We talked about what happens when you're owed money. Keep asking for it. What should you be thinking about in your contracts right now? A few things. One, let's put a kill fee in there. If you don't know what a kill fee is, it is just that. It's a fee if the brand backs out of the contract. I think industry standard is generally 25% of the contract value if content isn't created, 50% of the contract value if content is created and then if it's a multiple post-campaign and they pull out in the middle obviously they have to pay you for the posts that have already been posted and then 50% or 25% if you created the content for the other posts. Putting a kill fee in there, definitely gives you a little bit of protection.

Something else that could be hard but if you're a big influencer and you're talking about a big contract and it's with a brand that isn't established and maybe isn't really huge, you might consider taking 50% upfront. It's pretty rare in the influencer space but I think if you are a bigger influencer and again it's a bigger contract, an ambassador contract, something like that, then I think you could ask for it. If it's a big brand, if you're working with a large retailer or a huge multibillion dollar brand, those brands don't generally default on their payments so I don't think you have to really worry about that.

If it's a startup, if it's a brand you don't think has as deep of pockets and they're offering you a big contract maybe try and negotiate for 50% upfront. Even if that means you have to bring the contract value down at least you'll know you have some of that money to hedge if something does go wrong, because we're definitely going to see more businesses going out of business than we have in 10, 15 years happening here in the next 6 to 12 months. It's definitely something to consider.