SwipeTown Academy

The Influencer market has definitely exploded worldwide, where teenagers to adults have started using their “influence” to earn money.

Rightly so, marketing has become aggressive and brutal. In fact, it’s hard not to find influencers for any particular niche.

With the increase in the number of Influencers, brands have started to expect top-notch quality just by paying the bare minimum price to Influencers.

Moreover, Barter collaborations have become so popular that brands choose to collaborate on a barter basis only.

But what exactly is this Barter system and should you be saying “Yes” to Barter Collaborations? Let’s find out!

How does this work?

Brands contact Influencers or Influencers contact brands. The brand decides what they want the Influencer to talk about and how.

Instagram Influencers post videos or pictures on their accounts while YouTubers make videos about their products.

Usually, Influencers have a fixed price for every post and they charge a nominal amount.

Brands have started to come up with Barter collaborations where they send the Influencer products in return of an honest (or sometimes dishonest) review.

The influencer gets to keep the product for free and the brand gets exposure to the Influencer’s audience.

Why do brands go for collaborations, anyway?

Collaborations are a great way for brands to reach out to their audience through Influencers.

This means that people trust and value the opinions of Influencers and when they are asked to buy a product by their favorite personality, they do that.

This is the most common and effective method of marketing for brands. In fact, Brands can drive tons of sales through this one medium only.

Since there are so many amateur influencers who are eager to collaborate with brands for much lower fiscal impetus, it makes it difficult for Influencers to earn a decent living with this sort of competition.

Are Barter Collaborations Worth It?

If you’re a newbie, then Barter collaborations can be a huge stepping stone to success.

In fact, by doing barter collaborations, you’d be opening new ways for more collaborations.

After you’ve worked with a couple of brands, you’d become well-known in the industry and obviously, paid collaborations would start flowing in.

But if you’re a professional influencer with a massive following, you wouldn’t be getting a lot from this kind of collaboration apart from a few products.

This would give the brand you’re working with, exposure to your audience.

On the other hand, if it’s a popular brand, the opposite might happen.

Famous brands usually share your posts on their pages which would allow you to reach out to a wider audience.

Another handy factor to consider before saying Yes to a barter collaboration is the worth of the product and the popularity of the brand.

Either way, the arrangement should be reasonable for both ends and should benefit the brand as well as the Influencer in the end.

Make sure you consider everything before stepping in this bandwagon.

You definitely don’t want popular brands to perceive that you’re only interested in barter collaborations.