What to Charge for a Sponsored Post: A Practical Pricing Framework
Ask ten creators what to charge for a sponsored post and you'll get ten different answers — and most of them will be a gut feeling rather than a documented method. That's not a knock on creators; there simply isn't an official rate card for influencer marketing the way there is for, say, print advertising CPMs decades ago. But a gut feeling is a weak opening position in a negotiation. A transparent formula, even an imperfect one, gives both sides something to actually discuss.
Three inputs that matter most
Most pricing approaches, however dressed up, boil down to three factors:
- Audience size — the raw scale, usually priced per 1,000 followers rather than per follower, since the marginal value of the 10,001st follower isn't meaningfully different from the 10,000th.
- Content format — a 15-second story is cheap to make and disappears in a day; a dedicated long-form video is a production that holds attention for minutes. Format should move the price a lot.
- Engagement quality — two accounts of the same size can reach very different numbers of real, active people. An account whose audience visibly engages is worth more per follower than one with the same count but a quiet feed.
A simple formula
One workable structure: start with a base rate per 1,000 followers, scale it by a content-type multiplier, then adjust for how engaged the audience actually is relative to a typical account on that platform.
Base rate = (Followers ÷ 1,000) × platform rate × content multiplier
Suggested rate = Base rate × (your engagement rate ÷ typical platform engagement rate)
Illustrative platform base rates might run something like $10 per 1,000 followers for an Instagram feed post, $8 for TikTok, $20 for a dedicated YouTube video slot, and $5 for a post on X — these numbers vary constantly by market and niche and should be treated as a rough starting point, not a citation. Content multipliers might scale a story down to roughly 0.4x a feed post and a dedicated video up to roughly 2.5x, reflecting the production effort and attention span involved.
Worked example
Take a 50,000-follower Instagram account with a 2.5% engagement rate (right at a typical benchmark for the platform), posting a standard feed post:
- Base rate: (50,000 ÷ 1,000) × $10 × 1.0 (post multiplier) = $500.
- Engagement adjustment: 2.5% ÷ 2.5% (typical) = 1.0x — no adjustment, since this account is exactly average.
- Suggested rate: $500, with a reasonable range of roughly $400–$600.
Now compare a 200,000-follower TikTok account with a 10% engagement rate (double the typical 5% for the platform), posting a reel-style video:
- Base rate: (200,000 ÷ 1,000) × $8 × 1.3 (reel multiplier) = $2,080.
- Engagement adjustment: 10% ÷ 5% = 2.0x.
- Suggested rate: $2,080 × 2.0 = $4,160.
Notice the second account has 4x the followers of the first but suggests over 8x the rate — the format and the doubled engagement both compound the base scaling.
Where the formula stops and negotiation starts
A formula like this gives you a documented, defensible opening number — but real deals also hinge on things no calculator can see: exclusivity clauses, how long a brand wants usage rights for the content, whether they want to run it as a paid ad themselves (often priced separately, and usually worth more), how competitive the niche is, and plain old negotiating leverage. Use the estimate as an anchor on both sides of the table, then adjust for the terms that are actually on offer.
A few terms worth pricing separately
Two clauses show up in almost every brand-deal contract and both deserve their own line item rather than getting folded quietly into the base rate. Usage rights — a brand's permission to reuse your content in its own ads or website beyond the original post — extend the value of a single piece of content well past its organic life, and are commonly priced as a percentage uplift on top of the base rate, scaled to how long and how broadly the brand wants to use it. Exclusivity — agreeing not to work with competing brands for a period — closes off other income during that window, and is worth pricing as its own line rather than assuming it's included for free.
Try it yourself
The Influencer Rate Calculator runs this exact formula for four platforms and four content types. If you don't know your engagement rate yet, start with the Engagement Rate Calculator first.