Why 10% Matters: Fee Transparency for Creative Freelancers

The Hidden Cost of Platform Fees

You land a £500 project. You're excited. Then you see the platform fee: 20%. That's £100 gone before you've even started. For a freelance creative—a musician, a designer, a filmmaker—that's not a small number. It's a day rate. It's a piece of equipment. It's the difference between making rent and not.

Platforms like Fiverr and Upwork charge up to 20% on some tiers. For creatives who juggle multiple gigs, that adds up fast. A sound engineer doing five sessions a month at £500 each loses £500 to fees. Over a year, that's £6,000—money that could have gone into better gear, training, or simply paying the bills.

Why Fees Matter More for Creatives

Creative work is often project-based. A £200 logo design might take hours of iteration. A £500 music session might involve travel, setup, and prep. Unlike scalable digital products, creative labour doesn't scale linearly. When you're trading time and skill for money, every percentage point matters.

Creatives also tend to work across multiple platforms—Instagram for discovery, DMs for negotiation, maybe a marketplace for payment. Each layer can add friction or cost. The ideal is one place where discovery, booking, and payment happen—with fees that don't punish you for doing the work.

What 10% Actually Means

At 10% instead of 20%, that £500 project leaves you £50 more in your pocket. Over a year of £500-a-month gigs, that's £600 extra. That's not a rounding error—it's real money for rent, equipment, or savings.

Fee transparency isn't just about the number. It's about knowing upfront what you'll take home. No surprises when the payment lands. No hidden tiers or confusing structures. A clear, simple rate that lets you plan and price your work with confidence.

How LinkUp Approaches Fees

We're building LinkUp with creatives in mind. That means a 10% fee—not 20%. It means transparency: you know what you're paying before you book. And it means we're not trying to squeeze every penny from the people who make the platform valuable.

Our model is commission plus subscriptions. We want to grow when creatives grow—when they land more work, when they build their reputation, when they get booked again. Aligning our success with yours means we're incentivised to keep fees fair and to build tools that actually help you get work.

Conclusion

Platform fees are a fact of the freelance economy. But they don't have to be punitive. Creatives deserve platforms that respect their time, their skill, and their bottom line. A 10% fee isn't a small detail—it's a signal that the platform is built for you, not against you.

Ready to keep more of what you earn? Join LinkUp.