How Much Should I Charge for Sponsored Posts?
If you haven’t already then check out the prequel to this post on Why Bloggers Should Discuss Their Income! In that article, I discuss why talking about our income and how much we charge for sponsored posts shouldn’t be a taboo subject.
However, it is often a very common topic that comes up and so I felt that I should address how I decide how much to charge brands for sponsored posts and different factors that I consider. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
So, how much SHOULD I charge?
There is a difference between how much CAN I charge and how much SHOULD I charge for sponsored posts. This can be different based on a few things:
• Where is the brand/company located?
I wouldn’t charge the same to a US company or brand that I would to a company or brand in the Philippines. I would probably not even charge the same amount to a company in Skopje (South-Eastern Europe) that I would to one in Gothenburg, Sweden. It’s basic economics and based on purchasing power. Simply put, the average monthly salary after tax in Skopje is $351 and in Gothenburg it’s $2,435 (6 times higher).
Although I didn’t get paid for my trips to Skopje and Gothenburg, I did get sponsored stays for two nights in both cities. I consider both hostel stays worth the same in relation to the resulting blog posts in which they are mentioned. They may have been worlds apart in monetary terms of how much the stay would have actually cost me (around €53 for two nights in Gothenburg and €14 for two nights in Skopje) but the cost to each hostel was pretty much the same.
• What is the brand/company?
Would you charge the same to a multinational corporation that you would to a small local charity? Probably not, huh? There are times when I have worked with small startups or charitable organisation on a product only basis, whereas for the same campaign with a large corporation I would have charged a few hundred $$.
I think most bloggers would agree with me that sometimes you will throw aside any of your standard fees when the organisation (charity or startup) is close to your heart in some way. It is also a great way to start with collaborations when your blog/social media following is slightly smaller. This goodwill can go far and having a long-term collaboration with a company can really benefit you.
Traveling Dutchies were the first company to collaborate with me and I will still feature their products on my Instagram if I was using it at the time. I will happily tag them in it and drive traffic to their Instagram, even though I now have 58,000 followers and we originally collaborated when I only had 4,000. They are a small Dutch start-up and I’m happy to bring them business if I can!
• Are there products involved?
Collaborations involving products will generally involve slightly different fees than those without. After all, if an airline wants to give me two tickets from Germany to somewhere in the Caribbean then I probably wouldn’t ALSO charge them for a blog post and/or Instagram posts. (Unless they’re offering, then go for it. Also if you’re an airline and want to give me free tickets, I need you in my life, so feel free to email me.)
Generally use your own discretion about how much the product is worth to you and factor that into how much you are charging.
The Numbers
We have talked about how to decide what to charge and when to charge higher and when to offer a lower fee. But higher and lower than what? We will start with Instagram.
Instagram Sponsored Posts
How much should I charge Company X for a sponsored post? I get this question a lot and there seems to be no real consensus on the matter. As I demonstrated in my previous post on why we should discuss how much we charge, SocialBluebook suggests that I charge $458 for a post on my Instagram (59.3k followers – therefore this is approximately $7.70 CPM (cost per 1,000 followers). I generally find that SocialBluebook is pretty accurate when it comes to Instagram sponsored posts, as I generally recommend charging around $5-9 CPM, depending on the factors I mentioned previously.
At the end of 2015, global average CPM costs grew from $5.21 in September to a peak of $7.20 in November, before cooling off at $5.94 in December. (Source: Brand Networks)
I then decided to Google ‘how much to charge for Instagram sponsored posts’ to see what others were saying. One website told me (based on my follower number and engagement) that I should be charging $1,450! Another recommended that I charge $877. And then I also have the company that wants me to do a post for $30…
Why is there such a huge discrepancy with how much we should charge for sponsored posts? From the suggestions above I am being recommended to charge anything from $0.50 to $24.50 CPM. Quite a difference!
Here is a breakdown on how I decide what to charge a company:
1. Base cost of $5 – 9 per 1k followers
Why is there a range? Engagement. As a company, I wouldn’t pay the same for a sponsored post to an influencer with 10,000 followers and 10% engagement that I would to an influencer with 10,000 followers and 2% engagement since, on average, 800 more users interact with Influencer 1 on a post than they do with Influencer 2.
It is the same as an influencer. With a very high engagement level, you can charge premium prices for a post as it will reach many more people. I was recently in discussions with an influencer marketing company who told me I was charging too high and recommended that I charge a similar amount to a fellow influencer. However, I checked out her profile and, even though she had more followers than me, each post garnered fewer likes and comments than each of mine.
What is good engagement? Engagement varies as your account grows but, generally speaking, 2-4% is acceptable and anything above 5% is excellent. Under 10k followers this is usually slightly higher, around 4-6% and then 8% and above. Some micro-influencers I know have less than 10k but 10-20% engagement and are often garnering more likes than some accounts with 60k!
