Speaker 1: Closed mouths don't get fed. You are over 10,000 on TikTok. You should not be doing shit for free, period. If you are thinking about yourself when it comes to brand deals, you are not going to get anywhere because it is not about you. It's about the people that you serve as a content creator. ♪♪ Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my channel. My name's Alexis Barber. I'm 22. I live in Brooklyn. I work full-time in big tech, and I'm also a content creator focused on all things realistic fashion, finances, and career here in New York City. I am here to talk to you today about how much micro-influencers get paid, how to get started in the industry, and exactly how you can start to work with brands yourself. So I recently posted a TikTok exposing myself, telling you all what rates that I use to charge for my following of about 9,000 on Instagram and 40,000 on TikTok. A lot of questions came up, so I'm going to answer the most popular ones, tell you how to get started, and the averages of what you should be charging based on your size in the industry, as well as some tips for reaching out to brands. So let's get started with how to get started. I had a little bit of an unconventional path, but if you want to get started with creating content, there are a few main things you need to know. One, you need to choose a few platforms or just one platform that you're really going to focus on and build a content strategy around that algorithm as well as around that audience. So, for example, my Instagram audience and my TikTok audience are two different audiences. They overlap in some capacities, but they are not exactly the same. Therefore, I need to think about that when I'm creating TikTok content versus Instagram content. You need to figure out what you're going to give to your audience and why. If you are just getting started out, it's important to recognize that different niches get paid different amounts. So if you're in fashion, you will often be asked, like, just pay for clothes. If you're in health and wellness, you might make a little bit more because you're promoting big, like, snack brands. If you're in finance, you're definitely going to get paid a lot more, but you might have a little more exclusivity terms in your contracts because you only want to work with one bank. You can't work with 10. So there's a lot of things to consider in all those spaces. So I would say go to your favorite influencers in those spaces and see how their content strategy is performing across their different platforms and take that into consideration before you get started. So I personally am a lifestyle influencer. I don't limit myself to one niche, whether it's finances or fashion. I like to do both. So therefore, I'm going to continue to create that content on both platforms with the algorithms in mind. The second is consistency. You cannot be an influencer that gets paid 10,000 plus dollars a month if you are not consistently pumping out content. You have to come up with a way to integrate it into your life so that you can effectively show up for your audience. Otherwise, brands are not going to trust you. A few key things when you're getting started are one, you need to have an email that you check regularly, that's visible on your profile, that brands and anyone who's interested can reach out to you and actually show you those opportunities. Two, you need to check your DMs or you need to have a clear call to action, email me if you want to work with me, right? Closed mouths don't get fed, okay? So you need to have that on deck. So once you're getting started, you've developed a clear content strategy, you're consistently posting on platforms and you start to gain a following and you want to work with brands. Start out by making a list of all the brands in your niche that you're really interested in working with. For example, there's many brands that could reach out to you doing random things and you know nothing about offering you a check. You are nothing without the trust of your audience. So do not just say yes to something because it's going to get you a check. I've made that mistake before. Making that decision was not only like way below my rate, but it also didn't perform well with my audience. You don't want to do that, okay? So definitely take it from me, make a list of brands you actually enjoy and work with and then make a list of attributes for brands that you would be willing to work with. So one, does it fall into my niche? Does it fall into my mantra of what type of content that I like to put out? So if you want to reach out to a brand, here is what I suggest. Of that list of brands that you've created, of who you would like to work with at some point, you want to work with those brands. Chances are you already have those in your house lying around somewhere. So you should start authentically creating content with those products so that that brand or those people can notice that you actually use them and like them. So be sure to tag them in your videos or in your Instagram stories so it's very clear that you actually love these brands. Second of all, I would start making content in that niche. And once it performs well, you can use that data to reach out to brands. For example, in March or May or something, I did a video of Enamorada Swim. It's this very expensive swim brand. I did a size six try-on haul and it performed very well across TikTok. I took the data from that try-on haul, how many views I got, the likes, and I sent that to brands along with, this is a key point, recommendations. I asked my audience, what swim brands do you want me to try next? And of that list, you could tell, one, your audience is already interested in it, and two, that just gives you an idea of what they would be interested in consuming as well. It took that information and I went ahead and reached out to that list of brands. And I said, hi, my name's Alexis Barber. I'm a content creator. I recently had this video. I linked it in the email. That performed very well. My audience overwhelmingly asked me to review your products. So I wanted to reach out to see if you'd be interested in gifting me some pieces or if you have any upcoming campaigns and would like to work together. I think that our brands would be a very good fit. And that resulted in a paid collaboration with a brand that I absolutely love and was really interested in trying out. And my audience absolutely loves and is interested in trying out. So that's really important to do, to take that data to show them