Monthly Licensing

Contract

Annual Licensing

Contract

Full Lifetime Buy-Out

Contract

(5-Year Estimated Content Lifetime + CAGR Projections)

Before we proceed with choosing the best licensing option for you and your business, please make sure you have a full understanding of how U.S. Copyright Law works and why we’re discussing Commercial-Use Licensing to begin with.

I cover all topics in much greater detail on my “Commercial Licensing Explained” page, but this Licensing Options page here is meant to be a summary of that information to expedite and facilitate our work together.

I have a very specific licensing calculation system based on the National Media Industry’s quality-control and best-practices. I’ve carefully determined licensing options based on hyper-local statistics for all my Customers. It allows us to work together to determine precise licensing rates for various verticals and market niches. Doing business this way also protects our industry’s professionals by ensuring they are fairly compensated and that regional rates are never skewed.

Honestly, I lose about 80% of Prospective Customers at this point in the conversation. People just say: “This is too complicated - I’m not interested - BYE!”

And I’m actually grateful for that. Saves me a lot of time! But before you consider leaving and wasting a bunch more of your time looking for someone “cheaper,” there is ONE INCREDIBLY VALUABLE INCENTIVE that convinces 20% stay and work with me.

You’ll have to read to the end to discover why. . .

STR & Real Estate Customers

If you’re a Short-Term Rental or Real Estate Customer (i.e. NOT a small business or eCommerce Brand / Social Media Influencer) I’m just going to outline the terms of your Licensing Contract.

Rather than have you fill out my Media Permissions Form (primarily focused on the work I do with businesses that are actively advertising and selling products and services in an ongoing basis) I’ve already done the calculations based on the exact market (ZIP Code) you’re operating in. 

MLS listings and websites geared towards STRs are a little different for content licensing because they tend to be used for very short periods of time or seasonally. Those portals also charge you commission on sales rather than ad-spend fees so we have to approach licensing differently. 

I’ll explain more, but let’s dive right in. . .

How is Ongoing Licensing / Media Buy-Out Calculated?

Some basic background for context:

Commercial Licensing Fee Calculation

EXAMPLE: Your sales promotion is running for the next 30 days and you’re planning to spend $500 on the total “Ad Campaign” (Social Media ads, emails, banners, print materials etc.)

Based on the sliding scale below, I calculate your Commercial Licensing Fee to be 15% of your $500 Ad Spend / Media Buy: $75

And that’s it! If you decide you only want to license the content we create for the one campaign and you’re only going to run that campaign for a month, all you have to pay to use the content commercially is $75 in addition to the Production / Creative Fee.

Media Buy Outs

Sometimes, because of past experience, Brands already know what works and what will sell. When they do, they will often propose a Media Buy Out up front.

So they pay the requisite creative fees to the content creator then pay them for Exclusive Rights to the media before they even release it. Often this is more expensive than licensing the content by term based on performance and ROI - but it also gives brands the autonomy to control every aspect of their spend going forward.

It’s always a good idea to consider a Buy Out for Exclusive Rights as an option if you want to be in control from the get-go…

So when filling out your Media Permissions Form, please be as detailed as possible about your intended use of the multimedia and total ad-spend for your campaign.

Doing so helps me see ways to help save you money.

Another Example: If you intend to just post the media on your website and that only costs $20/month subscription, then technically, you’re only needing to license the content for $3/month!

We could easily set up a simple licensing contract for a year that would only cost you: $36

See how NOT EXPENSIVE that is?!

Rest-assured, our Licensing conversation will be an open exchange about how to stay within your budget rather than a series of hard-lined “deal points.”

Real Estate | Short-Term Rentals Content Licensing

Licensing for Real Estate / MLS Marketing Content and Short-Term-Rental Listing Content (Airbnb, VRBO, Homeaway, Booking.com etc) are calculated based on “projected commission revenue” rather than “ad spend” because when you affiliate or list your property on a brokerage site or booking site like Airbnb, you’re not paying them to list - you’re paying them a commission to host. (Anywhere from 3%-10% for Real Estate Brokers and ~20% for STRs)

So I determine commercial licensing fees and buy-outs based on the estimated commission you’ll earn - which is most similar to the “cost” of what you’d spend on an ad campaign.

Specifically, I aggregate a number of data-sets, looking at variables such as average regional nightly booking rates, occupancy rates or final home sales prices. I pull all this data from a variety of sources and have my own “proprietary formula” to determine a fair licensing rate.

There is no “guess work.” It’s not “off the top of my head.” It’s real, honest, and 100% transparent.

But here are a few of the kinds of “authority-based” articles I read to start to give you an idea of how I built the formula. 

> Flathead Beacon’s “High Travel Costs Could Slow Tourism Season” tells me the 2023 Hotel Occupancy Rate in Kalispell was at 78% which dropped 8% since 2022.

> AirDNA Data tells me that 2023 STR Occupancy Rate in Kalispell was at 52% across ~1000 Flathead Valley listings:

> Another Flathead Beacon article, “Can Short-Term Rental Data Shine a Light on the Tourism Season?“ sites a total of 3,345 Flathead Valley Listings which gives me a better idea of how to get an “average” earning potential per STR property.

Bottom line is, I’m charging you a fair market rate based on publicly available information. And even more importantly, I calculate everything based on evolving metrics - not just fixed or “random” rates.

ROUGH FORMULA: Total # of STR Listings X Average Nightly Rate / Variable Seasonal Market Fluctuations + Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) Projections = 1 of 3 Licensing Options:

Monthly Licensing

Contract

Annual Licensing

Contract

Full Lifetime Buy-Out

Contract

(5-Year Estimated Content Lifetime + CAGR Projections)

Yeah, okay that all sounds great, right? But what do the real numbers actually look like? I’m not going to list them here - I’ll give you the specifics in your Custom Quote. 

But in very simple terms, your most cost-effective choice is to opt-in for the Monthly Licensing Contract.

It represents the most current market rates. And it’s not influenced by projected annual or “lifetime” CAGR stats. Plus you can start/stop anytime.

If you choose to the Annual or Lifetime Buy-Out Contracts, you’re going to have to pay a much higher Licensing Fee upfront. And that is NON-refundable.

Why not work with someone else who just charges me $200

to simply show up and shoot something?

*** FREE CONTENT UPDATES ***

That’s right. You get FREE content updates as long as our MONTHLY contract continues.

If you pay the monthly licensing fees to keep using your Multimedia Content, I’ll update it however you want for as long as we’re working together. Nobody else is willing to do that.

And that’s exactly why you should work with me.