For example, Janna consistently gets over 1,000 likes (1,700 here!) even though she has only 8,300 followers. That’s 20% engagement! (Also her Instagram is just #goals)
If we look at the SocialBluebook value of how much they think I should charge for a sponsored post and compare it to my average engagement (comments + likes) on other sponsored posts (2.3k, 1.3k, 1.4k, 1.9k, 1.7k) then the CPE, or cost per engagement, comes out at $0.27 ($458 / 1,700).
An amount of around $0.25 – $0.40 per engagement (comment/like) is usually a good indication, and I would recommend comparing it to your CPM ($5-9 per 1k followers) and finding a number that suits both values.
e.g. 20k followers with 5% engagement (average 1k likes) = $100-180 CPM or $250-400 CPE
50k followers with 2% engagement (average 1k likes) = $250-450 CPM or $250-400 CPE
2. Cost markup/down based on brand
As mentioned above, I would usually charge a different amount depending on if it was a large multi-national corporation or if it was a small local startup. With the ranges stated above, I would recommend charging on the higher side for large brands and on the low side (or lower) for small startups. For charities, I tend to charge either very low or nothing at all (particularly product placement).
I also factor in the location of the brand/company – it will be a different matter if I’m collaborating with a company fully based in India than with a company based in the UK, since (generally) their costs and average earnings will be fairly different.
3. Cost based on products involved
If the collaboration involves a product then I will usually take this into account, particularly if it’s a high-value product (and even more so if it’s something I would buy anyway). I usually try to take the at-cost value of the product (i.e. what it costs the company to make) into consideration, rather than the marked up retail value.
You won’t necessarily know the exact at-cost price, but you can usually make an estimation (fashion is often a 100% markup, i.e. double the at-cost price).
3. Consider your hourly rate and production costs
I also try to factor in how long the post will take me. For example, if the campaign will require a lot of photography and post-production then I will charge a slightly higher fee than one without. Don’t forget to factor in any production costs that you might have!
Summary:
Base price based on $5-9 CPM / $0.25 – $0.40 CPE
HIGHER if a large brand, requires more work or has high production costs
LOWER if a small startup or a charity or includes a product (particularly for high-value products)
Blog Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts on your blog should be thought of in a similar way as explained above for Instagram posts. Just as with Instagram posts, blog post costs can be calculated in two ways – average unique readers per article (which can be calculated both overall and monthly) and UMV (unique monthly visitors).
From analysing a variety of costs, $0.20+ per view of an article in the first month that it’s live seems to be pretty standard and fair. $0.60 per view of an article on the first day of publishing is also fairly standard. This generally includes the post being promoted on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest as well.
Recommended rates based on monthly views/visitors range from around $50-400 from 5k UMV (subsequently $100-800 from 10k and $200-$1500 from 20k and so on) to $100 per 10k page views.
Breaking this down, we end up with:
$10-80 per 1k UMV and $10 per 1k page views.
This would mean that if you have an average of 5k monthly unique visitors and 6k monthly page views, you could expect to charge around $50 – $400 for one sponsored post.
Personally, I feel that this errs slightly on the extremes and would recommend pricing around $100 – 200 for one sponsored post (with 5k UMV). This would be higher if there were more photos within the post (approximately $20-50 per extra photo).
My experience:
A few people asked me after my last post about when I started getting sponsored stays and monetising my blog. I discussed in my previous post about my collaborations with hostels in Skopje and Gothenburg – these two hotels each gave me two free nights. During this period (January – March 2016) I had a total of 1,397 views and 929 unique visitors, or an average of 466 views and 310 unique visitors per month.
The Skopje article garnered 302 views (290 unique) and the Gothenburg post reached 1,882 views (1,774 unique) over the entirety of 2016. I shared both articles on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest and linked them on my Instagram. I still promote them on Pinterest and Twitter now!
I also get traffic to them via Stumbleupon and Flipboard, and the Gothenburg article was shared by Ölstugan on Facebook and their website, one of the pubs that I recommended within my article. This meant that for February and March, most of my traffic was from Sweden!
Here is a breakdown and calculation of potential fees based on my findings:
$15-40 per 1k monthly unique visitors / $0.20 – $0.40 per view of the article in the first 30 days after publishing / $0.60 – $0.80 per view of the article in the first 24 hours after publishing / $10 per 1k monthly page views
e.g. if you have 5k monthly unique visitors with 6k monthly page views and your articles get, on average, 300 views in the first 24h after posting and 800 views in the first 30 days you can charge around
$75 – 200 / $60 / $160 – 320 / $180 – $240 on each calculation
In the summary, I will clarify which calculation works best!
Summary:
Base price based on: $15-40 per 1k monthly unique visitors / $0.20 per view of the article in the first 30 days after publishing / $0.60 per view of the article in the first 24 hours after publishing
Factoring in cost per view to your fee can balance out prices if you post less per month. For example, a blogger who has 10k views but posts 10 times a month will have fewer views per article than a blogger with 10k views who only posts 3 times per month.
HIGHER if a large brand, requires more work or has high production costs
LOWER if a small startup or a charity or includes a product (particularly for high-value products)
Does this help you with deciding how much to charge for sponsored posts? If you have other ways of calculating what to charge a brand for sponsored posts then let me know in the comments!
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