How Comedy Creators Can Sell Personalized Videos

Comedy creators sell personalized videos by turning the requests they already receive — roasts, in-character birthday bits, and joke feedback — into fixed-price offers. The follower submits a name and a few details, pays upfront, and receives a short custom video within the turnaround the creator sets, with no follower minimum and no marketplace application. Personalized Videos let a follower pay upfront for one personalized video for themselves or someone they care about: you set the price and the delivery time, then record it on your schedule.

If you make people laugh for a living—or for free, for now—your comments and DMs may already read like a menu. Followers ask you to roast them, perform birthday messages in character, explain how you write a closer, or review five minutes before an open mic. Each request can become a distinct paid request rather than another unpaid DM.

Brillay has no follower minimum, so a comedian can list a paid roast before reaching any particular audience size.

What do comedy followers ask comedians to personalize?

Comedy followers ask for five recurring things: roasts, in-character birthday or congratulations videos, advice on writing and performing, feedback on a set, and money toward a tour or special. Cameo's Talent Hub lists the request types its talent receive as "Pep talks, Roasts, Shoutouts, Birthday messages, Special requests" (Cameo Talent Hub). The video request lives in your own bio link: one tap from the post they just watched takes a follower straight to your page, not to a marketplace roster.

Sort the requests you already receive into these practical categories:

• "Roast me" or "Say happy birthday to [name] as [your character]." This is a request for a personal video rather than a public comment reply.
• "How do you write a punchline, handle a heckler, or know when a bit is dead?" This calls for a direct private answer.
• "Can you review my set and tell me what is not landing?" This requires time and a defined deliverable, such as notes on a joke, tag, or pacing choice.
• "I do not need anything; I just wanted to send something." This is a request for Tips with no reply expected.
• "Can people help fund our Fringe run, first special, or new mic?" This is support for Goals rather than a service.
• "We are a brand and want a comedic ad read." This belongs in Brand Collaboration Inquiries, and in the United States a paid brand read carries a legal disclosure duty: the FTC's endorsement guidance requires influencers to disclose a material connection to a brand clearly and conspicuously (FTC, "Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers"). That guidance binds US endorsements; creators elsewhere are covered by their own regulators, such as the UK Advertising Standards Authority, whose advice on recognising ads on social media requires that "influencer marketing is obviously identifiable" as advertising.

These requests have different formats, but many creators currently handle all of them in free DMs. That approach becomes difficult to manage once the inbox turns into an unstructured queue.

Which paid offer matches each comedy request?

Each comedy request maps to one of three paid formats: a recorded video for roasts and birthday bits, a written private reply for advice, and a defined service for set feedback. Tips and Goals absorb the rest. With Personalized Videos, followers request a recorded custom video through Brillay (Brillay Personalized Videos, brillay.com/features/personalized-shoutouts).

• Roasts and personalized birthday or congratulations videos → Personalized Videos. A follower submits the request, and you record and deliver one video through Brillay.
• Advice questions and one-line roasts → Paid Questions. Paid Questions let a follower pay upfront to ask one private question, and you send one written reply on your own time — no live call or scheduling.
• Set or joke feedback → Custom Work. Custom Work lets you set the price, delivery time, what the follower gets, what you need from them, and what is not included for a defined deliverable such as tag suggestions on a closer; one delivery completes the order.

Tips and Goals cover the remaining requests. Tips let a supporter send you a one-time amount to say thank you, with nothing to deliver in return. For a Fringe run or first special, a Brillay Goal does not turn support into a Kickstarter bet: each contribution is yours even if the target is missed, and you do not inherit a campaign deadline or reward tiers to ship.

What do comedy offers look like at a glance?

These five offer types group the requests comedians commonly receive. You set the price and delivery time for Personalized Videos, Paid Questions, and Custom Work; Tips and Goals are one-time support payments with nothing to deliver. For Personalized Videos and Custom Work, you set the delivery time, up to a 120-hour cap (Brillay Personalized Videos, brillay.com/features/personalized-shoutouts; Brillay Custom Work, brillay.com/features/creator-services).

Brillay lets you deliver Personalized Videos or services on your own time, within the delivery time you set: no live call, no scheduling (Brillay how it works, brillay.com/how-it-works).

How much should a comedian charge for a roast or shoutout?

Start low and raise the price with demand. Cameo’s Talent Hub offers one public personalized-video pricing benchmark: it tells new talent to "keep your price point reasonable for the first 30 days" and says that "on average, we see most successful starting prices under $100".

Cameo's Talent Hub reports that "talent who start off at an affordable price and work their way up are 20x more likely to set themselves up for higher long term revenue," and gives Mandy Moore starting at $50 as its example.

