Getting Paid: Negotiating Brand Collaborations for Instagram Influencers
As an Instagram influencer, the ability to obtain regular paid collaborations is a sign that you have become confident in your branding and skills as a content creator. While reaching this stage is crucial if you wish to become a full-time content creator, there are no formal rules or resources that help fledgling influencers find their way. Therefore, it took a lot of experimentation, trials, and errors in order for me to obtain fairly-paid sponsorships on a consistent basis.
In 2020, being stuck at home full-time gave me the time to work on my Instagram engagement and learn how to properly negotiate with brands for paid campaigns. Over that year, I was able to receive numerous well-paid collaborations (and 2021 isn’t going too badly either)— I went from making a few hundred dollars in 2019 to over $12,000 in 2020. Over that year, I learned how to properly negotiate paid campaigns and nurture ongoing partnerships with quality brands. While I don’t profess to be an expert in this field, today’s post will cover the main ways in which I have found success in this area.
In this post, I’ll be covering the following subtopics:
Have Confidence in Your Work and Know Your Self Worth
While I have seen influencers with less than 5,000 followers negotiate paid collaborations, I admit that I didn’t have the confidence to negotiate more paid campaigns until I had reached a following of well over 10,000 followers. After fully evaluating the amount of work, time, and effort I put into my content, I realized that I really shouldn’t be doing everything for free when it comes to brand partnerships. As well, if you’ve built a following of people who genuinely love your content and listen to your advice, brands should be paying for that valuable exposure!
Honestly, if I look back even to 2019 and early 2020, I cringe to think at how many unpaid collaborations I took on and how terribly low my rates were. Shortly after the pandemic hit, I was able to focus more on increasing my engagement since I was at home so much of the time. After seeing steady progress in that area, I slowly began to attract bigger brand sponsorships (the first being an ongoing partnership with a popular luxury jewelry brand) and feel more assured about charging higher rates.
What Do Brands Look For?
Recently, I was able to ask a contact from a PR agency about how brands find the right influencers for their paid campaigns (I worked with this PR contact on a previous campaign and felt comfortable enough to ask her why she had chosen my social media platforms for a particular collaboration). In response, she mentioned that agencies are provided with a brief from the brand outlining the type of influencers that are required for the campaign. In this brief, the following factors are considered:
Niche (ex. beauty, lifestyle, travel, etc.)
Engagement Rates (comments, likes, saves, shares, reach, etc.)
Follower Demographics (country, gender, age group, etc.)
She also stressed that maintaining good relationships with PR contacts is very important as they will be more likely to recommend you for future campaigns (this will be covered in more depth within a later section). Lastly, for larger campaigns, brands usually prefer content creators who have a long form social media platform (blog or YouTube channel) so that there will be more options for content.
How Much Should You Charge?
While this may be a subjective area, there are some general guidelines you can follow when figuring out what to charge for content on Instagram. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub 2020 Report on influencer rates, the average earnings for influencers are as follows:
Nano-influencers
(1,000 —10,000 followers)
$10 – $100 per post
Micro-influencers
(10,000 — 50,000 followers)
$100 – $500 per post
Mid-tier influencers
(50,000 — 500,000 followers)
$500 – $5,000 per post
Macro-influencers
(500,000 — 1 million followers)
$5,000 – $10,000 per post
Mega-influencers
(1 million+ followers)
$10,000+ per post
Celebrities:
Varies, but $1+ million isn’t unheard of
While I find these details to be useful as a general guide, the actual rates you charge will depend greatly upon your own account and the brand you are working with. When brands request my rates, I have my current prices for Instagram posts, stories, reels, or blog posts contained in my media kit.
However, my charges usually depend on several factors:
The Brand
If the brand is a large corporation with a worldwide presence, you can expect that they will be more generous with their budget. On the other hand, when you are working with smaller businesses, you cannot expect them to always match your rates (unless they are a well established brand).
When negotiating with a bigger brand (especially one that has approached you), I feel more confident about asking for numbers higher than my usual rates— you will never know if it is possible unless you ask. However, when dealing with small businesses (especially ones that just launched), I provide my usual rates and generally am willing to lower them if I really like the brand. Another factor is the chance of ongoing partnerships— if this is a real possibility, I would be more willing to lower my rate to a certain degree.
