From the outside, the life of a travel creator can look pretty glamorous, especially when you’re scrolling through someone’s curated feed. The reality is less filtered. One of the biggest ongoing challenges in this job is getting paid properly for the work that goes into it. It’s tempting to accept an unpaid brief when it lands in your inbox, because turning it down often means the brand simply finds someone else willing to do it for free. I’ve been doing this since 2012 and the pressure to work for exposure hasn’t gone away, even as the industry has matured around it.

I want to be upfront about something before I get into this. I know the work creators do doesn’t compare to the work of nurses, paramedics or emergency service workers, and I’m wary of this post sounding like a complaint. It isn’t. I just want to share what actually goes into building content like this and why I think brands should budget properly for it. It took me a long time to feel comfortable charging for work I love doing, and I suspect a lot of creators feel the same.

Planning your trip?
•••
Hotels, I use Agoda
Insurance: Cover-More
Rentals: Discover Cars
RVs: Motorhome Republic
Transfers: Welcome Pickups
Travel eSIM: Simify

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If you haven’t already read them, you might like to catch up on the previous three guides in the series:

• This is why brands really need to work with bloggers,
• This is how to find + approach bloggers about working together, and
• 13 of the BEST ways brands can work with bloggers.

1. It covers the cost of my time

A lot goes into the content you see on Little Grey Box. Take a single destination video as an example. There’s a half day of filming on location, a couple of days editing, then another day preparing it for publishing and promotion. Even smaller post-production tasks, like using a tool to add subtitles to video for YouTube uploads or social teasers, add to the time and effort behind paid creator work. A polished piece can take a fortnight from first idea to final upload, and that’s before counting the driving between locations, the pre-planning, the teaser content for social, and the cost of fuel and food along the way. Every unpaid job is time I could have spent on paid work or growing the business, and it means valuing my own output at zero.

2. It covers the cost of equipment

Staying competitive means investing heavily in gear, and camera equipment hasn’t gotten any cheaper. I need a reliable laptop, a couple of camera bodies for different shoots, a drone, spare batteries and the rest of the kit that goes with it. This isn’t a high-margin business, so there’s no deep pocket to dip into every time something needs replacing. Without payment, the cost of producing content properly just doesn’t stack up, and every paid job helps offset the gear required to do the job well.

3. You get access to my audience

If a brand wants to work with a creator, there’s usually a clear reason behind it. They want to build awareness, drive sales or get in front of an audience that already trusts the person talking to them. If a brand went the traditional route, paying for a newspaper ad or a TV spot, they’d expect to pay for that exposure without question. I think creator content should be viewed the same way. A creator should be paid to put a brand in front of an audience, especially given how many years it takes to build one in the first place.

4. You get what you do or don’t pay for

We’ve all heard the old saying, ‘You get what you pay for,’ and the same is true when it comes to creators. Of course, I can’t say with certainty that every creator you pay will exceed your every expectation but, if you’re paying them, they should work to your contract and meet every deliverable set out for them. When a brand is paying me, I’m really switched on and want to do the very best job possible for them. Personally, I feel you get the best out of a creator because they’re incentivised to go the extra mile for the best possible content. You can guarantee, they’ll be hoping to impress you so you’ll give them more business.

5. It gives the brand more control

When a brand pays a creator, it gives them the power to establish a contract. This means you have more control over what the creator is doing. You’re paying per deliverable so you can be really specific about the number of photographs they share on social media or the number of blog posts they create. I just want to stress, paying a creator isn’t about paying for positive promotion or an opinion, it’s about paying for the actual output and covering the costs that go into creating them. But, as I always say, a brand who is willing to invite a creator to experience their product must be pretty confident it’s a winner or they wouldn’t risk it.

