Creating a proposal

A proposal is a priced offer you send to a brand. When they accept and pay, it becomes a signed contract and a live collaboration, with the money already in escrow before you start work.

The builder walks you through five steps: Brand, Deliverables, Commercial terms, Usage rights, and Review and send. Your progress saves as you move between steps, and a draft waits as long as you need.

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Before you start

What you need first depends on who the offer is for. Going out to a brand of your own means a record in My Brands with a contact who has an email address, and the builder links you there if your book is empty. Answering something already on the platform, a campaign brief or a custom request, needs neither: the brand is already an account, so there is nobody to look up and nothing to email.

The same builder produces all three. An offer that prices a campaign brief is what the Pitches screen calls a pitch.

Two settings show up on the document and are worth having right: your business details in Settings → Company, which put your legal name on the contract and decide whether sales tax is added, and your payout account, without which the brand can pay but the money cannot reach you.

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Step 1 · Brand

Pick the brand, then the person at the brand who receives the offer. The brand's primary contact is pre-selected; you can switch per send. The email address shown is where the proposal goes, and the builder will not send without one.

Proposal title. The brand sees it as the email subject and the page heading, so "Skincare UGC package · autumn" beats "Proposal 3".

Start from. A blank proposal, one of your packages, or a past proposal. Starting from a package or an old offer copies it as a starting point; nothing you change afterwards touches the original.

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Step 2 · Deliverables

Each line on the offer is one deliverable, and each line becomes a milestone in the contract. A line has:

• Deliverable. What you will make, in your own words. "UGC video, 30s, vertical" is the level of specific that prevents revision arguments. If the work involves posting, say where in the description, because production for the brand's channels and a post on your own account are different products.
• Qty. How many of it. The price is per one, so three videos at 2 500 is quantity 3, not one line at 7 500.
• Deadline. An optional date per line, for staged deliveries.
• Revisions. How many rounds are included on this line. Anything beyond what is written here is a new offer, not a favour.
• Price of one. What you charge for a single unit of this line.

You can insert one of your packages as a line with one click, and a scope of work field below the lines holds everything that is not a deliverable: context, constraints, what is out of scope. It is carried onto the contract, so write what you would want to point at later.

The rail keeps a running total. Usage rights are priced separately in step 4, so the deliverables total is the production price alone.

Step 3 · Commercial terms

Most of this step is read back to you, fixed by how the platform works: your total excluding sales tax, your currency, whether tax is added on top of your prices, that payment is by card into escrow, and the cancellation rules that apply to every contract.

Two dates are yours to set, and both are required:

• Delivery date. When the brand gets the work. It becomes a contractual date, so be honest.
• Proposal expires. When the offer lapses if nobody answers. It defaults to seven days out. An expiry is not a threat; it is a reason for someone to make a decision, and it stops an old price being accepted three months later when your rates have moved.

There is no separate review window to set. Once you request completion the brand has 14 days to approve or send the work back, the same on every contract, and neither side can shorten it.

Step 4 · Usage rights

Usage rights are what the brand may do with the work, where, and for how long. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake in creator work.

Channels. Six switches: their own social posts, paid social ads, their website and emails, retail and print, TV and streaming ads, and whitelisting, which is ads run from your own account and a separate, more valuable permission. Nothing selected means the brand gets no usage rights at all, and the builder says so.

Territory. A country, a region, or worldwide. Usually the brand's home market; global rights are worth more.

Exclusivity. None, or exclusive in their category, which is a promise not to work with their competitors and should be priced like one.

Duration and fee. A licence in months, or perpetual. The preset buttons suggest a fee as a share of your production price that grows with the length; the number stays yours to overwrite, including down to zero if you are deliberately throwing usage in. Perpetual has no preset because permanent rights are priced by you, not by a formula.

As you choose, the step writes the licence out in plain words, exactly as the brand will read it. The duration clock starts at completion, not at signature, and the licence stays editable on the contract until you request completion.

Step 5 · Review and send

The left side of the screen is the document the brand will read: your letterhead, every line with its quantity and price, the usage licence in plain words, the terms, the expiry. Read it once as them.

Send to shows the recipient, and below it is your covering message as the brand will read it. You write it on step 1, with room for 5,000 characters, and it is worth two sentences of a human being rather than zero. When you pitch a campaign it is your application: why you fit, and how you would approach it. The Still to answer list names anything that blocks sending, a missing contact email, a missing delivery date, and the send button stays off until the list is empty.

Sending does two things: it emails your contact a link, and it creates the same link for you to paste into a DM or a chat yourself. Anyone with the link can read and accept the offer, so treat it like an invoice. The email also tells your contact, as we are required to, that you hold their contact details, why, and how to have them removed.

Once sent, the offer is fixed. That is what makes it trustworthy.

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What happens after you send

When a brand accepts, they pay the full amount into escrow as part of accepting; there is no separate signing step, and no platform fee appears in your flow, because the fee is added on top of your price at the brand's checkout. You will see the money held from that moment, and you can start work knowing it exists.

To change a sent offer, withdraw it or let it lapse, then use Duplicate to revise: it copies everything into a new draft, marks it as the revision, and the new email tells the brand it replaces the old one. Withdrawing is only possible while the offer is unanswered; once it is funded, it is a contract.

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Common questions

Can I edit a proposal after sending it? No. A sent proposal is a fixed offer, which is what makes it trustworthy. Withdraw it and send a revision; Duplicate to revise takes about twenty seconds.

Can the brand counter my price? Not inside the proposal. They reply by email or message and you send a revised proposal. The answer to an offer here is accept or decline.

What if the brand wants to pay by invoice instead? Escrow is how CollabNordic protects both sides, so it is not optional on a platform contract. If a brand insists on their own procurement process, that work happens outside CollabNordic and outside its protection.

Do I need a company to send proposals? No. Private individuals can send proposals and get paid, without charging sales tax. Set what you are in Settings → Company.

Can I see what the brand pays on top of my price? Yes, on the contract after acceptance. The full breakdown, your fee, the platform fee, sales tax, the total charged, is on the signed contract, visible to both sides.

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