Creator deals
Exclusivity
A clause stopping you from taking competing work for a period. In brand deals it is normal, but it should be scoped to a category and paid for.
What it means
An exclusivity clause restricts you from working with competitors of the client for a defined period. In brand deals it is common and legitimate: a brand does not want its sponsored creator promoting a direct competitor the same week.
Why it matters
The question is never whether exclusivity exists but whether it is scoped and priced. Exclusivity has real cost to you: it removes a slice of your addressable market for its duration. A broad, long, unpaid lockout, a whole industry for six to twelve months folded into the base fee, can quietly cost you far more in foregone deals than the campaign paid.
What fair looks like
Bounded on three axes: category, duration, and price.
- A short window of 2 to 7 days around posting is routine and usually unpaid.
- Beyond that, a common convention is to charge: roughly +20 to 35% of the fee for a 30-day category lockout, +50 to 75% for 90 days, and +75 to 100% for six months.
- The category is the specific competitor set, not a sprawling industry definition, and any post-campaign restriction has a hard end date.
Related reading
See the guide to what brand-deal exclusivity is normal, and the exclusivity benchmarks.