A second platform is a second purchase.
By Paul Taylor · Written from inside live campaigns, not from a content calendar.
This summer, while we were agreeing a package of two Instagram formats with a creator’s agent, the agent asked a fair question. The creator’s second channel was on another platform, not the one the brand had in mind. Did it count?
The terms we agreed covered the two formats we had priced. Before production started, we confirmed to the agent in writing that the other platform was outside the paid package. Now we settle that question before anyone agrees a price.
A second creator on the same campaign did not yet have a channel the brand valued. The contract handles it in one clause: if the creator launches a public channel during the term, they add 1 post per campaign month on it, from the month after launch, at no extra fee. Nothing obliges them to launch it.
A third creator’s agency sent a rate card with a separate line for each format and each platform, and a note that none of the lines included usage rights.
Why a platform is not a free extra
A creator’s audience on a given platform is not the same audience on the next. Followers do not travel with the creator’s name. We price each platform from the views its own recent uploads get, measured there, not from a follower total on a different one. The creator’s side prices them separately too, as that rate card shows.
When a second platform enters a deal as something extra, nobody has priced it, nobody has said what it delivers, and nobody has written down when it posts. It becomes a promise that each side remembers differently. Or the creator’s side raises it again after signing, this time as something to charge for.
What we put in the contract
- Each platform in scope, by name, with the format and the number of posts on it.
- A price for each platform, or a clear statement that the platform is included at no fee, with how often it posts.
- For a channel that does not exist yet, a condition: when it starts, what it delivers, and that the creator has no obligation to launch it.
- Anything the creator’s side raised and we left out, confirmed in writing as outside the deal.
How to use this
Before you sign, list the platforms the creator has mentioned anywhere in the thread, not only the ones in the proposal. Each one should be in the contract with a deliverable, or out of it in writing.
If a creator offers a platform as a bonus, accept it on the same terms as the paid ones: named, counted and dated. A bonus with no frequency is a favour, and a favour is hard to ask for when it does not arrive.
If the deal is already signed, read the deliverables clause and note which platforms it names. Anything you expected on a platform it does not name is not in the deal yet, and asking for it now is a new negotiation.
When you compare prices across platforms, compare views measured on each platform, not one follower number applied to all of them.
A second platform is a second purchase. Price it, or write it out.