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I know it’s not a secret that “influencers” make extra money with their publications. For this reason, let’s take a look at this particular topic.

In today’s digital landscape, influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience—particularly if they’re of a certain age and demo.

But though influencers have certainly taken hold in the last few years, bringing attention to everything from lifestyle brands to food, drink and new media, they’re still a relatively new commodity – and that makes it hard for marketers to gauge the basic details of their arrangements.

Things like logistics (when and where they’ll post), scale (how often to have them post) and, most importantly, payment (how to pay them and how much) pose a constant challenge to traditional marketers who just don’t know how to fit this new model into their old ways of working.

Ever since the emergence of social media, a new trend has come along with it: influencers. In an online world, that hasn’t entirely taken shape yet, these internet celebrities have become full-time social media moguls. Which raises some questions like how much do they make and how stable of a job is it?

To answer the first part of that question, we have to take a closer look at each of the platforms the influencers are using. Influencers on different sites receive payments in different ways. For example, a YouTuber will receive money from ad revenue off of their videos. This is why YouTube celebrities like PewDiePie or Jake Paul have quickly gained a lot of wealth off of their large followings. PewDiePie’s net worth is estimated to be around $20 million. In contrast, Instagram’s top users are paid per post, sometimes through ads or sometimes by the app itself. Through sponsored events or affiliate posts, some accounts are able to make thousands of dollars for each picture they put out. Kim Kardashian, for instance, makes around $500,000 each time she posts.

The Price of Not Paying For Social Media Influencer Marketing

There are some instances where your influencer doesn’t cost anything at all.

At least monetarily.

Sometimes, an influencer will be happy to push your product or let you use some of their user-generated content.

But remember, few things in life come free. And in terms of social media influencers, the price of a “free” agreement is usually a product trade.

This is much more common in the B2C space, particularly among lifestyle and fashion brands. Provide an influencer free samples of your product – often before their release date – and ask them to review the product.

You’re almost guaranteed to see a spike in traffic if you take this route.

The caveat here is that you don’t always have control over what they influencer might say or the option to review the post/video/story before it goes live.

And if you run a B2B, it’s much harder to come to this sort of agreement, as most industry experts don’t provide their insights for free.

Wondering how much social media influencer marketing costs? You Don’t Need A Huge Following To Start Earning Money

Instagram influencers continue to be a hot topic in social media, and by the looks of it, you can expect to keep seeing more of these social stars flooding your feeds.

These collaborations and sponsorships have nearly replaced traditional ads and are a huge part of a social media strategies today.

So how much do Instagram influencers cost?

Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. There’s a variety of factors involved that go well beyond an Instagram influencer’s number of followers.

While there isn’t a well-developed formula to calculate how much you should be paying, we’ve rounded up and few statistics and asked some industry experts how much Instagram influencers really cost:

Let’s Talk Money: Calculating the Cost of Instagram Influencers

In the earliest days of influencer marketing, rising social stars would take on brand partnerships in exchange for free product.

Those days are long gone — while there are many micro-influencers still willing to exchange free product for promotion, today’s biggest Instagram influencers are charging major bucks to create posts for brands as their accounts have become their main source of income.

There’s no questions social media influencers have become indispensable for brand campaigns, especially on Instagram.

Getting Down to the Numbers

It’s time for the specifics. On average, when asked how much businesses pay for sponsored Instagram posts:

• 66% report that they pay under $250 per post,
• while 27% pay between $250 and $1000.

Although some marketers have questioned the value of influencer marketing, it has become one of the most effective marketing tactics for many successful brands. Research from Sway Group reported marketers who implemented an influencer marketing campaign earned an average of $6.85 in media value for every $1 they spent on paid media.

That’s not surprising when you consider consumers’ trust in brands has continued to decrease year-over-year, while their reliance upon and trust of word-of-mouth has increased.

Recent Nielsen research found that word-of-mouth recommendations continue to outperform all other advertising types. Nielsen found 83% of Americans somewhat or completely trust endorsements and recommendations from people they know. This is followed by customer opinions posted online at 66%.

Celebrity influencers get lots of press around their multi-million dollar earnings and the brands that are writing those checks. But are they worth it? The answer, which will vary from brand-to-brand, is “it depends”.

I really hope that this information will be quite helpful, I always try to write with the best of my intentions.