops you conceding on the call.