How Much to Charge

The age-old question - what am I worth? Rates are easily the most highly debated topic in the influencer industry. We have seen campaigns where influencers with roughly the same statistics (follower count and engagement) ask for rates with 5x difference in price. 

Unfortunately, there is no exact formula to calculate your rate and a number of factors influence it (no pun intended). 

The three biggest factors are follower count (this will get you a starting range), engagement rate (this will peg you high or low in that range), and which social network or post type you’re pricing for (e.g. an Instagram story or post).

For the purposes of this article, we assume we’re talking about Instagram but have seen that a Facebook influencer with 50K followers will likely not get as much per post as an Instagram influencer due to the limited visibility that Facebook posts get these days. Conversely, a blogger with 50K monthly visitors may get slightly more (as the content stays online longer, can add SEO value, clicks and purchases are trackable, etc..). 

There are two things you should do to figure out your rate. First, understand what other influencers similar to you are charging. Like it or not, marketers are evaluating lots of influencers at the same time. Knowing your “competition” and their pricing is critical. You can find pricing information in a few places such as browsing profiles on influence.co or using our dynamic rate landscape tool. 

Once you have a general understanding of the range you’re in based on your follower count and your competition, adjust your rate to the bottom or top based on your engagement rate. 

The second thing to understand is how digital marketers pay for other forms of digital advertising. Like it or not, a marketer’s budget for influencers is always competing with their budget for PPC ads, SEO, display ads, video ads, retargeting, radio buys and everything else in between. The best comparative for sponsored posts on Instagram would be a Facebook or Instagram Cost Per Like or Cost Per Engagement which a marketer would calculate when buying an ad. While rates vary widely, it’s generally safe to assume that most marketers are spending $0.05 to $0.75 per engagement on Facebook or Instagram ads. To calculate your own expected engagement rate on a post simply use this formula: 

Price you’re asking for a post / Average engagements (e.g. likes + comments) per post 

If a marketer pays you $100 for a post and you get 350 engagements (325 likes and 25 comments, for example), their effective Cost per Engagement is $0.28. For some marketers, this may be high but in general, it's in the range of other options they have. 

Note that we did not mention follower count in this equation. You can guess total engagements for any influencer by multiplying followers by engagement rate. You could have a 100K follower account with a 1% engagement rate or a 25K follower count account with a 4% engagement rate and still get the same number of engagements. That’s why it's so important to know your numbers and focus on your engagement rate too. 

There are other factors that play with rates as well. Niche categories (e.g. fishing, birds and pets, kayaking) will have higher rates per post as there are fewer influencers and the audience is likely very targeted. If you include bio links or links in a Linktree or Linkinbio product you can increase your rates too. Some brands will also be willing to pay the effective higher price of a post if you take a product in-kind versus cash. It never hurts to ask for what you think you’re worth but being informed about the brand’s other options is important.