Cameo's Talent Hub also advises talent to pick a price that lands inside one of its featured tag pages — "under $50, under $100, under $150" — noting the difference between "$49 vs. $51 to make it in the under $50 category" (Cameo Talent Hub). Cameo's Terms of Service set the floor for any paid video at "at least US$5.00" per booking (Cameo Terms of Service).

For rush work, Cameo's Talent Hub recommends pricing 24-hour delivery at "50% X your current price" — a 1.5x rush multiplier a comedian can copy onto a same-week roast. For text answers rather than video, you set the price for Paid Questions, subject to Stripe's minimum charge for your currency.

Then subtract the fees. Brillay charges 8% when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals, has no monthly fee, and supports creator payouts in 41 countries (Brillay pricing, brillay.com/pricing). Payment processing is deducted separately: Brillay's pricing page sets out that card processing is separate from the platform fee, and that payments run through Stripe, whose published US rate is "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction" charged on the full amount the follower pays (Brillay pricing, brillay.com/pricing; Stripe pricing). On a $50 roast that is $4 in platform fee; using Stripe's published US rate only as an illustration, processing would be about $1.75, leaving roughly $44.25 — the actual Stripe processing fee can vary.

How do comedians record and deliver a paid shoutout?

Record on a phone in one take, in the same setup you already use for social video, and deliver the file through the offer rather than by DM. Personalized Videos are delivered as one video — uploaded through Brillay within the 500 MB per-file cap, or sent as a video link when the file is bigger than that.

Custom Work works differently: the follower can attach up to 5 files of 50 MB each when ordering, and the creator delivers text plus files of any allowed type and/or a link. That is the format for a set review where the follower needs to send audio or video for you to evaluate.

Define the scope before you list the offer: say exactly what the follower gets, what is excluded, and that one delivery completes the order. For Custom Work, that scope lives on the listing itself, so a set review reaches you with the audio already attached and the order already paid — no unpaid DM negotiation before the work starts. Personalized Videos include one delivered video, so review the follower's name and instructions before recording and decline the request if you cannot fulfill it as submitted.

Reused material is a category error in personalized video. Cameo's Community Guidelines, last updated August 1, 2024, state that "each Cameo video should be tailored to the follower's request" and instruct talent, "don't reuse content -- it's boring and not what our service is for" (Cameo Community Guidelines).

What if a follower's comedy request goes too far?

Payment does not oblige you to perform a request. Comedy requests can cross boundaries: a roast may target someone who is not the paying follower, a customer may ask you to attack an ex, or a proposed bit may involve a subject you do not want to cover. Followers pay before you do the work; you deliver on your own time. This is not a chargeback guarantee, so the best scam defense is to keep requests inside Brillay, avoid delivering outside the order, and decline anything suspicious or outside scope before delivery.

Third-party roasts are the hardest case, because the target never agreed to anything. Cameo's Community Guidelines prohibit soliciting content that is "illegal, abusive, harassing, hateful, racist, derogatory, or harmful to someone's reputation," and specifically instruct users, "don't insult someone because of their personal attributes (like appearance, personality traits, or intellect)".

The same guidelines draw two more lines a comedian should copy into a listing: "don't ridicule or taunt victims of tragic or violent events," and requests that the buyer knows "would embarrass talent or compromise their integrity" are prohibited (Cameo Community Guidelines). Cameo's Community Guidelines do carve out an exception for material "that is clearly satirical, scientific, or educational in nature," which is the narrow space a roast has to live in.

If you use AI to generate any part of a paid video, disclose it. Cameo's Community Guidelines require that videos generated with artificial intelligence "clearly and conspicuously disclose that this is the case".

Protect your boundaries in two ways: state on the listing what you will and will not joke about before followers submit, and decline anything that arrives outside those limits.

How should a comedian promote a paid shoutout link?

Put one Brillay link in your bio and frame the Personalized Video as a clear, optional offer—“Want a birthday roast? Request one here”—so followers can buy without an awkward donation ask; then mention it in ordinary posts one to two times a week. Cameo's Talent Hub reports that "talent who share on their social channels raise more awareness and have made up to 26x more than talent who do not promote their profiles to their followers," and that it sees "talent with consistent requests post 1-2 times a week".

Write the profile copy before you promote it. Cameo's Talent Hub states that "talent who add a bio have seen a 30% increase in requests," and advises talent to name the work followers know them for so the profile surfaces on those search terms.

Time the posts around occasions. Cameo's Talent Hub tells talent to "post a week in advance" of a holiday so followers have time to request and receive the video, and to reuse the reminder for Mother's Day, wedding season, or a dog's birthday. Cameo's Talent Hub adds that promoting in an Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, or Facebook feed post produces better results than an Instagram story or Snapchat. One bio link that carries every offer: followers pay you as guests by card, at prices you set, whatever format the request takes.

