How Much to Charge for a Sponsored Post

How much to charge for a sponsored post

Influencer marketing is a great way for businesses to reach a modern customer base and it’s a great way for influencers to monetize their brand. It’s a win-win for both parties! Once you hit your micro influencer and/or macro influencer goals, you can take advantage of this lucrative opportunity! 

To get into influencer marketing, simply do what you do best. You make great content, but now brands pay you to do it! This is exciting, but it begs the question: How much do you charge? Setting your freelance rates is so hard, and it can sometimes prevent you from ever starting your influencer marketing business. So, today, we’ve broken down how to set your sponsored posts rates:

How Much to Charge for a Sponsored Post

What is a sponsored post?

What is a Sponsored Post? 

First of all, what is a sponsored post? Essentially, a brand decides they want to use content marketing to advertise their product or service (or simply increase their brand awareness.) They hire you to make a post showcasing their brand. This content might be a blog article, an Instagram post, or anything else in that wheelhouse! 

Once you create the content based on their terms and your media kit, you post it and collect your payment. This is called brand collaboration! The company gains your influence, and hopefully your post leads to lots of new sales and followers for them! With a good sponsored post business model, you can make a huge profit off your social media page or blog.  

Setting sponsored post rates

Things to Consider When Setting Your Rates

To set your rates, you must first evaluate your worth. Now, we know you’re amazing, but what stage is your brand right now? Believe it or not, there’s more to it than just your follower count. Here are all the things you should consider before setting your rate: 

Open Rate on Emails

If you have a regular newsletter, your open rate will be important to consider. A high open rate on your emails means that your followers are engaged and tuned-in to all you’re doing. So, if you have a strong open rate, think of that as a huge bonus that’ll bump up your price! 

Website Traffic

Monthly page views on your website is another vital analytic. If you’re offering sponsored blog posts, the brand will want to see you get lots of regular traffic and new organic traffic. Traffic from lots of sources shows your blog is buzzing! 

Even if you’re offering an Instagram post, your website shows where your most loyal and engaged fans hang out. These numbers should be included in your media kit to help brands understand why your price point. 

Social Media Following

Your follower number isn’t everything, but it is the first thing brands look at when they find you! A high number of followers show your influence is wide, and brands will get a lot more eyes on their sponsored post if they use you.

However, if you’re a micro influencer with around 1,000 followers, don’t give up on your influencer marketing dreams! There are tons of businesses out there interested in brand collaborations, and their budgets are all different. They’ll want your small sphere of influence as long as they’re super engaged. 

Blog and Social Media Engagement

Speaking of engagement, brands want to see your followers are engaged. On both your blog and socials, followers should be consistently commenting, liking, and sharing your posts. These active fans are much more likely to convert into sales for the brands, so even if you feel like your numbers are small, companies love a really engaged group of followers! 

Conversion 

This one is more for down the road when you’ve done some sponsored posts already. But, if you can show new brands that you have good sales conversions from your sponsored content, it makes you a lot more valuable to companies. Collect statistics on the brand’s ROI after using you!

Expertise

What’s your knowledge of this market? For example, a blogger who primarily blogs about dermatology and skin care will have greater credibility and expertise when reviewing a face cleanser. Whereas, a fashion influencer might also advertise this same cleanser, but she’ll do so with less reliability.

Your expertise in an area could definitely lead to more conversions, because your voice is trusted! Make sure to include in your media kit specific knowledge you have on sought-after topics! 

Content Type

The truth is, you shouldn’t have one price for all of your sponsored posts, because some posts will take much longer than others! A full blog post review of a product will take way longer than a quick Instagram story. So, before you give the brand a price, consider what they’re asking you to do, and make sure you’re leaving yourself enough margin. 

Brand’s Expectations

When I say margin, that might seem like a weird term to use, because sponsored posts are project based and not based on an hourly rate. However, you should view even fixed rate jobs as hourly. For example, if you set your price at $500 and the post will take you 5 hours, you have to make sure you’re okay with $100 an hour for your work. 

Every brand will have different expectations. Some will be so specific they’ll require a certain color scheme, pose, scene, and caption. Other brands will give you full creative control. A sponsored post that requires a lot of staging and working to get to the brand’s exact specifications should definitely be priced higher than a creative control post! 

Lastly, every contract has varied expectations for revisions. Some brands will include a lot of potential revisions in their agreement too, which alters the price. If they ask for 5 revisions, and each one takes at least an hour, that $100 an hour from the $500 post suddenly becomes $50 an hour. If that’s not something you’re okay with, consider raising your price for lots of revisions! 

