15 Tips for Pricing and Negotiating as a Blogger

In my third year of blogging, I learned how to recognize, ask for my value, and win paid brand campaigns. So yesterday, I shared the lessons I learned asking for my value. Today I wanted to share tips for pricing and negotiating your value! In this blog post you’ll find:

Resources to figure out your price

Important factors that go into your price

Tips for Negotiating from my friend Tori from Victorimedia.com!

This blog post is dedicated to all the aspiring micro-macro influencers out there! If you’re asking yourself: how much to charge per blog post, how much to charge per Instagram post, or how to negotiate with brands, then this blog post is for you!

Pricing and Negotiating – Part One: Resources to figure out your price

First of all, I’ve heard the blogger/influencer industry being compared to the Wild West. The industry is relatively young compared to other industries out there and pricing is not standard or transparent. What I’ve realized over this past year especially is that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by not discussing ways to figure out pricing as an industry.

Here are my favorite resources to help you figure out where you should be charging as a blogger:

Fohr (formerly known as Fohrcard)

Even though I haven’t used Fohr for brand collaborations, I use Fohr’s because it provides you an estimate on price per post. For instance, my Instagram is linked to Fohr and it’s calculated that I can charge between $250-500 per Instagram post.

For my Google Analytics/blog traffic, Fohr suggests charging a price between $350-700 per blog post. Fohr takes into consideration the health of your following (real followers vs. fake followers) and your engagement on your platforms.

Tip #1 for Pricing and Negotiating:

If you haven’t created a Fohr account yet, I would create one. Fohr does a great job of breaking down your following on all of your digital channels! I also love how Fohr shows your total reach (combines blog and all social channels).

Influencer Marketing Hub

Influencer Marketing Hub has developed an Instagram Money Calculator. They created this to help people calculate their estimated earnings from their Instagram. This was the first tool I discovered that help influencers calculate how much to charge per post based on your engagement of your last 12 posts.

For example, when I enter my instagram handle into the calculator, my estimated earnings per post is between $90-$150.

Tip #2 Pricing and Negotiating:

If you’re curious what you’re engagement rate is on your last few posts, influencer marketing hub is a great tool!

The 1cent per follower Rule

This year I learned the one cent per follower. So if you have 18,000 followers, you would start your base price at $180. You can also view this rule as $100 per 10,000 followers. So if you have 5,000 followers, you can start with a $50 price.

If I applied this rule to me: I have 18,900 followers – which means I could start charging around $190 per Instagram post.

Tip #3 for Pricing and Negotiating:

You should use these available tools as guidelines on where you should start your price. Then I would add any fixed costs to you price – costs of photography or videography. And after, I would think about how much you value your time.

These resources are awesome but they aren’t the only thing that determines your price as a blogger or content creator. YOU determine your price BEYOND your number of followers and engagement rates. You should also take into consideration the scope and time of your project.

Even as a microinfluencer (an influencer between 1,000-100,000), you should definitely price your influence and services. My friend Alyssa also pulled together 5 Tips for Negotiating Brand Collaborations as a Microinfluencer. So if you need some confidence about pricing, check out her blog post!

Pricing and Negotiating – Part Two: Important Factors that go into your price

In my previous blog post “What to do when a brand reaches out to you”, I break down all of the steps to ask the brands. The reason why I go through all of these steps is because this my personal approach to pricing out the collaboration. When you understand the brand’s goals, content deliverables, and the work you have to do to support it, you’ll have a better understanding of how to charge.

Tip #4 for Pricing and Negotiating:

Here are the three questions you should be asking the brands every time:

1. What are the goals of the brand’s collaboration?
2. What specific tasks or deliverables are they asking for?
3. What is the brand’s timeline?

Tip #5 for Pricing and Negotiating:

After you learn this from the brand, here are the questions you should ask yourself:

What are your fixed costs? And variable costs?

