Beauty Creators: Brand Inquiries and Paid Async Product Reviews

Beauty creators can separate two inbox problems with one bio link: a Brand Collaboration Inquiries form that collects budget, timeline, and deliverables from brands, and a custom request that sells a paid, async product or look review with a set price and turnaround for individual followers. Both the inquiry form and the paid review replace ad hoc DMs with an organized, paid flow. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.

No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate. pricing

A beauty creator's inbox usually holds two unrelated things at once: a brand asking "would you post about our new serum?" and a follower asking "is this foundation worth it for oily skin?" Treating both the same slows brands down and leaves followers with no way to pay for your opinion. Splitting them into a structured brand inquiry form and a priced, async review service keeps each request moving without turning your DMs into an unpaid help desk. The inquiry form organizes unpaid brand leads, while the custom request gives individual followers a clear way to pay for a defined review instead of asking in DMs.

What counts as a beauty creator brand inquiry?

Brand Collaboration Inquiries is a “Work with Me” form on your Brillay page that collects a brand’s budget, timeline, and deliverables into a separate brand inbox. The inquiry form qualifies and organizes partnership leads; it does not book a call, negotiate rates, set usage rights, or guarantee that a deal happens.

Brand pitches arrive in at least three distinct shapes — a gifted-product mention, a paid multi-post campaign, or an affiliate-commission-only offer — and each one needs different numbers on the table before a creator can answer sensibly. A Brand Collaboration Inquiries form gives all three the same starting point: budget range, campaign dates, and expected deliverables, instead of a vague "we'd love to work with you!" DM that has to be interrogated for details.

A free or discounted product can create a material connection that should be disclosed, just as payment from a brand can; check the FTC guidance for the disclosure required in your situation. The Federal Trade Commission's revised Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising took effect on July 26, 2023, and treat free or discounted products as a material connection that must be disclosed (Federal Register, 88 FR 48092). Ask the brand to state in the project details whether the pitch involves cash, free product, or affiliate commission so you can check the applicable disclosure requirements before agreeing to content.

Brillay routes brand inquiries into a separate brand inquiry inbox from follower activity, and brand inquiries are free to receive (how it works and pricing). A Brillay brand inquiry form collects leads; the creator writes the reply and negotiates the terms off-platform.

How do you sell a paid async product or look review?

Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request. No live call, no scheduling; one time, no membership, and no follower account needed.

The payer is what separates a review from a brand deal. In a custom request, an individual follower — not a brand — is buying an honest opinion on something they are deciding whether to buy. Common beauty formats include a written pros-and-cons breakdown of one product, a shade or dupe match for a stated skin tone, and notes on whether a look in a submitted photo suits a follower's face shape. Custom Work has no follower minimum, so the people already asking for your opinion can buy one defined review — clear deliverable, clear deadline, your price — at 300 followers exactly as at 30,000.

Delivery format is specified in Brillay's own documentation: the creator can return text plus files of any allowed type — video, audio, images, PDF, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint — and/or a private link. A beauty creator can therefore return an image file annotated with shade notes, a short audio walkthrough, or both in the same delivery. Custom Work is one-time: one delivery closes the order, and there is no membership the follower has to keep paying for afterwards.

A paid follower review is not a purchased business review. The Federal Trade Commission's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, went into effect on October 21, 2024, and its Section 465.4 prohibits a business from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on a consumer review expressing a particular sentiment (FTC: The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule). A follower buying an honest opinion for their own purchase decision is paying for the creator's time, not for a positive verdict, and the listing should say so.

Followers attach their own files — a product photo, a selfie, a screenshot of a shade chart — when they place the order, so the creator has the input before starting. Follower attachments can include up to 5 files at 50 MB each. You choose the delivery time for each custom request, anywhere from 1–24 hours up to a maximum of 5 days.

Brand inquiry or paid review: which offer fits the request?

