The Value of Sponsored Blog Posts: How Much to Pay Market Influencers
Rapid expansion in the field of social media influencers has resulted in lots of questions from seasoned online marketers. While influencers provide brands with a great way to reach untapped target audiences, knowing how much to pay such individuals for their market power can be tricky. Thankfully, findings from a recent survey on UK bloggers from the software experts Vuelio shines some much-needed light onto the expected market value of influencer sponsorship.
The Survey Headlines
The online survey from the software experts was sent to everyone in a database of around 7500 bloggers. Around 12% of bloggers took part, and there were 787 usable responses. Just over three-quarters of respondents – 78% – informed Vuelio that up to half their blog work is paid. Niches, where bloggers reported getting payments for 50%+ of their blog work, included gardening, fashion, nature, beauty, lifestyle, and parenting.
So, now you’re wondering how much do influencers earn? The survey findings showed that the figure trended towards <£250 for both paid-for collabs and blog posts. While 27% of UK bloggers who took part said they charged up to £100, 29% of the same group said they have and do charge over £100 but less than £251. 8% of respondents who reported charging nothing for blog posts.
When we turn to the big bucks, the survey findings showed that a blend of super-sector and specialist blogs were able to attract the highest payments. The percent of participants charging over £1000/blog post was 2%, while the percentage of participants charging over £1000 for collabs was 4%.
Bloggers who commanded the largest paychecks were most likely to be blogging in the wedding, business, politics, fashion, beauty, media, marketing manager jobs London, and combination (i.e., food & travel, health & beauty) sectors.
Finding Genuine Influencers
It all makes sense so far, but the tricky part is working out which market influencers will offer your brand the most value for your pounds and pennies. You have to consider the fact that influencer marketing is a saturated field, so getting your brand’s message in front of the right eyeballs amongst all the noise is not easy.
Don’t necessarily assume that a blogger with thousands of followers has great influential market power. And, note that followers are getting wise to shameless sponsorship selling tactics by their favourite online personalities. Any partnership your brand forms with an influencer needs to be believable for it to be worth the money.
Remember, it’s easy to buy ‘likes’, ‘comments’ and ‘followers’ on many social media platforms and call yourself a powerful market influencer even though your genuine market reach is obviously limited – many scam artists are deploying such a tactic to exploit brands.
Finding the Fakes
Research is your best defence against getting duped by fake market influencers. So, be sure to request detailed breakdown stats of any prospective influencer’s audience demographics. The demographics most important to your brand will, of course, depend on the nature of your business, and they could be age, location, gender, employment status, household income, etc. In addition, find out which metrics potential influencer partners use to monitor their success. If a prospect can’t provide those metrics, ensure you’re prepared to walk away from the partnership deal.
The Social Chain Group LikeWise tool is something you might want to check out. It claims to deploy the latest AI-technology to identity influencer fraud. The tool has already been used by one company to undercover a fake influencer who was charging brands almost £800 for sponsored posts of their blog, despite the blog’s genuine engagement rate being just 4%.
It’s important to understand that to profit from influencer marketing; you have to focus your attention on building long-term relationships with the right partners. Don’t fall into the trap of paying random influencers one-off fees for the occasional blog post.