Getting brand deals in the UK follows a repeatable path: prove your engagement, make yourself easy to find, pitch brands your audience already trusts, and vet every offer before you sign. Follower count matters less than fit, and the contract that arrives with the deal decides what it is actually worth.
Brand deals do not have an application form. They come from being easy to find and easy to say yes to, and then from not giving the deal back through the paperwork. The checklist below is the whole path in order. Most creators at 10k to 100k followers are further along it than they think.
1. Make your niche legible
Brands buy audiences they can describe. A line such as "UK parents of under-fives who buy sustainably" tells a brand manager exactly who they are paying to reach. Look at your last thirty posts and write one sentence describing who they serve. If you cannot, tighten the content before you chase the deals, because every later step gets easier once a brand manager can see at a glance who you reach.
2. Get your proof together
A simple media kit does most of the work: audience size, engagement rate, the age and location split, past collaborations if you have them, and the formats you offer. UK brands buying UK campaigns care where your audience actually is, so if your geography split is strong, lead with it. Keep the kit to a page or two and update the numbers monthly rather than perfecting the design.
3. Be findable where brands look
Brand managers shortlist from what they can see. That means a bio that states your niche and a contact email, tagging brands you already use organically, and joining a creator marketplace or two, where brands filter by niche and audience and come to you. Agency rosters bring repeat briefs in exchange for commission. None of this replaces pitching, but it is how inbound offers start.
4. Pitch, and vet what comes back
Direct outreach still produces the best-fitting deals: a short, specific pitch to the person who runs partnerships, with one idea and your proof attached. Whatever channel a deal arrives through, vet it before you invest time. A real brief names deliverables, timelines and a budget or fee range. Be cautious where "payment" is exposure or a discount code alone, where the brand asks you to pay for products up front, or where nobody will put the offer in writing.
5. Read the deal before you celebrate
What a deal is worth is set in the contract, and two clauses do most of that work. The first is how long the brand can use your content: a usage period, sometimes called a licence period, sets how long a brand can use your content after a campaign, and the usage period guide shows how these windows are commonly drafted. If the grant runs "in perpetuity", the fee covers one campaign while the content works for the brand indefinitely.
The second is exclusivity.
Show: Look for a section headed "Exclusivity" or "Non-compete", together with a category definition and a time period. Typical wording reads "Creator shall not promote, endorse or collaborate with any competing brand".
Decode: Category exclusivity means you cannot work with competing brands for a defined period. At 10k to 100k followers, brand work is a large share of most creators' income, so a wide category lock ("health and wellness" rather than three named competitors) can cost more in declined briefs than the deal pays.
Fix: Narrow the category and shorten the window, or price the wider lock separately. Say: "I can offer exclusivity against these three named brands for 60 days from the final post. Category-wide exclusivity is available at an additional fee."
If the work is UGC the brand will run on its own channels, the ownership question does the heavy lifting instead, and content ownership vs licensing in UGC contracts explains the difference between licensing a video and assigning it.
6. Confirm the money in writing
Before you start creating, the agreement should state the fee, the payment term and what triggers it. "Net 30 from delivery" and "net 60 from approval" are very different waits for the same work, so ask for a cap on the approval step. It is also worth checking what happens if the campaign is cancelled after you have started: a kill fee sets what you are paid in that case, and the kill fee guide covers how these clauses commonly work.
Deals compound. A brand that pays on time and renews is worth more than a bigger one-off, and the contract terms you accept in month one tend to follow you into the renewal, which is why the checklist ends at the paperwork rather than the pitch.