How to Price your Services as a Creator

"72 percent of consumers will unfollow an influencer with disingenuous endorsements in their content. 69 per cent will unfollow if they see promotion of unrealistic beauty standards, and 68 per cent will leave if the influencer has purchased fake followers" Takumi, Industry Report, 2019

This first stat is a reminder that pricing your services as an Instagram creator means really looking at basing partnerships on reputable collaborations and work that can resonate with your followers.

When should you get started with collaborations? You'll need to have at least a good base of followers on Instagram  to effectively collaborate with brands. I find that the average between 500 - 1,000 is the starting point for most crestors. 

A lot of people have different opinions on the matter, but in order to have a clear idea of your reach, engagement and growth you need to have enough audience to track your analytics and account quality. Once you are in a position you feel can allow you to charge what your time is worth, it's key to understand how best you can price your services. 

One first step before thinking about pricing methods, is to be able to have some data that can help you increase your fees over time. Here are  my favourite two things to monitor:

Followers: To find your number of followers / blog-old monthly users: simply head to your social accounts or check Google Analytics for an exact number. 

Engagement rate: You can calculate your average engagement from your last 30 days using the formula shown in this article. Simply calculate the average of the post with the most engagement, and the one with the least engagement, divide it by your followers, then multiply by 100 to get your percentage.

A few people enquired about WHY engagement is such an important factor - engagement and impressions are important to justify the cost of your services, as well as a boost in validation for brands looking to boost ROI. As well as engagement, saves, post shares and Stories insights are also critical  for potential partners and sponsors.

When it comes to stories we recommend adding them to a package with a post, unless you are looking to offer a story-takeover as a standalone offer.

Once you are clear on how often you are going to increase your pricing, and what you are going to base this on, it's time to think about numbers.

As a base, you want to use your followers and their engagement , and combine the different services and platforms required to create a clear picture of the collaboration and your overall fee. As a rule of thumb, when it comes to pricing, take into account your time, your resources needed and any costs associated with your post and build them into your price.

By project: if you already have expertise in a specific type of assignment, charging by the project is probably the best. This way, you can finish it up quickly, but still earn well. Charging per hour would place you at a disadvantage as most likely it only requires a couple of hours to complete.

By the hour: this could be your best bet when the project requires multiple hours to complete. However, most clients are cautious about paying hourly, so we recommend setting a number of hours per project. We use this method to calculate our rates.

Building blocks: if you individually price each element of your project (eg individual posts, videos, stories, content development) you can do a simple sum of all of the blocks you are bringing into a project and let partners pick and choose what to leave out, pricing out every single item.

Reposting rights: it's good practise to decide whether you should be charging more for a brand to reshape a post - this also depends on your photography skills. Make sure you are always credited and state WHERE a brand can repost your content

Content type: are you looking to focus on images, videos or dynamic content? That will also change your pricing.

Add percentages for extra elements: sometimes simple is best, so instead of having a full-on menu or variety of services, you can keep your services simple and use other elements such as stories as add-ons.

Deadlines: is you are working around a tight deadline, add an additional percentage for that.

If you want to provide maximum value for your brand partners, be ready to offer different packages that speak to the different levels of service you provide.

You may want to add a 20% to your original price and come down to a price point you would be happy with. So instead of settling for one-off advertising agreements, catch the vision for working with brands who are looking for a long-term partner. 

Overall, in order to get clear on your worth, you need to start asking yourself the right questions. For more guidance and actual figures coming from industry standards, you can check our pricing guidelines including options for creators and blog-oldgers.