My story and introduction into the world of being a creator is a little different than most. I work in the finance world as my day job. I married a creator and because of her influence, I’ve gained a decent following. I get pitched brand deals occasionally and I use Social Bluebook values as my negotiation tool.
In the finance world, performance of investments are tracked against a benchmark. You know if your Investments are doing well because you can compare your return to something like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ 100. The benchmark is available 24/7 and is published on every financial channel available. When it comes to comparing social media values many creators are left in the dark and are forced to guess what their true value really is. Social Bluebook fills that void.
Imagine a brand or agency reaching out to you and offering you $X dollars to post for them. Seems exciting, right? The question isn’t about whether or not it’s a good idea to advertise for the company, but rather how much should you charge to align your brand with that company or product. You can try to guess an estimate what you should charge but you’ll effectively have to come up with your own benchmark and system.
An alternative to this is using Social Bluebook and their suggested values. Here’s a real life example that just happened in the last couple weeks…
I was offered $1,000 to post a photo on Instagram. Sounds great, right? But what is a post on my Instagram really worth? What’s my engagement like? What are my average likes, etc.? Instead of trying to build my own benchmark and mess with the different insights, I simply logged into Social Bluebook, checked my values, took a screenshot, and sent that to the brand.
Charging what you’re worth does require some faith. It’s tough because you don’t want to lose out on money. That’s why we’re all in this business in the first place, isn’t it? It turns out that my value was higher than what the brand originally offered. In my reply I told them that I was willing to post for them at value shown by Social Bluebook.
The brand came back and agreed to pay me my rate. I made an extra $327.58 just by using my Social Bluebook Value. That’s an increase of over 30%! My Social Bluebook Pro membership just paid for itself for a few years and now I feel confident charging more for my work.
Do you have any Social Bluebook moments like the one I just shared? If so I’d love to hear it. Send them to me at jackson@socialbluebook.com.