One of the things we’re asked on a regular basis is “How much should I charge for a sponsored post”, whether that’s a blog post or an Instagram post, or whatever you’re asked to do. There are lots of different elements to your rates so we’re going to break it down and make it easier to figure them out.
The first starting point that we normally recommend is Social Bluebook. It’s a website that looks at your statistics and followings on various social media platforms and then recommends how much to charge for various things – you can adjust the dropdowns to specify what sort of post is involved (e.g. a blog post with 3 photos, or a dedicated Instagram video). However, we only recommend it as a jumping off point, as it may not take into account other things that you do to create the content.
The next thing to consider is what is required. Your rate for a simple tweet will be different to a post on Instagram with a styled photo and long caption and different again to a blog post because of the time and skills involved in creating the content for the various platforms. Consider what goes into creating your content – your time, skills, writing, photography, image editing skills etc. A good starting point for this is to consider the hourly rate that you earn in your day job and then adjusting that to what you feel is fair for the amount of work involved.
Finally, you should consider what the rates that others in your niche and of similar size charge – you don’t want to undersell yourself (because a lower rate may cause potential advertisers to wonder why you’re so cheap!) but charging significantly more than others could put advertisers off. This is one of the reasons we did the finance survey last year so you could see what sort of rate others are charging. Another reason to consider is what the company is able to afford – a large international brand should be able to pay more for a sponsored post than a small local startup and it is up to you whether you adjust your rate or offer different items (an Instagram post instead of a blog post for example)
Your rate should not be set in stone because every situation is different, but hopefully, you have a good idea of what sort of amount to request in the future.
