Even if you don’t consider yourself an Instagram influencer, we all invest a significant amount of time and effort cultivating an eager crowd of social media followers. So haven’t you always wanted to know how much your Instagram account is worth – and how fake your (and others) followers are? Well, I recently came across two free online tools that do just that. In this article, I will put my own Instagram account (@jpdanko) to the test, along with a few well known creative industry related to Instagram influencers!
As it turns out, it is actually very difficult to calculate a return on investment for all the work we put into social media (though we still do it anyway)
However, that hasn’t stopped influencer marketing from becoming an ever-growing share of revenue available to creative professionals. In order to maximize the potential revenue you might expect from influencer marketing, you need to have a sense of how much your posts are actually worth. The value of your Instagram posts are generally based on a few interconnected variables:
How many followers do you have? (Generally the more the better, but even a small number could be valuable to a niche brand.)How much engagement do your posts generate? (Likes, comments and new followers indicate that your audience pays attention to your posts.)How fake is your audience? (Obviously, an army of bots is useless to a brand).
So lets check a few Instagram accounts to see how valuable they are and how fake their audience is.
@jpdanko
With roughly 10k followers over 620 posts, I have never taken my Instagram account too seriously. However, the Instagram Influencer Earnings Calculator estimates that a branded post would be worth $78 – $130.
Hmmm, not so good on my audience quality score. I attribute this to two things. First, I don’t post consistently which really tends to kill engagement. Second, I experimented a few years ago with purchasing likes and followers in an attempt to artificially boost specific posts to get them onto the Instagram Explore Page (it didn’t work).
@saramelotti_
Sara Melotti is one of my favorite photographers (and reluctant influencer) on Instagram (we previously featured her here: Secrets of A Full Time Travel Photographer: Q&A With Sara Melotti). She is also quite well known for calling BS on the whole Instagram influencer game.
With a decent base of followers and a great level of engagement, Sara could command a respectable value for a sponsored post.
@petermckinnon
Peter McKinnon has 1.8M Instagram followers and is a creative industry phenom – but how much is that worth? With a huge following and good quality audience, Peter McKinnon’s Instagram posts are pretty valuable to marketers!
@saraunderwood
Obviously we couldn’t leave this post without taking a look at a top-tier Insta-famous star. Sara Underwood has a massive 9.2M followers and occasionally releases branded content. So how much is that worth? I’d say $18k – $30k per post is pretty healthy, despite less than stellar engagement.
Test your own Instagram account (or your Frenemies)
The Instagram Money Calculator and Instagram Fake Follower Bot Checker were published by the Influencer Marketing Hub back in 2017. Obviously, I would take the results from these free tools with a grain of salt – but they can be a good starting point if you find yourself in the position where you are negotiating a post rate with a brand or marketer (assuming you actually want to be able to purchase food and shelter and avoid getting screwed over – for more info see: Do Not Submit User Generated Content to Brands or Marketers – Know Your Rights.) So test out your own account and share the results with us in the comments below!