6. We’re doing something you can’t

If a brand was able to build brand awareness, boost sales or create the content themselves, they’d do it! Right?! If you’re engaging someone externally to create content for you, no matter what the reason, that person is doing something you were unable to do internally. It seems right, then, that they should be paid to do that job for you, just like an employee would be. When you pay that person, you’re paying for access to their knowledge, skills, experience and more to boost your brand.

7. It’s my business

I left full-time work to focus on growing Little Grey Box, and it’s been my full-time job since. I offer videography, photography and writing as a freelancer, but otherwise this site is my only source of income. It isn’t a hobby, it’s a business, and I run it like one. If I didn’t get paid, I’d eventually run out of money and have to stop. My business depends on brands paying for the work I do.

When a brand approaches me, I see them as exactly that, a business. Businesses pay the people who work for them. If a brand wants to engage me to create content about their product or destination, that’s me working for them, and it makes sense that I should be paid for it.

Pro tip: Something is better than nothing! 

Of course, brands come in all shapes and sizes and while, in a perfect world, every brand would have a generous budget to put into marketing, many simply don’t. From my perspective, something is always better than nothing. Being paid, even a smaller amount than I would quote a job for makes me feel like the brand values my time and that means a lot. There’s no guarantee a creator will say yes to the budget, but I’ve always found honesty goes a long way. If a brand says, “We’re a small business and we don’t have a big budget but we love what you do and could offer you $300 to do this,” I’m more likely do it than if they offer me an unpaid arrangement. I can completely identify with small budgets!

Two things I’ve learned about being paid as a creator…

The faux ‘glamour’ factor

One thing I battled with when I first left my office job was balancing the guilt I felt. I’d just come from a job I didn’t get any enjoyment from to being invited to spend two nights at a hotel and write about it. It felt to me like it wasn’t a real job, it was just a vacation! It also felt really unfair that I should get paid to go and do my dream job at a hotel instead of sitting in an office working. I felt guilty, I felt like a fraud and I didn’t think I deserved to be paid.

So, I would take jobs for free. But, I quickly started feeling really frustrated and angry because I wasn’t spending two days relaxing at a hotel, I was spending those two days, and many more days afterwards, working with nothing but a few blog posts to show for it. The reality of it is you have to work to get the content you need to fill your obligations to the client, no matter how glamorous it may seem at first.

The faux ‘free’ factor

I’ve often heard people talk about creators receiving things for ‘free’. In my experience, this isn’t the case. To me, free means you’re given something without anything expected in return. When a brand offers me the opportunity to stay at their hotel, for example, I can’t just show up, sleep in, laze by the pool all weekend then pack up, go home and not whisper a word of it to anyone but my cat. The expectation is I’ll create content and share it with my audience. When I’m there, I’m working and, like everyone else, really need to be paid to do my job.

How AI has changed the conversation around paid content

The rise of AI-generated content has only sharpened the case for paying human creators properly. Brands now have the option of generating generic copy or stock-style imagery for next to nothing, but that content doesn’t carry the trust, lived experience or engaged audience a creator brings with it. If anything, audiences are placing more value on content that’s clearly made by a real person who has actually been somewhere and tried something. Paying for that authenticity is no longer optional if a brand wants its message to land with a real audience rather than be lost in a sea of AI-generated noise.

Frequently asked questions

Do all collaborations need to be paid?

Not necessarily. A genuinely valuable in-kind arrangement, such as a hosted stay with no other costs involved, can still work well if it’s transparent about what’s being exchanged. The issue is brands treating unpaid exposure as a substitute for fair payment on every brief, regardless of the work involved.

What should a brand expect to pay a creator?

Rates vary depending on experience, audience size and deliverables, but most established creators price based on production time, usage rights and the scope of the brief, not just the size of their following. A clear brief and a written agreement help both sides avoid confusion.

Is paying for content different to paying for an opinion?

Yes. Payment covers the cost of producing the deliverable, the brief, the time and the equipment, not a guaranteed positive review. Honest, balanced content is still the expectation regardless of payment.

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