that you are going to convert, you are going to give them what they need because why would a brand pay you if your audience isn't genuinely interested in that? If you are thinking about yourself when it comes to brand deals, you are not going to get anywhere because it is not about you. It's about the people that you serve as a content creator. So once you've reached out to brands and you start getting those few brand deals, you're starting to get paid and type of things, how much do you actually charge? So in my video, I told you how much I charge with a following of 9,000 on Instagram and 40,000 on TikTok. Instagram, it's a minimum $500 for stories, $500 for an in-feed post, $500 for reels. And on TikTok, it ranges between 700 and $1,500. I've charged more for that, I've charged less. This is really just in the past like 30 to 60 days of that's what I've been doing. When I first started doing brand deals despite having 6,000 followers on Instagram, sometimes I was posting shit for free or for $100 or $200 here and there. That's not worth it. You really don't want to do that. If you're over a few thousand on Instagram, you should not be doing shit for free, period. You're over 10,000 on TikTok, you should not be doing shit for free, period. If it's a small business, a black-owned business, perhaps maybe you can do a discount, but the amount of work that it takes for you to consistently pump out content, to sacrifice your mental health to be creating this content and for you to actually create that content, send it to them, invoice them, all that stuff, that's a lot of work. And you can't sell yourself short just because society says influencers are stupid, okay? I've done it. It takes a lot of fucking time. The average rates that you should have on TikTok, I think these rates are the wild, wild west at the moment. But like I said, I charge between $700 and $1,500 for one video, and it can range to be more. If you have over 100,000 followers on TikTok, you should absolutely be charging like $2,000 to $3,000 minimum. If you have over 500,000 followers on TikTok, $10,000 minimum, okay? It is a very, very fickle market for sure, but those brands have their money. They are transitioning their paid media advertisement budgets to go towards influencer marketing. So these people like, for example, Crest or P&G, those big companies used to spend millions and millions of dollars on TV ads, and they still do. But a big portion of that budget is now being funneled into influencers for a reason. And that's because you trust someone who you follow on TikTok or Instagram. So if you trust them and they're promoting a product in a way that you can digest as an audience member, that's invaluable to that brand. So don't sell yourself short, okay? Like, it makes sense. Like, you have to believe in yourself when it comes to your rates too, because if you get this brand deal and they're not paying you what you deserve, and you're like, okay, like, I guess I'll do this, your heart's not gonna be in it. Therefore, you are not going to want to create the best possible content. The content's not gonna perform well, the brand's not gonna wanna work with you anymore, and that can continue to just funnel into the rest of your reputation as an influencer. So definitely don't do that, okay? Some other things to look out for in the contracts to be sure that you are not getting played are whitelisting, paid media, as well as exclusivity terms. If a brand wants to repost your content onto their social media, sometimes that can be included in your original fee. However, if they want to repost it and put paid ads behind it, so for example, you're scrolling on Instagram and you see on the stories that there's one of your favorite influencers, but it's like under a brand's name. If they wanna do that, you should immediately tack on 30% of the original rate for every piece of content that they want to use. That's the general rule, I think. I think it could go more, if you are a big influencer, please correct me in the comments, like this is gate-kept information and I want us all to do well. The second part is you should charge for exclusivity. If you work with a skincare brand, for example, and they say, hey, you can't post any other skincare brands for three months. What if another skincare brand reached out to you that you're obsessed with and they wanna do a deal with you that month? You can't do that anymore. So you actually have to say goodbye to whatever your rate would have been, whatever the extra whitelisting would have been. So you have to add on whatever that timeframe, how much you would probably make in that time onto your rate. A good rule of thumb is that you should be posting 80% regular content and 20% sponsored content. You never wanna overwhelm your audience with too much sponsored content because it can feel like you're selling out or it can feel problematic. So be sure to keep on track with that. Finally, I'll give you an overview of the general timeline of a brand deal. One, either a brand reaches out to me or I reach out to them and we negotiate a rate. They'll send over a contract. I'll read through it with a fine tooth comb to make sure that they're not throwing in exclusivity or weird terms in there. Once I sign the contract, we'll agree on a posting date. And usually they will send over some form of a brief or some posting guidelines for what they want in the content. Then I will create that content myself, send it over to them and make sure it's approved. Then I will post that content. And within 24 hours, I will collect the metrics about that content. So take screenshots of the story views or the likes or the comments. And with that, I will send it over to the brand along with my invoice. And with my invoice, I can expect that they will pay me in about 30 days net. Sometimes it's sooner, sometimes it's later, but that's really how it goes. So the timeline of it can range from being like a week to being multiple weeks, especially if something goes wrong. You always wanna make sure that you're paying very close attention to the contracts and what's happening in them, because otherwise you could really get lost in it. And I have. So that is my overall tips for how to get started with paying brand deals. If you are new here, please subscribe. I make content all about realistic fashion finances and career in New York City. Follow me on TikTok and Instagram as well for more content like this. Have a wonderful rest of your day and do not forget you are too smart to not love yourself.