The Ask
My rates usually greatly depend upon the deliverables and deadline. For instance, if the deliverables are simple (ex. one post and one set of stories), I will be more willing to accept a slightly lower rate. On the contrary, if they are asking for multiple posts and sets of stories, I will either stick to my usual rates or ask for even higher rates (as this content will take a considerable amount of time and effort to create and take up a lot of real estate on your feed).
Also, if the deadline is very tight, I will demand compensation for the additional effort that will be necessary in order to finish the deliverables on time. Generally, I will ask for a period of least 1-2 weeks in order to finish the deliverables. If the completion period is shorter than one week, I try to be more assertive about asking for some form of compensation (either in the form of product or payment). Conversely, if there is no set deadline, I will provide my usual rates as I know there will be much less stress involved in completing the campaign deliverables.
Exclusivity
I learned about this one the hard way in 2020. As someone still relatively new to being paid regularly for Instagram Influencer campaigns, I didn’t realize that I should be asking for increased rates if the brand demands exclusivity for a certain period. For instance, you decide to accept a campaign for a large beauty company and they ask that, while posting for them, you do not work with any other beauty companies for a period of month. Now, if you are popular enough, you might be expecting other beauty brands to be contacting you for paid collaborations. Therefore, you should ensure that you are properly compensated for this potential loss of revenue.
When signing contracts with a brand, be sure to always review the document for exclusivity clauses and make sure that you properly understand the fine print. Last year, I didn’t realize I had signed an exclusivity contract that did not allow me to post a certain product type for two weeks before AND after posting for that brand. As a result, I nearly lost another paid campaign with a well-known competitor (luckily, it worked out as the second campaign was set for two weeks after I had posted for the previous brand). Even worse, I realized too late that I was not even being properly paid for that exclusivity.
Happily, another big brand did pay me for exclusivity rights and I ended up making quite a bit more on that campaign as a result. Consequently, the bottom line is that you should always be careful when signing exclusivity rights with a brand.
Content Usage
Similarly, you should always ensure that you are being properly paid for your content if it is going to be reused for other forms of promotion. For instance, the same big brand that paid me for exclusivity rights also paid me upfront for the right to potentially amplify my content on their own platform. Unfortunately, I also allowed another brand use my images for free (from an unpaid campaign) and they ended up using those images for months on their Instagram and FB ads… I know now that I should not let brands use my content for ads or their website unless they are properly paying me for it! (They also did not credit me in the ads so I didn’t receive any added exposure or benefit from them using my images.)
Seasonal Demand
If it is a particularly busy season and you are already struggling to get your current campaigns done, you should feel confident in asking for higher payment from brands (especially if they have higher asks). Specifically, November and December are usually the busiest months of the year when it comes to paid campaigns (for Black Friday, Christmas, and Boxing Week). Content creators often make the bulk of their income from those two months alone!
Note: There are many other factors that might play into this decision-making process (i.e. engagement, product type, content approval process, etc.). In particular, my relatively high rates of engagement (9.51% - 11+%) give me the confidence to ask for higher rates.
Selecting The Right Campaigns For You
In my experience, choosing suitable brand sponsorships is an important process as the campaigns you take on now will greatly impact your future collaborations. From what I’ve seen, there is a certain “snowball effect” where the campaigns I have taken on will lead to other similar partnerships. For instance, if I have just completed a jewelry collaboration, I often will receive a boatload of offers from other jewelry brands.
Conversely, if you choose questionable brand sponsorships merely because they are paying you well, you might be deterring more prestigious brands from contacting you. Think of your Instagram page as a resume— any worthwhile PR agencies will be scouring your page in order to determine if your content is worthy of representing a certain brand.
So, how do you ensure that your campaigns will reflect well upon your page? I ask myself the following questions:
Does the campaign fit your niche?
For @TheStylishWordsmith, my niche is lifestyle, conscious fashion, beauty (preferably clean beauty), and travel content. Therefore, I obviously try to take on brand partnerships that fall within those categories. As well, I like to create and post aesthetically pleasing content. Consequently, I would not take on, for example, a partnership with a major fast food chain or a toilet paper company— even if they paid very well.