Route each message by who is paying and what they want back. A brand pitching a campaign belongs in the Brand Collaboration Inquiries form, which is free to receive. A follower asking for an honest take on a product they will buy themselves belongs in a paid custom request, priced before the work starts.

A brand inquiry and a paid async review differ on every field that matters at setup time:

Separating the two flows keeps a brand's gifted-product pitch out of the same queue as a paying follower's request. Brillay supports that split directly by giving brand inquiries their own inbox, separate from follower activity.

What should a beauty review listing include before you post it?

A beauty review listing should state the input the follower sends, the one delivery they receive, the delivery time, and the scope included in the price. The Custom Work setup states what followers get, what you need from them, and what is not included.

• Input: A specific product, shade, or look photo.
• Deliverable: Written notes, an audio walkthrough, images, or another file format; state which.
• Delivery time: A delivery time you can reliably meet, up to 5 days for Custom Work.
• Scope: Cosmetic feedback based on the product details and images the follower supplies.

Example scope: "One written review of one product or look photo, covering fit for your stated skin type and an honest recommendation."

Stripe's documentation states that a customer sees a refund as a credit approximately 5-10 business days later, depending on the bank, and that Stripe's processing fees from the original transaction remain charged when a payment is refunded (Stripe: Refund and cancel payments). Your own refund policy, which a follower reads before paying and can see again on the order, is what you point to when someone asks — it still does not eliminate chargeback risk after you deliver.

How do you handle disclosure on a paid or gifted review?

U.S. influencer disclosure rules require revealing any material connection to a brand — cash payment, free product, or a discount — clearly and inside the post itself. The Federal Trade Commission's revised Endorsement Guides have been in effect since July 26, 2023.

The Federal Trade Commission's Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers, published in November 2019 and accessed September 2026, defines the trigger plainly:

A "material connection" to the brand includes a personal, family, or employment relationship or a financial relationship – such as the brand paying you or giving you free or discounted products or services.

— Federal Trade Commission, Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers, November 2019

The Federal Trade Commission's Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers also directs where an influencer's disclosure has to live: "Make sure people will see and understand the disclosure. Place it so it's hard to miss" — meaning inside the post or caption, not on an "About" page a viewer has to click through to find. A paid Brillay review bought by an individual follower is not a sponsored brand post, but if a brand supplied the product being reviewed, that relationship still requires disclosure.

The FTC's Endorsement Guides are interpretive guidance rather than a rule that carries automatic penalties, while the FTC's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) is a rule courts can enforce with civil penalties (FTC: The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule). The Federal Trade Commission set the maximum civil penalty for violations of Sections 5(l), 5(m)(1)(A), and 5(m)(1)(B) of the FTC Act at $53,088 per violation, effective January 17, 2025 and announced on February 11, 2025 (FTC: Inflation-Adjusted Civil Penalty Amounts for 2025).

How much should I charge for a paid beauty product or look review?

For a first paid review, test a clearly bounded price such as $25 for written feedback on one product or look photo, then charge more when the request includes multiple products or additional deliverables. Treat that as a starting example, not a market rate, and adjust it to the time and expertise involved. Occupational pages such as BLS: Skincare Specialists are useful background for beauty work, but they do not set the price for an async creator review.

The key is matching price to scope, not copying a salon wage. One product, one look photo, and written notes can be a small starter offer; a routine audit, multiple products, files, or a longer audio walkthrough should be a different custom request with a higher price and the same clear delivery deadline.

Licensed salon work and creator reviews also carry different expectations. A cosmetologist or esthetician may be paid for in-person service, while an online beauty creator is often being paid for taste, product familiarity, and a specific opinion on a follower's purchase decision. Broader occupation pages such as BLS: Barbers, Hairstylists, and Cosmetologists can describe labor-market context, but every paid Brillay review still needs its own deliverable, delivery time, and exclusion list.

What else can a beauty creator sell alongside reviews and inquiries?