Timeline

How fast does the brand want the post? An overnight job should cost more than something you have a week to do. Remember to ask about the timeline before getting to the agreement, so you can determine the costs and time. 

SERP Rankings

The last thing you should consider if you’re setting a price for brand collaborations is your SERP ranking with different search terms. Brands are paying for a sponsored post that’ll stay at the top of people’s feeds for a few hours, and then vanish until either you or the brand reshares it. However, if your blog posts rank high on the search engine results pages, that could stay there for years!

This organic reach would be super enticing to a brand. So, when setting a price, think about whether or not you rank with any relevant keywords. If they’re a pet food brand, and your article, “Top 20 Pet Foods for Chihuahuas” is in the top 10 of the SERPS, you just became a whole lot more valuable to the company. 

A lot of influencers forget this last consideration. Don’t! It’s super important. We understand this might be a little out of your wheelhouse, so get an SEO Performance Report to include in your media kit. InfluencerSEO can make one for you if you email us at info@influencerseo.com! And, if you want to learn how to get your posts ranking high, start here

How to write sponsored blog posts

How to Write Sponsored Posts

Now that you know what a sponsored post is and how to set your price, how do you create one? Writing a sponsored post isn’t too different from what you already do every day on your blog and social channels. After all, the brands are hiring YOU to do what YOU do best, because this will resonate with your audience the most. Nevertheless, this is how you write a sponsored post:

Ensure you have a contract. 

When you’re doing a brand collaboration, you definitely want a contract. These contracts will ensure that the expectations are clear and you get paid. As you’re starting out, there may be brands out there that try to take advantage of you. Don’t let this be the case. Make sure the contract is clear and lays out all the details of the collab!

Review the terms and set a timeline. 

Once you have that contract, review the terms and set a timeline. This is a great starting point, because you can note all the requirements in one location! If there is specific text or language that must be used, if there is a photo that must be attached, or if there is a certain time it must be uploaded, you need to learn and remember all those expectations. Missing even one can ruin your relationship with the brand and definitely cut into your check amount. 

List when your post is due, and all that you need to include. As you’re planning, writing, designing, and uploading, keep this list close. That way, you won’t forget anything. Then, map out production on a calendar to ensure you hit your deadline.

Be authentic to your brand.  

As we said, the brand hired YOU. This means they want your influence and your type of content. So, truly, don’t overthink it. You’re the content creator they want. Keeping this in mind, ensure you’re creating a sponsored post that feels authentic to you and your brand. Despite the integrated advertisement, your sponsored content should feel like anything else you post. In short, be you!

Come up with a great hook. 

Though this should feel like anything else you post, you don’t want your followers to scroll past too quickly. This one needs to stand out to gain lots of interaction and conversions. Come up with a great title for your blog post or a great caption for your photo. Think of something that would resonate with your audience, so they stop and listen to what you have to say about this brand!

Always use no-follow links.

Due to some nefarious linking practices of the earlier days of Google analytics and blogging, Google’s policy (as well as most social networks) that all paid for links should be “no-follow.” This means the affiliate links will not affect ranking on either side of the brand collaboration. This keeps everything authentic. No low quality link spamming that’ll ruin the blogging experience for readers! 

So, to ensure you stay within policy on your sponsored blog posts, ensure you use no-follow links. If you’re sending readers over to the brand’s website, you shouldn’t try to benefit from that external link. You can learn more about linking here! 

Disclose it’s a sponsored post. 

Google doesn’t like to be hoodwinked by sponsored posts, and neither do your followers. Because of this, social networks demand you disclose sponsored posts in their own way too. You must put “ad,” “sponsored,” or “advertisement” at the beginning of the post. Then, those boosted posts can be on their merry way. Without this disclosure, you’ll be in violation of the FTC guidelines. This means fines, possible social media banning, and probably no payment from the brand.  

Give your followers a deal.

It’s true, some follower’s stomachs churn at the sight of an ad. (Just some. Most appreciate your recommendation and expertise!) However, a way to sweeten the deal and create a positive reaction is to offer the followers a deal! You can either offer your followers something from your own brand, or, you can work with the company to develop a coupon or discount for the future customers! 

Well-written and well-priced sponsored posts are a great way to monetize your brand and grow your business! 

Influencer marketing is more popular than ever. This is great for content creators of all sizes, because the advertisers are coming your way to gain your influence! With their interest, you can monetize your brand and make a true career out of running your blog. Follow this guide to set your prices and craft the perfect post. And, check back weekly for the freshest advice on all things blogging and SEO!

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