Even if the brand does fall within my niche, however, I still must narrow things down by asking more questions.
Does the brand align with your branding and values?
If possible, I try to partner with brands who share similar branding and values with my account. For instance, I would rather choose a female-owned small business offering Canadian-made clean beauty products over a major beauty brand with a reputation for mistreating BIPOC employees and models.
Since transitioning to conscious fashion, I have stopped taking on fast fashion sponsorships. Instead, I’ve been blessed with a few fairly-paid campaigns with some great ethical and sustainable clothing brands (I also find that they tend to value paying their content creators for quality content; on the other hand, many fast fashion brands try to avoid paying you).
If you have trouble deciding on this matter, think of it this way— would you feel comfortable promoting this brand and their products to your closest friends and family members? Would you feel embarrassed or proud?
How easily can you produce quality content for this campaign?
Lastly, ensure that the required content will be worth the time and effort that it will take to create. Unfortunately, you will only be able to decide upon this matter once you have gained enough experience with creating sponsored content. After over three years of being an Instagram influencer, I can tell almost immediately if campaign deliverables will be easy or difficult to complete. A myriad of factors apply— the season, the weather, shooting partners, shooting locations, campaign requirements, etc.
In general, I am more likely to accept campaigns requiring Instagram feed posts and Instagram stories (as I am most familiar with creating that content). On the other hand, I would only create Instagram Reels, IGTVs, or blog posts for quality brands paying very generous rates (since planning, filming, and editing a IGTV or writing a blog post will take much more effort than a feed post and stories).
How to Negotiate Prices
In 2020, I worked with several large corporations that provided me with either ongoing partnerships or the highest payment per post I have ever received. While I do not claim to be an expert on this matter either, I did pick up some best practices on negotiating prices.
Ask For Their Budget First
If possible, I ask brands (or the PR agency they are working with) for their budget for a particular campaign. Rather than sharing my rates, I will see if their budget is higher or lower than my usual prices. Since some bigger brands will have large budgets, sometimes you will luck out and be more highly paid than expected!
Give The Rates You Feel You Deserve
In 2020, I saw my engagement rates grow at a satisfying pace in conjunction with the growth of my following. Also, since I’m blessed to have wonderful followers who actually seem to value my content, I began to feel increasingly confident in asking for higher rates. Additionally, if you set your rates lower, the brands will gladly accept that lower rate even if they could afford to pay you more. Don’t lowball yourself!
Have A Minimum Rate In Mind
Sometimes, smaller brands will not be able to accommodate your usual rates as they understandably have smaller budgets than large corporations. As a result, I have a minimum rate in mind if I choose to accept these lower-paying offers— this rate must be high enough to be worth the effort of creating content on a deadline for that brand. However, if they cannot meet that rate, I will have to pass on their offer.
As well, I consider if the company’s branding and values are worth the lower rate, or if they are offering an ongoing partnership in the future. For instance, if I adore the brand’s products and have fallen in love with their values (i.e. environmentally-conscious, ethical manufacturing, etc.), I will be more likely to accept the campaign even if they are paying lower rates. If they express that they would like to continue working with me in the future, initially working for a lower rate might lead to higher pay in the future (if the brand finds your content to be valuable).
Package Rates
I also consider bargaining with brands if they offer to pay for me a set of deliverables, as opposed to just one piece of content. For example, if they are asking for one post and set of stories (rather than one post or one story), I would be willing to negotiate a slightly lower rate for the two deliverables.
When to Say No and Walk Away
There will be times when a paid campaign will simply not be worth the trouble. This decision might result from a number of factors, such as:
The Pay Is Too Low:
If they are unable to commit to even your minimum rates, then it’s best that you turn down the collaboration as you will be committing to making quality content for not enough pay. Your time is valuable— don’t undersell yourself!
The Ask is Too High:
Sometimes, the price may be right but the requirements are too much. For instance, they are asking for you to create a well-made IGTV video within a week and you will be busy with other collaborations— making it very stressful for you to finish the content on time. Another example would be the brand asking you to make multiple posts over several months when you know that you will be busy in those months with other partnerships.
