How to Price a Five-Minute Creator Reply

Price a five-minute creator reply at $10–$20 as a practical starting point, then adjust up for expertise, specificity, and demand. That range prices the judgment behind the answer rather than the five minutes of typing, and after platform and payment fees it leaves roughly $9–$18 in your account. 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.

For expert answers, try a starting price around $20–$35, then move it up or down based on expertise, specificity, and demand. You are pricing the judgment behind the answer, not the minutes spent typing. The table below shows common price points after Brillay’s 8% fee on a Paid Question and an estimated US card processing fee. 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.

Those net figures use Brillay’s 8% paid-work fee (Brillay pricing) and Stripe’s published US card rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction (Stripe pricing) against the same amount the client pays. Pricing a quick written answer is one part of getting paid to answer questions from your followers, and the wider pricing framework covers when to raise or lower the price when the work is not quick.

What do comparable paid-answer platforms charge for a short reply?

Public paid-answer pages can give you a gut check, but they should not set your price for you. A written answer that needs judgment, context, or trust is different from a casual DM, and it is different from a live call.

As of September 2026, Minnect’s official public expert profiles listed text answers from $15 for Sardor Akhmedov and $35 for Tom Ellsworth (app.minnect.com expert profiles). Paid-advice marketplace Clarity.fm tells prospective experts its average 30-minute call works out to about $50, or about $1.60 per minute (Clarity.fm — Become an Expert). That puts five minutes of live expert time near $8, while a written reply you can think through and edit can reasonably sit above that floor. Nothing to apply for, nobody ranking you, and the answer is written instead of booked.

Before choosing where to sell your answers, check what you keep after fees and how each platform handles refunds and payment disputes. Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request. The rates below are the platforms’ own published percentages of the person’s payment. They are platform cuts only, not a full net-earnings comparison, because payment processing, app-store fees, refund rules, and category charges can change what lands in your bank.

Clarity.fm’s terms state that the current applicable percentage is 15% of the appointment fee. Minnect’s FAQ says the platform takes 20% per transaction and experts keep 80%. Cameo’s talent site says creators take 70% and Cameo takes 30%. The paid question itself lives in your own bio link: one tap from the post they just watched takes a follower straight to your page, not into a marketplace roster.

For an expert written answer, treat $20–$35 as a starting test, not a measured market average. No paid-answer tool publishes a clean per-order dataset showing what creators charge for a five-minute written answer, so test the range against your own clients, niche, and available time.

Why isn't five minutes the number that matters?

The person asking is not buying your typing speed. They are paying for your experience, your judgment, and direct access to your thinking. That may have taken years to build, even if the final answer only takes a few minutes to write.

That is the model behind Brillay’s Paid Questions: a client pays your set price upfront, asks one private question, and you answer in writing later on your own time. The price is shown before they submit the question, instead of being calculated from the minutes you spend typing.

Brillay charges 8% when a follower pays for work and 5% on tips and goals, with no monthly fee, so choose a price that still feels worthwhile after fees instead of undercharging for the experience behind the answer.

A useful five-minute answer should therefore be priced according to:

• The value and specificity of the answer
• The expertise required to provide it
• The access the client receives
• The amount of research or context needed
• Whether the question requires specialist judgment

Why should you think in price per reply rather than price per minute?

Price per reply reflects the value of the finished answer. Price per minute can punish you for being good at what you do, because the faster you can answer, the less you would charge.

As a planning exercise, ten five-minute questions priced at $10 each would equal $100 in gross payments for approximately one hour of reply time. That is only arithmetic, not a forecast. Actual sales depend on client demand, niche, promotion, and how many people decide to pay.

This exercise helps you ask a simple question: would I still feel good answering ten of these in a row at this price? If the answer is no, start higher.

Do not squeeze a serious question into a cheap five-minute answer just because that was the price you picked first. Give the answer the care it needs, and use the higher end of your range when the question needs expertise, research, or careful context. The full pricing framework explains how effort and expertise can move a price up or down.

Stripe’s fixed processing charge is $0.30 per successful transaction regardless of price, so round prices above $10 can keep that flat fee from taking too much of a quick written answer.

What does a five-minute reply net after fees?

A $15 reply nets approximately $13.06 after a $1.20 Brillay fee and about $0.74 in Stripe processing. A $10 reply nets about $8.61 and a $20 reply about $17.52. Both fees are calculated from the original payment amount, so the flat $0.30 Stripe piece matters more at low prices.

Stripe’s published rate for US domestic cards is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction.

Using those assumptions:

• Brillay fee = gross payment × 8% for a paid reply (tips and goals carry a 5% fee instead)
• Estimated Stripe fee = gross payment × 2.9% + $0.30
• Estimated creator net = gross payment − Brillay fee − Stripe fee

At a $15 reply, combined Brillay and Stripe fees are about 12.9% of the payment — $1.94 of $15 — using Brillay’s 8% fee for paid work and Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 US card rate. At a $5 reply, the same two fees are about 17% of the payment, because Stripe’s flat $0.30 is a larger piece of a smaller price.

These figures are estimates. Stripe’s exact processing charge can vary by card type, payment method, and country, while international or manually entered cards may cost more. See Stripe’s pricing page for its full rate table, and read each tool’s refund and payment-dispute rules before you rely on a low headline fee.

The fixed $0.30 component also represents a larger percentage of a low-priced reply. At $5, the estimated Stripe fee is $0.45, or 9% of the charge; at $15, it is approximately $0.74, or about 4.9%. That is why the number you keep matters more than the number on the button.

What if a five-minute reply becomes ten minutes of back-and-forth?

Define the paid unit before you raise the price. Say it plainly: one payment buys one private question and one written reply. If someone needs a larger review, audit, feedback pass, or defined piece of work, price that separately through Custom Work.

Because each Paid Question ends after one written reply, a short answer cannot turn into open-ended consulting.

It can feel awkward to ask people to pay when you have answered for free for years. A fixed question price makes the boundary easier: helpful public content can stay free, and the person who wants your direct time has a clear one-time option, not a membership.

You also do not need a huge client list before you test this. Creators in 41 countries can get paid; followers pay by card from anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge when people keep coming to me with questions?

For an expert written answer, test $20–$35 as a starting range, then adjust for specificity, expertise, and how quickly questions fill your available time. This is a Brillay editorial recommendation benchmarked against public paid-answer prices — Minnect text answers start at $15 on public expert profiles (app.minnect.com) — not a measured market average.

Should I charge for this or keep answering for free?

A $5 price can test whether anyone will pay, but it nets approximately $4.15 after Brillay’s 8% fee and Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 US card rate; the 8% applies to paid work, while tips and goals are charged 5%. If the answer uses real judgment, start closer to the price that would make you happy to answer ten of them in a row.

How does Brillay's cut compare with other paid-question platforms?

Brillay takes 8% of a paid reply and 5% on tips and goals, against Clarity.fm’s 15% service fee, Minnect’s 20% per transaction, and Cameo’s 30%. Those are platform cuts only, before payment processing, refunds, or payment disputes.

Should I charge less just because I can answer fast?

No. A concise answer based on specialized experience can be more valuable than a long but generic response. Price the usefulness, specificity, expertise, and access involved rather than relying only on word count or writing time.

What if the question takes longer than I expected?

If the same question type repeatedly requires more work, raise its price or create a separate, higher-priced offer. If a single question is bigger than one written reply can cover, you can decline and refund it rather than stretch the answer.

You do not need a large following to start: Create your free Brillay page, turn on Paid Questions, and put the link in your bio so clients can pay by card with no sign-up.