• Fixed costs: may include the price of the photographer, videographer, makeup artist or editor if you hire one to help you complete the campaign.
• Variable costs: In my opinion, is the minutes and hours spend completing the campaign. You have to ask yourself:

Tip #6 for Pricing and Negotiating:

Do you have enough time to develop all the content the brand is requesting?

Sometimes brands ask for a super quick turnaround (a few days or a week to receive product, shoot the content, write the copy, and submit it). And on the flipside, there are times when the brand does give you enough time to complete the campaign.

Tip #7 for Pricing and Negotiating:

How much time will it take to develop the content?

You should take the 15-20 minutes to calculate how much time it will take you to complete the campaign.

For example, it may take you 2 hours to style and shoot the product, another hour to write all the social media posts copy, and another hour to accept all the edits from the brand and actually publish it on social media. To give you an idea of the time spent on producing content, I’ve outlined how long it actually takes me to shoot and publish a blog post and social media posts in: How long it actually takes to produce one blog post.

Tip #8 for Pricing and Negotiating: How much is your hourly rate?

This past year, I’ve learned that some bloggers use the hourly rate to help calculate their price. Kate from Secret Blogger Business recommends that everyone should charge $50 an hour for post creation. She specifically discusses how much to charge per blog post and breaks down taking your hourly rate and multiplying it by the amount of time it takes to create the content. She also factors in average number of contents and views per post! Her blog has been a great resource for me!

Now that we’ve discussed resources to figure out where you should start your price point and other factors to consider you’re figuring out how to price yourself as a blogger,

we have to talk about negotiation.

Like I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, my first paid collaboration was $200 for 4 Instagram post. At just over 10,000 followers last summer, I pretty much charged $50 per Instagram post. If I had known what I knew now, I would have negotiated at least $100 per Instagram post!

My friend Tori from VictoriMedia.com is a fellow boss babe with incredible tips for negotiations! Here are her tips:

Pricing and Negotiating – Part 3 Know Your Worth (Then Add Tax): Strategies for Good Negotiation

Negotiating Tip #1: Negotiations are not conflicts, they are collaborations.

Brands or employers EXPECT you to negotiate. You are negotiating to get paid your value, and to demonstrate that you really care about this partnership. Work with the employer or brand so you both feel successful at the end of the negotiation.

Negotiating Tip #2: Negotiate for yourself as if you were doing it on behalf of someone else.

Women especially are statistically more likely to be more success in negotiations if they pretend they are advocating for a friend, partner, or family member.

Negotiating Tip #3: NEVER apologize for your rate.

Never say, “My rate per post is X, I’m so sorry!” OWN IT. You are a position of power. Either the brand reached out to you (which means they want to work with you!) or you pitched them with your exact rates (so they knew exactly what you were worth from the get-go.)

Negotiating Tip #4: Always approach a negotiation with an excited, proactive tone.

After asking for your rate, sign off with “I can’t wait to work with you!” It makes it super easy for the brand to accept. Show you’re excited.

Negotiating Tip #5: You’re NOT going to lose the partnership by asking for more.

They’re never going to say to you, “How DARE you ask for what we know you’re worth!!!! This conversation is OVER.” Worst comes to worst, they’re simply going to tell you that’s out of their budget, and you can choose then whether to push back again (which I suggest), take it, or walk (which I also suggest if this isn’t a fantastic opportunity, because girl you need to get PAID!)

Negotiating Tip #6: STOP taking on projects for free.

Just STOP. Not only are you not getting compensated for your work (which is, you know, illegal) you are making it so much harder for every other blogger out there to charge. When brands have been conditioned to get valuable content for free, they’re of course not going to want to pay!!! It perpetuates this horrible cycle of brands not paying, and bloggers who are actually charging getting turned down because there’s someone else who will work for free.

There you have it friends! 15 tips total to help you price and negotiate your value and services as a blogger. I hope the resources and framework I use to help price out brand campaigns + tips for negotiations will help you for your future brand campaigns!

You can follow Tori on her website, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Thank you for reading!

Love,

Emma

Karya Schanilec Photography

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