Someone offers you a game and a bit of money to talk about it, and your brain immediately does the worst possible thing: it tries to guess the biggest number they'll accept without laughing. That guess is almost always low, because it's built on insecurity rather than arithmetic. Then you do the work, realise it ate a whole weekend, and quietly resent the client for a deal you set the terms on.
The fix isn't confidence. Confidence is unreliable and tends to evaporate the moment a real invoice is due. The fix is a number you can defend with a straight face, built from two things you actually control: how long the work takes and how many people it reaches.
Start with the two numbers that matter
Everything else is decoration on top of these.
Your time. A sponsored video or written review is not "I was going to play this anyway." It's playing on a schedule, capturing footage, scripting, editing, revising to a brief, and answering emails from someone who uses the word "synergy" unironically. Add it up honestly. A single mid-length YouTube piece can be two or three full working days once editing is in. Decide what a day of your time is worth. If you don't have a number, pick one now and stop reading until you do.
Your reach. Not follower count — that's a vanity figure a bot can inflate. Reach is how many real people reliably see and act on what you post. A creator with a small, engaged audience that actually buys games is worth more to a developer than a big account whose comments are all other creators saying "great content bro."
Your floor is the time cost. You should never earn less than your day rate times the days involved, or you're paying to advertise someone else's product. Your ceiling is set by reach, because that's what the client is really buying. The gap between the two is your room to negotiate.
Build the rate, don't guess it
Work from the floor up.
Start with days of work times your day rate. That's the number below which the deal isn't worth getting out of bed. Then add a reach premium — a markup that reflects the value of the audience, not just the labour. A big audience doesn't make the editing take longer, but it makes the placement worth more, and that difference is yours to charge for.
Then add for anything that makes the job worse. Usage rights beyond your own channels — they want to run your face in an ad — costs extra, because you're licensing your work, not just making it. A tight deadline costs extra. Script approval and rounds of revisions cost extra, because "can we just tweak one thing" is never one thing. Exclusivity, where you agree not to cover a competitor for a while, costs a lot extra, because you're selling off future income.
Write the total down. That's your rate. It should feel slightly uncomfortable to say out loud. If it feels completely comfortable, it's too low.
Use the rate card as a filter, not a wish
Here's the reframe that changes everything. A rate card isn't a hopeful opening bid you expect to get haggled down from. It's a filter that removes the clients you don't want before they waste your week.
The developer emailing to ask if you'll cover their game "for exposure" and a Steam key is not a lead. They're telling you, up front and for free, that they don't have a budget and won't develop one. A clear rate makes that person disqualify themselves in one reply. You want that. Every hour spent negotiating with someone who was never going to pay is an hour stolen from someone who would.
The good clients — studios with a real marketing line, publishers who've done this before — read a rate card and think "fine, that's roughly what this costs." They're not offended by a number. They're relieved to be dealing with someone who has one, because it means you're a business and not a hobby that might vanish mid-campaign.
So publish it, or at least send it the moment money comes up. The awkwardness you're avoiding by staying vague is nothing next to the awkwardness of realising three days in that you priced a week of work at pizza money.
What actually moves the number up or down
The honest answer to "how much should I charge" is: it depends. Here's what it depends on, since most advice stops right before this part.
Format. A long-form dedicated review is the top of your range. A mention inside a video that was happening anyway is a fraction of that, because you're renting a slot, not building a whole thing.
Audience fit. If you cover cosy farming sims and they make a farming sim, your recommendation carries weight and you can charge for it. If they make a hardcore shooter and hope your audience "branches out," the fit is bad, the results will be bad, and you should either decline or price in the risk that it flops and dents your credibility.
How much of your judgement they want to buy. There's a difference between "cover our game honestly" and "say these three bullet points." The more they constrain what you can say, the less it's your review and the more it's an ad you're fronting — and ads cost more, not less, because you're spending trust you can't easily rebuild.
Deliverables and platforms. One video is one price. A video plus shorts plus a pinned post plus a week of stories is a campaign, and campaigns are priced as campaigns.
Notice what isn't on this list: how much you personally like the game. Enthusiasm is not a discount. You can love a game and still charge properly for the labour of talking about it well.
Keep the money and the verdict separate
The fastest way to make your rate worthless is to let it buy your opinion. The moment your audience suspects the score follows the cheque, your reach — the thing you were charging for — quietly deflates.
Sell your time and your platform. Never sell the conclusion. A sponsorship should pay you to give a game your honest attention, not to pretend it's good. Make that explicit in how you talk to clients, and be relentless about labelling paid work so nobody has to guess — we've covered how to disclose sponsored gaming content properly in its own right, because getting it wrong is both a trust problem and a legal one.
The clients worth having understand this. The ones who want a guaranteed glowing verdict are buying something you shouldn't be selling, and your rate card, thankfully, tends to scare them off before you have to.
Do this first
Work out your day rate this week, before anyone offers you anything. Decide what one full working day of your time is worth, write it somewhere you'll see it, and refuse to go below it. Every other decision in this piece gets easier once that single number exists, because you finally have a floor to stand on instead of a feeling to argue with.
When the offers start coming, the other half of the job is bringing them in on purpose rather than waiting — that's a separate skill, and pitching yourself to developers is where to start. You can also list yourself where studios go looking on Playkora's creator side.
Common questions
Should I show my rates publicly or send them on request?
Either works, but sending them the instant money is mentioned is the minimum. Public rates filter harder and save you emails, but some creators prefer to quote per project so they can adjust for fit and usage. If you keep them private, have the card written and ready so you're never inventing a number live in a reply.
What if a studio genuinely can't afford my rate but I like their game?
That's a choice, not an obligation. If you want to help, offer something smaller that costs you less time — a mention, a short — at a price that still respects your floor, rather than doing the full job for scraps. Discounting the work quietly teaches every future client that your rate is negotiable to zero.
How do I handle "we'll pay in exposure"?
Exposure doesn't pay rent and you already have an audience, which is presumably why they emailed you. Decline politely and move on. If they had a budget, they'd have led with it.
Do I charge more for a bad game?
You charge more when a game constrains what you're allowed to say, or when covering it risks your credibility with your audience — both of which correlate with games that are hard to be honest about. You're pricing the risk and the restriction, not punishing the game for being mediocre.