What should be influencers’ commission for a single piece of content or social media exposure?

Many bloggers don’t actually have a strong case for a particular figure and they are often expected to provide PRs with a rate card. If the fee is disproportionate to their reach, brands will turn to someone else.

So how can influencers correctly estimate their content’s worth?

Key numbers

To start with, bloggers can determine their rates using Moz Open Site Explorer, which finds out the domain authority. This is a guide helping to rank influencers’ site and evaluate how well it may perform in Google’s search results.     

The second step is to check the website’s monthly unique visitors via Google Analytics. This shows the number of users a website attracts every month, which can be helpful in estimating bloggers’ commission.

Looking at Awin’s past campaigns, this has proved to be the most appropriate tool when pricing content, although some influencers add in their time and photographer expenses to ensure the rate covers their creative time.

However, not every blogger is an influencer. Typically, influencers have built a significant audience and reach. The below table should be taken as guidance rather than rules when it comes to pricing based on a website’s reach:

One other metric that can be helpful in estimating influencer rates is cost per mille (CPM). This is a traditional payment method in the space of advertising which measures the reach of an ad by showing the cost of it as seen by 1000 people, otherwise understood as 1000 impressions. This can be accessed through Google Analytics, which shows impressions for a specific amount of time.  

Typically, CPM would stand at £5, £10 or £15, and to calculate a rate, a total number of impressions needs to be divided by 1000. For instance, if a page generates 50,000 impressions, it should be divided by 1000 which equals 50. To calculate the final cost, it can be then multiplied by the CPM cost, for instance, 50x10CPM would be £500.

Level of work

What does a charge for a sponsored blog post depend on?

There are a few elements to factor in:

Creative work

It’s important to take into account the amount of creative work involved in the process. Is there authentic imagery and text rather than stock images? Influencers tend to add up the hours it takes to complete the post, so if it takes less time to carry out, this should be reflected in the final fee.

Social media

Social media acceleration is another thing to consider. Rates will depend on the social media exposure the brand needs when building the promo package.

Audience

A big part of setting up the price is the audience. The quality of traffic is crucial for most brands and if brand’s target demographic matches the audiences following the influencer, it should be reflected and rewarded in the price.

Images

Full imagery rights and exclusivity is also something to bear in mind. In the case of brands using influencers’ images without crediting their website or if the contract requires exclusivity within a certain period, this should be reflected in the fee.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all rule to go by when it comes to deciding on influencer campaign commission. When negotiating, it’s key to take into account the above points but also what the campaign and brand  require , and create a bespoke package.