How much should I pay an Influencer? The 1 % Rule

Hey everyone! If you're new to working with and hiring influencers, then this might be a good article to read through so you can make sure you're paying them appropriately!

We here at Calli encourage authors to go by the 1% rule, then adjust up or down based on the influencer's engagement.

What is the 1% rule?

This is a way for you to determine how much to pay an influencer. Just calculate 1% of their follower count and that result will be their base fee! You can then adjust based on their engagement rate. Take a look at this graphic for more information!

Let's look at an example:

You've come across an influencer with 20,000 followers. You think they'd be perfect to hire for your campaign. You go through their latest posts.

On average, their latest posts get about 3,000 views.

3,000/20,000 =0.15, so their view-to-follower ratio is about 15%.

This puts them within 'Typical' category of engagement and you can likely stay at the baseline fee.

Because they have 20,000 followers, their baseline would be:

20,000 * .01 = $200

Views aren't everything

When you are determining if an influencer is a good fit for a campaign, don't just check for views! Open up their posts and check if people are also commenting, liking, and/or saving their posts. Influencers with less than 5,000 followers but a strong, interactive following may very likely generate more impact than an influencer that has well over ten thousand followers but gets very little interaction with their posts aside from views.

What about gifted campaigns – how much content could I expect from an influencer who is being compensated with a copy of my book?

If you plan to compensate influencers with a copy of your book, a single post/reel and maybe a story would be a fair and appropriate exchange.

That's all we have for this post – of course, if you have any questions at all, don't ever hesitate to reach out via the Contact Us page on the Calli website!

Thanks all!

-Christina