Brillay provides a link you place in your bio or posts so followers can submit and pay for a roast, private answer, or joke review through a defined offer. See what to put in your bio to monetize DMs for wording that directs followers toward a paid request instead of another free reply.

How does Brillay compare with Cameo for comedians?

Cameo is a public marketplace that supplies discovery and keeps 30% of each booking; Brillay is a link you send your own audience and charges an 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals. Cameo's Talent Hub states the split as "You take 70% we take 30%," while Brillay charges an 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% on tips and goals, and $0 per month (Cameo Talent Hub; Brillay pricing, brillay.com/pricing).

On a $100 booking the gap is 22 percentage points before processing: Cameo's 30% cut is $30, while Brillay's 8% platform fee on a Personalized Video booking is $8 before Stripe's "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction" processing fee (Cameo Talent Hub; Brillay pricing, brillay.com/pricing; Stripe pricing). See Brillay vs. Cameo for the full comparison.

When is a different platform the better choice for a comedian?

Choose Cameo when strangers search for you by name, a membership platform when followers want recurring access rather than one-off bits, and a general storefront when the product is a downloadable album or special rather than a personalized video.

• Choose Cameo if you need discovery. Cameo's About page advertises "personalized video messages from 50,000+ stars" that buyers browse without following anyone first, which is worth the 30% cut when bookings come from people who do not follow you (Cameo; Cameo Talent Hub).
• Choose Patreon if the offer is recurring, not per-request. Patreon's creator-fees overview states that creators who published a page after August 4, 2025 "are on our standard 10% pricing plan," a fee charged on an ongoing membership rather than on a single custom video (Patreon creator fees overview).
• Choose Ko-fi if you mainly want tips. Ko-fi's pricing page charges 0% on one-off tips under its Free plan and 5% on shop, membership, and commission payments, so a straight tip jar is the shape Ko-fi is built for, rather than a priced, scoped request (Ko-fi pricing).
• Choose Brillay when the audience is already yours. Brillay gives the people already asking you a way to pay, with an 8% platform fee for work, a 5% fee on tips and goals, creator payouts in 41 countries, and no follower minimum (Brillay pricing, brillay.com/pricing; Brillay FAQ, brillay.com). A follower pays once for one question, one commission or one video, and nothing is owed afterwards — so the people who were never going to subscribe can still pay you, beside the Patreon you already run. Each of the three work offers is one priced request on the same page: the price, the scope and the delivery window are published, the brief is collected at checkout, and the follower pays upfront by card as a guest, so the work arrives already paid for and already specified.

How should a comedy creator start selling Personalized Videos?

Launch one offer, not five. Start with the request you receive most often—usually a roast, birthday message, or other Personalized Videos request—define what the follower must submit, state your content boundaries, choose a price under $100, and set a delivery time you can reliably meet. Add the other offers only when demand repeats.

Add Paid Questions when advice requests become frequent, and add Custom Work when followers repeatedly ask for joke or set feedback. On Brillay, you claim one link, turn on the offers you want, and paste the link into your bio.

Frequently asked questions

How do comedians make money from personalized videos?

A follower picks the roast or birthday bit, pays upfront at the price you set, and you record it inside the window you chose — no account for them to create first, no roster to be accepted onto. Take the request or decline it.

How much should a comedian charge for a roast or shoutout video?

Under $100 to start. Cameo's Talent Hub states that "on average, we see most successful starting prices under $100," and that talent who "start off at an affordable price and work their way up are 20x more likely to set themselves up for higher long term revenue". For a rush option, Cameo's Talent Hub recommends pricing 24-hour delivery at "50% X your current price".

Do comedians need a certain number of followers to sell Personalized Videos?

No. Brillay has no follower minimum, so a creator with a small engaged audience can start selling Personalized Videos the same day they decide to put a price on the request.

Can a comedian refuse a roast request after checkout?

Yes. The follower pays upfront with the request, and you read the name and instructions before recording anything; decline any roast that falls outside the joke limits your listing states. Cameo's Community Guidelines set a comparable outer limit by prohibiting content that is "harmful to someone's reputation".

What can a comedian deliver besides the video file?

For Personalized Videos, the deliverable is one video. For Custom Work, a comedian can deliver text plus files of any allowed type and/or a link, and the follower can attach up to 5 files of 50 MB each when ordering.

Is Brillay the same as Cameo for comedians?

No. Cameo is a marketplace that keeps 30% of each booking and requires a minimum price of "at least US$5.00" per video (Cameo Talent Hub; Cameo Terms of Service). Brillay charges 8% when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals, with no monthly fee or follower requirement; offer prices are subject to Stripe's minimum charge for the creator's currency.

Create your free Brillay page and put a price on the bit you're already doing for free.