How many followers do you need to become a paid influencer?
Influencer marketing is huge.
More and more companies are turning to this form of marketing each and every day, leading content creators to ask, how many followers do you need to become a paid influencer?
The answer is both simple and complicated, but if you’re looking for the short answer: there’s no specific amount.
That is, there’s no ‘paid influencer’ committee that decides whether or not you — a small or large influencer — gets paid for promoting products and services. At the end of the day, it’s up to a brand to decide whether they want to invest in you. But what are they looking for? What are the pros and cons of having 1,000 followers versus 1,000,000 followers?
Understanding influencer tiers
In the realm of influencer marketing, influencers are categorized into tiers ranging from nano-to-mega. We’ll go through each of these tiers and aim to offer insights into pros and cons faced by influencers in each respective tier.
Nano-influencers
Nano-influencers are considered influencers with 1,000 to 10,000 followers. They are considered to be the most common type of influencer, as achieving over 1,000 followers can be done rather effortlessly with a moderately strong strategy. On the positive end of the spectrum, nano-influencers tend to have terrific engagement rates and extremely niche audiences — things brands seek out. The downside is that these influencers have a limited reach and may not be full-time.
For a brand, nano-influencers are extremely cost effective, since they are cheaper to sponsor, but results can be hit-or-miss depending on the influencer and how well they execute the campaign. It’s not uncommon for influencers in this tier to not receive payment at all for products. In fact, many take a ‘free sample’ as payment.
Micro-influencers
Micro-influencers have anywhere between 10,000 to 50,000 followers.
Micro-influencers are generally in a good spot. Most are working with brands, but not nearly enough to make influencing a full-time living. Like nano-influencers, micro-influencers enjoy loyal, engaged audiences, and generally have specialized content that brands find appealing. Depending on the brand, some may execute entire campaigns across a micro-influencer roster — balancing cost vs. effectiveness. So, if you’re in this tier, you’re doing something right.
Mid-tier influencers
Here’s where things start getting really interesting. Mid-tier influencers have between 50,000 to 500,000 followers. You see a lot of YouTube channels that fall into this tier, and their videos are usually sponsored. This group is extremely attractive to brands for a couple of reasons. The first is that the content is usually professionally done. The second? Broader reach than nano and micro tiers. Finally, for the brand, they aren’t cheap, but they also aren’t breaking the bank.
The downside, of course, is that these influencers tend to have lower engagement rates, which is something brands are not keen on. As an audience grows larger, it becomes more difficult to maintain a personal connection with them, which is a major difficulty faced by popular influencers.
Still, though, mid-tier influencers are perhaps by far the most sought-after influencers because they offer good balance between reach, engagement, and cost effectiveness.
Macro-influencers
Macro-influencers are influencers with between 500,000 and 1,000,000 followers. That’s a lot of followers! It also happens to be the group our agency, Dalton Street, most commonly works with.
This group of influencers boast massive reach and have the potential to really increase brand recognition but tend to be expensive and have lower engagement rates than previously mentioned influencer tiers. But for brands that have the money to spend, macro-influencers are a great way to bring attention to a product or service.
Mega-influencers
Finally, we’ve reached the final tier. Mega-influencers are about as big as you can get. These influencers have over 1 million followers, and many (who happen to be celebrities) have tens of millions. Or take Kim Kardashian, for example, who has hundreds of millions of followers on Instagram. These are truly global influencers with the potential to take a brand partner from zero to hero. The campaigns they partake in are high-profile, and the brands that hire them are certainly spending a lot of money to do so.
Of course, engagement rates are always a concern, but with reach like this, brands tend to trade-off the lack of engagement with the incredible reach they are getting. Brand partners may include multinational corporations to VC-backed start-ups. There is usually a line out the door hoping to work with the mega-influencer, and the influencer must be selective with whom they work.
Factors that influence earning potential
Do you fall into any of the tiers above? If so (the odds are you do, since we pretty much just covered the whole spectrum!), there’s a chance a brand out there might be interested in partnering with you. But in full transparency, they are looking into many more things than simply your follower count.
For starters, you have engagement rate. We’ve mentioned this quite a bit in the section above, but what does it mean, exactly? In short, your engagement rate is the percentage of your followers who actively interact with your content. That is, leaving likes, comments, shares, and so forth. They are going one step beyond simply viewing. We find engagement rates to be even more important than follower counts, and so too do advertisers. An engaged follower is one who is more likely to be influenced by you, which in theory should increase the chance of converting into a sale of the product you are promoting.
Next up, we should consider which niche in which your content is situated. Does your content focus on cars? Consumer electronics? Beauty? Personal finance? It matters! Specific industries or topics can command higher fees. Below is data from Tasty Edits on profitable YouTube niches.
You might be asking yourself, what the heck is a CPM? CPM stands for cost per mille — or how much advertisers are willing to pay per 1,000 impressions. Some niches command higher CPMs for a number of reasons; for example, the type of person that consumes the content, how affluent they tend to be, and so forth.
Let us also briefly discuss content quality. Easy to perceive, but difficult to measure, content quality is exactly as it sounds. It goes beyond how well it is produced or how crisp the sound is. It also includes how friendly the content is to all groups. Is it offensive? Is it likely or unlikely to appeal to the masses? Does the creator deliver this quality content consistently? All questions to ponder, and questions that you can bet are being considered by advertisers.
Another factor that influences an influencer’s earning potential includes the platform in which they distribute their content. Are they on YouTube? TikTok? Instagram? Payouts on YouTube tend to be better than payouts on TikTok, as an example, because the quality of content is higher on YouTube.
Finally, audience demographics. We’ve talked followers, but who are the followers? Are they primarily male? Female? Do they come from English speaking countries? These are things advertisers consider. A makeup brand, for instance, wouldn’t be interested in advertising to an audience that is 75% male. Likewise, a mobile videogame producer might not be so keen on advertising on an influencer’s channel devoted to hairstyling.
Concluding remarks
Never let anyone tell you that you need a specific number of followers before you can begin monetizing your content. Especially in today’s day and age, there are tons of brands who are willing to work with a myriad of influencers — big and small. As a small creator, though, it’s up to you to seek out these opportunities. For larger creators, influencer agencies like Dalton Street may be able to help with deal flow.
