You are welcome to set your rates at whatever you choose, but you give the platform a percentage of whatever you earn and, in return, you enjoy the support of a dedicated Webfluential staff member during any campaign. This person acts as the go-between for the brand’s marketers and you the influencer. Essentially, they do what YouTube’s monetisation function does for YouTube content creators, only now you can agree to what you charge before the advert features on your account. The downside is that you do not build a direct relationship with the brand, but the upside is that you get indirectly introduced to new clients outside your existing network.
They check that you received the information you need to incorporate and communicate in your sponsored post, that you load your post(s) in the agreed time frame, and that you provide the links to these posts as a report-back function for the client’s benefit. Often, they will also give you instructions on how to change a few settings on your platforms, so that brands can promote or sponsor your content to pop up in more people’s feeds as a paid-for advert. They also often help you to activate software that ensures that both you and the client get useful and important analytical data on how your followers engage with the sponsored content you created.
I have worked directly with marketers, brands and agencies as well, and these business relationships have their own pros and cons. They usually contact influencers via DMs or your e-mail address (if you have a public one), or you can seize the chance to set up personal relationships (these are probably the ones that yield the greatest return) by attending launches and events and networking with clients who are in attendance. Or you can just pitch yourself to them directly. I have googled the names and e-mail addresses of marketing managers at brands and e-mailed them pitches on how I wanted to add value for their brand.
An important aside, though: the guide price advice you can gather on websites like Webfluential does not consider supply and demand. At different stages you might have multiple offers coming your way and you will be able to push for higher rates, while at other times you might need to drop your expectations to stay busy. This is the nature of being a freelance content creator or, essentially, an entrepreneur.
Knowing when to push for more and when to take what you are offered is the stressful aspect inherent in any job that doesn’t earn a straightforward salary. Sometimes you win, while other times you lose out.
When considering an offer and drawing up a quote, I always ask myself:
• What is the best that can happen?
• What is the worst that can happen?
• What is the most likely outcome?
If I am comfortable that I can face any of the answers, I proceed.
Let’s talk formulas
There are two ways to approach rates. The one is to ask what the market is willing to pay and to adapt. Joe Scott also outlined the alternative, which is to figure out what you need to be able to make to do this work full-time.
Value your time per hour accordingly [which can only be decided by you and your lifestyle needs based on the aforementioned question], and think about how long it typically takes you to film/edit/publish a typical video on YouTube, an image on Instagram, or whatever platforms make the most sense. For example, if I’m pursuing it full-time, and my goal is to make a working salary of around $20 [let’s say R400] per hour and it usually takes me 20 hours to produce and publish a video, there’s $400 [R8 000] right there. But then you have to account for your follower size [or average impressions] and its value, along with the cost of operation for your equipment, and the like.
Maps Maponyane says he initially worked on 50 cents per follower, which basically boils down to R5 000 per paid post if you have 10 000 followers.
But then as your following increases, you need to drive that cent-value down. You have to be reasonable. It’s not the US, where you’re going to earn R500 000 for something. Even if you charge 10 cents per follower, I think you need to just be able to give a brand that breakdown, if they ask for it.
In the branding industry they often talk about a forever mark, a brand that is beyond their current engagement rates; it is a brand with a story, that is established and has a track record. That’s what I strive for. If every time you work with a brand, their sales shoot up, that’s far more valuable to them than mere likes. You want to work to a point where your involvement drives their business.
There are plenty of very complex formulas out there. The South African digital marketing agency Nichemarket suggests working on an average of R70 CPM (cost per 1 000 impressions/followers) on its blog, but it also factors in a few other things: your engagement rate, a so-called brand-fit rating”, a target group accuracy rating (what percentage of your followers actually form part of the target market), as well as “content value” (what it should roughly cost the influencer to produce the required content).
A lot of these are subjective or hard to quantify universally, but it does give you some insight into how agencies and marketers might get to the valuations they present to clients on what your voice is worth. On one of my own sponsored posts, I actually ran this sum:
R70 × 100 (roughly 100 000 followers) = R7 000 CPM
3 140 engagements: (3 140 ÷ 100 000) × 100 = 3.14% engagement rate (based on the actual post insights)
Target group accuracy = 50% (I’m guessing)
Brand-fit rating between 0.5 and
