How Brand Deals Work, Step by Step: From Offer to Getting Paid

How do brand deals work once a brand says yes? A typical deal runs in eight stages: the offer, the agreement, product shipping, the brief, filming and drafts, revisions and approval, posting with disclosure, and invoicing and payment. Not every deal has every stage. A content-only UGC deal skips posting, and a cash deal with no product skips shipping. Each stage has one check to make before you move on, and most of them come down to getting the terms in writing before you act.

What is a brand deal? It is an agreement in which a brand gives a creator something of value, such as a fee, free product or a commission, in exchange for content about its product. Brand deal is the umbrella term. A sponsorship is a brand deal where the brand pays to appear in content on your own account, so your audience drives the price. A UGC deal is one where you make the content and hand over the files for the brand to publish, so no posting audience is needed. When an offer asks for both, price the content, the posting and the ad usage as separate lines.

Before you accept an offer, confirm the fee and what you actually receive after any fees, the exact deliverables and platforms, usage rights with channels and an end date, any exclusivity, the number of revision rounds, the draft and posting dates, payment terms and method, and what product ships. A short reply email listing those terms works even when a brand never sends a formal contract. When an agreement arrives, read it against those terms and look for capped revisions, a review window, a cancellation fee and a clause that requires disclosure.

If product ships, share an address you are comfortable with, ask for tracking, unbox on camera for your own records and report problems the same day. A real brand never asks you to pay to receive product. Read the brief twice and ask questions before filming. Check specs, required talking points and banned claims, avoid licensed music if the brand may run the post as an Instagram partnership ad, and disclose on screen and out loud. Sort feedback into in-scope revisions, brief corrections and new scope, and get approval in writing.

Under FTC guidance, payment or free product is a material connection that needs a clear disclosure such as #ad, and a platform's built-in label may not be enough on its own. As of October 2026, Instagram requires its Paid Partnership label for any compensation including gifted product, TikTok requires its commercial content disclosure toggle on branded content, and YouTube asks creators to tick includes paid promotion. Send a Spark Ads code or approve a partnership ad only when paid usage is agreed for a set period, and note the end date.

Invoice the day the work is approved or posted, have a W-9 ready, and put the due date in your calendar. Net 30 means payment is due 30 days after the agreed starting point, and it is a negotiable term. There is no standard deal length. In one illustrative example, a single posted TikTok with product, one revision round and net 30 terms takes about nine weeks from offer to payment. If a brand misses a date and then asks to switch payment methods, verify the sender before sharing anything.

How do brand deals work on Aurelia? Brands post campaigns, and creators of any audience size apply in a few taps with their media kit, stats and answers attached. Every campaign shows your take-home pay, the product, the usage rights and the deadline before you apply, and the take-home you see already has Aurelia’s fee taken out. The agreement is written from the campaign and you accept and sign in one step. Product ships only to creators who have signed, feedback is pinned to the exact second of your video, and you’re paid to your bank automatically when the brand approves your work.