The Brand Is Too Demanding:
Unfortunately, many larger brands can be extremely picky with their content approval process. You will have to grow a thick skin when you are asked to reshoot for campaign just because one small detail doesn’t sit right with the brand. Usually, if the payment is adequate, I will take a deep breath and reshoot the content as asked. However, if you felt lots of stress and anxiety while working with a particular brand, you might want to reconsider working with them in the future.
The Product Is Not Worth Promoting
Over the years, this has become a factor to which I must increasingly pay attention. As my brand and following have grown, I don’t want to risk losing the trust of my followers by promoting shady products. As well, nowadays, I have to closely vet the brand for its ethical and sustainability practices as those principles have become more important to me.
Unfortunately, you might not know in advance whether these factors will apply until you have gained enough experience. Sadly, if you have signed a contract and you’re unhappy with how the collaboration is going, you are obliged to try your best to make it work (unless they don’t fulfill something on their end and you have the right to terminate the partnership). Just make a mental note to avoid similar situations in the future and move on!
The Ultimate Goal: Ongoing Partnerships
If your aim is to become a full-time content creator, forging ongoing partnerships will be your main goal when working with established brands. Since influencers are freelancers with no guaranteed income, it is important to create good relationship with larger brands who might select you for multiple campaigns throughout the year. In 2020, I obtained my first ongoing partnership with a global brand for seven paid campaigns (and two unpaid charity campaigns). At the end of the year, the brand expressed that they loved working with me and wanted to continue working with me in 2021.
As with any form of employment, you should keep these best practices in mind (also, come to think of it, I’ve had nothing but praises from every single manager I’ve ever had— so I must be doing something right):
Professionalism is Key
In every single communication with a brand representative, you should practice the highest level of professional etiquette whenever possible. This level of courtesy extends to emails, phone calls, and even DMs. For example, in every email with a rep, I always address them formally, thank them for their email, and sign off with a “Best regards, Debbie” (unless it’s ten emails into an email thread and you have bypassed all formalities).
Also, even when I am feeling frustrated over feedback on my content during the approval process, I take a deep breath and write a super polite email back expressing my willingness to get the required work done (even if it’s the complete opposite of how I’m feeling at the time). Take it from someone who has worked customer service for many years— you never should let your negative emotions overpower good manners when working in a professional capacity.
When working as a content creator, it is important that you do your very best to follow instructions given to you by the brand— whether they be from creator briefs or from emails. This form of professionalism demonstrates that you are a mature individual who does not need your hand held by the brand representative (which, in turn, will make them want to work with you more). If you have questions, be sure to ask the representative in a timely manner so that you don’t run into problems close to the deadline.
Be Timely
Unless there are extenuating circumstances (i.e. the product has not arrived on time), always try to submit your content by the required deadline or before. If you know that you running into difficulties, be sure to keep the brand or PR representative well informed with regular updates.
I have often been complimented on how quickly I submit my content— if you struggle in this area, you most likely should work on your time management skills. Logically, it makes sense that PR representatives would want to keep working with influencers can be trusted to turn in quality content within the set timeline.
Be a Good Brand Representative
If you wish to continue working with a brand, you should act in manner that will positively represent that brand even after you have concluded working with them. For instance, if you have marketed yourself as a vegan and work with a vegan brand, don’t start eating meat and dairy after working with them and expect that brand to continue working with you (that’s obviously a very silly example, but I think you get what I mean).
Also, if you really liked working with that brand and value their products, make more content with their products and continue to share why you like these items in future posts (I have done this with clean skincare or ethical clothing that I really loved).
Conclusion
Well, that was a long one! This post literally took me four days to finish (writing several hours each day), so I really hope that it helps you in any way. As mentioned previously, I would not consider myself to be an infallible expert in this arena. However, I do feel like the above practices have served me well over the past year or so. As an influencer, nothing is really is set in stone; consequently, I always have to be open to new ideas and constantly researching new ways of improving my work. Therefore, you can expect updated content from me in the future as I continue to upgrade my negotiation skills!
As always, if you liked the content or have any further questions, feel free to email, DM, or leave a comment. As mentioned before in my Instagram stories, I really, really appreciate when you all read my posts and leave me the sweetest feedback. It motivates me to try my best to write high-quality posts in a timely manner!
Cheers,
Debbie (a.k.a. The Stylish Wordsmith)