The short version: sponsored content is any post, video, or newsletter feature that a brand pays you to publish, and it must be disclosed as an ad by law in both the UK and the US. Rates run from about £75 for a small blog with a few thousand monthly readers to £2,500 or more for an established site with a loyal audience, and the number that matters is not your traffic, it’s how many people take action after reading.
What sponsored content is
Sponsored content is a piece of content a brand pays for, briefs you on, and usually approves before it goes live. It sits inside your normal editorial flow rather than looking like a banner advert. Think of a fashion blogger writing “how I styled this coat for autumn” where the coat brand paid for the mention, or a marketing blog running “five tools we use to manage client projects” where one of the five tools paid for placement. Wikipedia’s entry on native advertising covers the wider category well if you want the formal definition, but in plain terms: if money changed hands to get that piece written, it’s sponsored content, and readers have a right to know.
It is not the same as affiliate marketing, where you earn a commission only if someone buys through your link, and it’s not the same as a product review you wrote unprompted and unpaid. Brands sometimes try to blur these lines. Don’t let them. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority requires a clear #ad or “sponsored” label at the point someone sees the content, not buried in a footer. In the US, the FTC requires the same. I’ve seen bloggers lose brand deals and reader trust in the same week because they skipped the disclosure and got called out in the comments.
The main types of sponsored content brands buy
- A dedicated sponsored blog post written around the brand’s product or service
- A “best of” or listicle post where the brand pays for inclusion, sometimes for the top spot
- A sponsored review, where you test and write about the product honestly but disclose the payment
- A newsletter mention or dedicated send to your email list
- A social media package bundled with the blog post, usually one or two Instagram or LinkedIn posts pushing the article
- A long-term content partnership, where a brand pays monthly for a set number of mentions across the year
Bundled deals are where most of the real money sits. A single blog post at £300 feels fine until you realise the brand also wanted three social shares, a newsletter mention, and usage rights to repost your photos on their own channels for free. That’s not one deliverable, it’s five, and it should be priced like five.
What drives the price (and it isn’t just traffic)
Every pricing calculator online tells you to multiply your monthly pageviews by some tiny number and call it a day. That’s a starting point, not a strategy. Here’s what really moves the number:
- Engaged, niche audience over raw traffic. A blog with 15,000 monthly readers who are all small business owners is worth more to a B2B software brand than a general lifestyle blog with 80,000 readers who scroll past everything.
- Domain authority and SEO value. If your post ranks and stays ranked, the brand gets ongoing visibility, not a one-day spike. That’s worth a premium, and you should say so in your pitch.
- Turnaround and reliability. Brands with a launch date will pay more to the blogger who delivers on time and doesn’t need three rounds of nagging.
- Exclusivity. If a brand wants you to agree not to write about a competitor for three or six months, that’s a separate paid clause, not a freebie you throw in.
- Usage rights. If they want to reuse your words or photos in their own ads, that’s licensing, and licensing costs extra, always.
Real pricing by audience size (based on 2026 UK and US rates)
These are the ranges I see quoted and paid across genuine deals right now, not aspirational numbers from a course selling you a template:
- Under 5,000 monthly visitors: £75 to £200 per sponsored post. This is where most brand-new bloggers start, and it’s fine as a stepping stone as long as you’re not staying here for two years.
- 5,000 to 20,000 monthly visitors: £200 to £600 per post, more if you have a engaged newsletter list of 1,000-plus subscribers.
- 20,000 to 75,000 monthly visitors: £600 to £1,800, with newsletter add-ons often charged separately at £150 to £400 per dedicated send.
- 75,000 to 250,000 monthly visitors: £1,800 to £5,000, and this is where brands start asking for content calendars and multi-post packages rather than one-offs.
- 250,000-plus monthly visitors: £5,000 to £15,000-plus, often negotiated as retainers rather than single posts.
A rough baseline formula that holds up across most niches: £15 to £25 per 1,000 monthly pageviews for a standard sponsored post, then add a flat fee on top for each additional deliverable (social share, newsletter mention, exclusivity, usage rights). A blog with 40,000 monthly visitors charging on the low end of that formula lands around £600 to £1,000 for the post itself before extras.
