My Blogging Rate Card and How I Value Myself
When I first started blogging I didn’t even know about working with brands, so being asked what I charge for working with brands was an absolute mind field. ‘Do you have a blogging rate card?’ is a question that I have feared for the best part of 5 years. It wasn’t until the middle of last year that I finally gave in and actually made one. For the first year or two of blogging, I would quite honestly just guess what to charge people and looking back, sometimes I would be wildly wrong. Over time you start seeing patterns in what budgets companies have set out for your stats and you can work from there. It also helps when others share their stats and what they charge, over the years there’s been a couple of anonymous surveys happen, and they did help a little but some results were still very different. With blogging being such a new industry still, it’s really hard for a lot of us to know what to charge, and a lot of people don’t want to share. Which is their right, but a blogging salary isn’t exactly one that you can Google like a teacher. Therefore I’m a firm believer in being open and transparent with others as I feel it might help regulate payments from brands and ensure bloggers get paid respectably for their work. Since creating my rate sheet I’ve been paid a lot higher than usual, offered huge campaigns, and generally been respected a lot more. I’d say that a rate card is just as important as a media kit (you can see mine by clicking here!) and you should always have them on hand when talking to brands.
Thanks to Freelancing and working with bloggers via my clients, I’ve come across several blogging rate cards over the years which has definitely helped me work out around where I should be charging based on their average. I’m also in a lot of blogging groups on Facebook and in one I suggested that we share rates and as a result, a lot of people are being paid more than they would have originally asked and pitched for. There’s a lot of things to consider when charging a brand. Bloggers do a LOT of work, one post can take hours, even days if it requires research. We have to trial products, photograph products, head out to pretty locations to photograph clothes. It all takes time, it all takes money. Equipment like computers, cameras, phones, don’t come free. It costs a lot to build and run a website too, so it’s only right that bloggers do charge for their time.
So how did I work out my rates? There isn’t an exact formula, but there’s a lot I take into consideration.
Domain Authority
If you’re unsure what DA is, then check out my Blog Help section where I explain it in a lot more detail. You can find your DA on MOZ and you need your own domain for this to be accurate. A DA of 0-10 is considered a newer blog, or one that doesn’t post new content much. The higher your number, the more popular and frequently updated your site is. I’ve been in the 30s for as long as I can remember now, which is considered really good. DA40+ are the really high ranking blogs, and they can charge hundreds for blog posts, even thousands depending on their social reach.
Based on having a DA35+ I worked out that I should be charging around £300 for a blog post with full social media promotion. Sometimes I accept lower than this if it is something that fits in really well with my blog, if I’m already planning similar content, if it’s easy work, or if I simply like the brand. For example, if a brand just wants a small mention on my blog, I can offer this at a much lower rate as it requires less work of me. Sometimes I’m offered a lot higher than this based on the brand’s budget and if they require extra work into the collaboration. For example, if I need to go out and shoot special content, run a giveaway, or promote it a lot more than I usually would.
I charge slightly more for giveaways as these tend to be more popular, and encourages people to follow the brand to enter the competition.
Google Analytics
It’s really important to know your Google Analytics statistics and be able to gather all the information that brands may require. Mostly brands want to know your monthly unique users and monthly views. A lot of the time your actual audience is really important too. If you’re doing a post about a specific venue in the UK, they’ll want to know if anyone from that area will actually be reading. Knowing as much information about your audience can also be really beneficial to you, as you can tailor your content more. I know that that mostly women aged 25-34 read my blog, and they’re mostly based in the UK. I have this information on hand on my blogging rate card, but I go into more details on my media kit.
Social Media Following
In nearly 5 years of blogging, I’ve managed to rack up a following of over 83,000 people across my platforms. This means that my social channels are great for brands to be promoted on as a lot of people will see the posts. My Instagram is my biggest platform and I charge £200 for a dedicated post on there. According to Tribe and other Blogging Platforms this seems accurate for my following. For an Instagram Story, I decided to charge £150, this could be an unboxing, or simply talking about a campaign. This isn’t just the one post, this could be as many as I feel necessary to promote the collaboration to the best of my abilities. It could even be for how many a brand specifically wants.
Working out my biggest platform first allowed me to work out what I should charge for my other platforms. On Twitter I have 22.5k and I can add direct links and photos, plus other people can retweet this and share the tweet more. I thought that £150 was worth my reach and audience. On Facebook, I have a smaller audience so I lowered the price. The same for Youtube, I really don’t upload regularly or promote my channel so I’ve valued that as the lowest despite it being video content.
Time
Of course, all of the above can change depending on how much time a campaign will take. Sometimes a brand will want more than one blog post, or so many photos. A lot of people work out an hourly rate for their time, and then use that to work out how much to charge depending on how many hours it will take. A good hourly rate for a blogger would definitely be over £30-£50+.
What do you think about being open about rates? Do you have a rate card?