Beyond paid reviews and brand inquiries, a beauty creator's Brillay page can carry three more offers: Personalized Videos, Tips, and Goals. Each is a separate offer with its own price and purpose, and turning any of them on costs nothing until a follower actually pays, at the rates already set out above.

• Personalized Videos: A congratulations or hype video for a follower's big moment, unrelated to any product.
• Tips: A no-strings way for someone who enjoys your content to support you directly.
• Goals: Funding toward a stated goal, such as new lighting or testing samples, with a visible progress bar rather than a shipped product.

Paid Brillay orders appear in your Brillay earnings flow, while Brand Collaboration Inquiries is free to receive. Brillay supports creator payouts in 41 countries, and payout details are managed inside Brillay. For the 2026 tax year, the Internal Revenue Service requires a third-party settlement organization to file a Form 1099-K only when a payee's gross reportable payment transactions exceed $20,000 and the number of transactions exceeds 200, the threshold restored by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (IRS: Form 1099-K threshold FAQs). The Internal Revenue Service states that a creator must report payments received for goods or services even if no Form 1099-K arrives (IRS: What to do with Form 1099-K). Creators outside the United States are not covered by the IRS Form 1099-K threshold at all, because that reporting rule applies to U.S. third-party settlement organizations and their U.S. payees; non-U.S. creators report under their own country's rules.

Keep each offer scoped to one purpose. A review listing that also tries to cover tutorials, brand collabs, and general support gets confusing fast, while separate offers keep pricing and expectations clear.

How do you get a beauty inquiry-and-review page live?

Add a Brand Collaboration Inquiries form and one priced custom request to your Brillay page, then use that one link in your bio instead of sorting requests in DMs.

Creators redirect people from Instagram or TikTok DMs to their Brillay link, where the request and the payment happen on the page, as a guest. See Brillay for beauty creators for how the rest of a beauty page typically comes together. Set the review price and delivery time first, since a paid review is the offer most followers will use regularly, and add the brand inquiry form once outside pitches are frequent enough to be worth organizing. One bio link that carries every offer: followers pay you as guests by card, at prices you set, whatever format the request takes.

Pricing a first brand collaboration works differently from pricing a follower review, because a brand deal involves usage rights and campaign scope rather than a single opinion — see how to price your first brand collaboration. Brillay states that creators can start for free with no monthly fee; the paid platform fee only applies when a follower pays.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be a licensed esthetician to sell paid reviews?

Custom Work has no follower minimum and nothing to apply for. You remain responsible for any professional licensing rules that apply to the advice you offer where you live. Avoid implying a diagnosis or a medical claim about skin conditions, and describe your background accurately, because general product opinions are different from licensed skincare advice.

How fast do I have to deliver a paid beauty review?

Within the delivery time you set on the service, and the longest window you can set is 5 days. Delivery is asynchronous: you reply on your own time inside that window, with no live call to schedule.

Is a paid follower review the same thing as a sponsored brand post?

No. A paid review sold through Custom Work is a follower paying you directly for your opinion on something they are deciding about. A sponsored post is a brand paying or gifting product in exchange for coverage, which should go through the Brand Collaboration Inquiries form and still requires disclosure under the FTC Endorsement Guides in effect since July 26, 2023 (Federal Register).

What if a brand DMs me instead of using the inquiry form?

Redirect the brand to the form so the budget, timeline, and deliverables get captured in one place before any negotiation starts. You make that redirect from the social DM to the Brillay form manually.

What does Brillay charge for these offers?

Brillay has no monthly fee; its only charge is the small platform fee in the pricing line at the top of this page, taken when a follower pays for a review or another paid offer, while brand inquiries cost nothing to receive. Card processing is its own cost: Stripe processing fees are deducted separately from creator earnings and can vary by transaction; the follower sees only your displayed price (Stripe pricing).

Create your free Brillay page and turn brand pitches and "will this work for me?" DMs into two clear flows.