A real example from my own inbox
In 2019, when my blog was sitting at roughly 40,000 monthly visitors, a project management software company emailed asking for a “quick feature” in an upcoming productivity roundup. Their opening offer was £150. I said no and sent back a proposal at £600, which included the blog mention, one dedicated tweet, and inclusion in that month’s newsletter to around 6,000 subscribers. They came back within a day and agreed. The lesson wasn’t that I was brilliant at negotiating. It was that their first number was a test, not a ceiling. Almost every brand’s opening offer is deliberately low because they expect a counter. The bloggers who accept the first number every time are the reason rates across the whole industry stay depressed year after year.
That’s the part most pricing guides skip: rates don’t rise because traffic rises, they rise because someone in your position said no and made the brand come back with a real number. If everyone in your niche keeps accepting £150 for a full post with usage rights thrown in, that becomes the market rate, and it stays that way even as inflation, your domain authority, and your audience quality all improve. Your rate card is a group decision whether you like it or not, and staying quiet about what you charge helps nobody but the brand’s marketing budget.
How to set your rate
- Pull your last 30 days of Google Analytics traffic and your email subscriber count. These are the two numbers brands will ask for first.
- Calculate your baseline using the £15 to £25 per 1,000 pageviews formula above.
- Add a flat fee for each extra deliverable: £75 to £150 per social share, £150 to £400 for a dedicated newsletter send, and a separate negotiated fee for exclusivity or usage rights.
- Write it all down in a one-page rate card with three package tiers (basic post, post plus social, full package with newsletter). Having tiers ready stops you from freezing when a brand asks “what’s your pricing” on a call.
- Quote 15 to 20 percent higher than your comfortable number, because almost every brand negotiates down, and you want room to land where you meant to.
If you’re still building the audience that makes these numbers possible, it’s worth reading through what realistic blogging income looks like in 2026 before you start chasing sponsored deals, because sponsored content works best as one income stream among several, not the whole plan. And if you haven’t published a single post yet, the fundamentals matter more than the pricing table, so start with how to start a blog from scratch as a complete beginner and come back to this once you have a few months of real traffic data.
The brief matters more than the fee
Bad briefs are the number one reason sponsored posts turn into unpaid rewrites. A vague brief that just says “write something about our app” will cost you three revision rounds and half your margin in unpaid time. Ask for the brief in writing before you agree a fee: what the brand wants included, what tone they expect, what links they need, and whether they want approval before publishing. If they don’t have a brief ready, that’s a red flag worth pricing in, because you’ll end up writing it for them. This is exactly the kind of structure I now build for clients using a proper content briefing system, and it saves the same headache whether you’re briefing yourself, a freelancer, or a sponsor.
Once a sponsored post is live, don’t let it disappear into a single day’s traffic. If the deal includes social promotion, plan it rather than firing off one rushed tweet. I schedule sponsored post promotion the same way I plan everything else, using the same batch approach I describe in writing a full month of social content in one morning, and slot the sponsored mentions into whatever content calendar already runs your organic posts, so the paid mention gets the same consistent push as everything else rather than one lonely post that vanishes by lunchtime.
What to say no to
- “Free product in exchange for a post” once your blog earns real traffic. Free product deals belong in your first year, not your fifth.
- Any request to skip disclosure. This isn’t a grey area legally, and getting caught costs more reputation than the fee is worth.
- Full editorial control handed to the brand. You can accept fact-check requests and factual corrections; you shouldn’t accept a brand rewriting your voice.
- Payment terms longer than 30 days after publication. Sixty and ninety day terms from brands are common and worth pushing back on hard.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to disclose sponsored content on a small blog?
Yes, regardless of size. UK ASA rules and US FTC guidelines both require clear disclosure such as “#ad” or “sponsored post” at the point a reader sees the content, and this applies to blogs with a few hundred readers just as much as blogs with millions.
How much should a beginner blog charge for a sponsored post?
Most beginner blogs under 5,000 monthly visitors charge between £75 and £200 for a single sponsored post, and it’s reasonable to raise that rate every time your traffic roughly doubles rather than waiting years to review pricing.
Is sponsored content the same as affiliate marketing?
No. Sponsored content is a fixed fee paid upfront for a post regardless of results, while affiliate marketing pays a commission only when a reader clicks through and buys something, so the risk and payout structure are completely different.
Should I include social media shares in a sponsored blog post fee?
Only if you price them separately as an add-on, typically £75 to £150 per platform per share, because bundling social promotion in for free is one of the most common ways bloggers undercharge for the full scope of what they’re delivering.
