How to Price Your Work Online
Post by BlogPaws CEO Yvonne DiVita
Our bloggers routinely ask us how to price their work online.
“A company I like approached me and asked me to do a sponsored post,” they write to us. “They asked how much I charge…and I don’t know! Can you help me?” The anxiety in their voice comes through in their note. It always makes me sigh.
The question clings to each of us, like a leech that won’t be satisfied. It just keeps sucking the life out of us, as we write, and write and write… and wish our bank balance was going up and up and up…when it’s not.
Are you plagued by this question? How to price your work online? Is it a mystery to you?
Let’s blast through that confusion.
The easy answer is to understand your value. Once you know what you’re selling, and once you investigate the market to better understand costs, you can easily set a price to your sponsored post or ad in your sidebar.
Value is set by the sponsor, not by you. YOU need to present the sponsor with reasons to pay the price. What will the sponsor get by paying you to write or promote them? Or, to add an ad in your sidebar? What’s the ROI? Yes, return on investment counts. It’s in evaluating these things that the sponsor will set the value of your blog. (YOU can help by having a fantastic blog- if you’re coming to this year’s 2015 conference, we’ll teach you how).
An important note here: each sponsor may want or request a different ROI. When you create your page demonstrating why they should consider your blog for an ad or a sponsored post (you have a page, right?) don’t worry about the changing needs of sponsors who will approach you. Share the relevant content and information and say you will work with the sponsor to establish a positive result for them. Let your fantastic blog speak for itself.
Quick cheat sheet on what to put on your page inviting sponsors to hire you:
- Your monthly uniques and pageviews (you do track this, right?)
- Your engagement factor (comments…other conversations on social)
- Your numbers in social (followers on Twitter and Facebook, etc)
- Any kudos or awards you’ve garnered in your years online
- Your “topic focus” and links to some good posts
- Your contact info – can be a form but best if it’s a specific email
- Your picture – shouldn’t count, but it does. Not because they will judge you on your image, but because it humanizes you.
Once you’ve done that, you can begin to understand your value and decide how to price your work online.
Look over the content you’ve produced in the cheat sheet. Compare it to the cost of an advertorial in a small print publication. What would a small company pay to have content about them show up in a major or minor print publication? $1000? $500? More? Less? That’s an easy answer to find. You know how to find it out… go to it.
Considering your work is online, let’s look at some online costs. What does it cost to have a writer publish a brand story for an online publication? How much do brands pay to have press releases sent across the web? What are other people in your situation being paid to support the brands they support? Much of this is online, easy to find, revealed by the brands and the authors alike. All you have to do is research it.
And therein lies the rub. It’s not up to BlogPaws to tell you how to price your work online. We work with brands and price our programs according to much of what I’ve shard here. We have a bigger picture in mind – gathering groups of influencers together to represent a brand. And, we manage all the behind the scenes logistics.
When you’re working one on one with a brand, it’s a bit different. It requires much study and focus and research.
Want to see how one particular blog did it? Visit the good folks at Pinch of Yum and learn from the experts.
As a bonus, here’s a link to the top earning blogs on the web. Learn from it.
What did I leave out? What other burning questions do you have about how to price your work online?
