TikTok Pricing Formula; Child Influencers; Boosting Content; & More - Ep. 70

In this episode, James discusses the new Illinois law regarding compensation for kids in social media content (effective July 1st, 2024). He also talks about a TikTok pricing formula for creators, the effects of boosting content on Instagram, and whether brands are considering podcasts in their marketing campaigns with creators, and more.

Below is a portion of the episode transcript for your reading pleasure. Make sure to subscribe to the Fohr YouTube channel to get notified of new episodes, and watch the full episode below.

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How to price for TikTok content

Viewer question: Can you walk through pricing for TikTok? In an earlier episode, you mentioned TikTok pricing formula is more complicated and takes into account more than just the amount of followers. I have about 17,000 followers on TikTok. I'm wondering what specific factors formula would be best to price myself out for the platform.

So, I love this question. Understanding how to price yourself and how to be fair and compensated fairly are such big parts of running your business as an influencer.

I'm not going to say who asked this because I don't want to give any specifics away. But I went through this account and looked at the last 20 posts they had created. They have 17,000 followers on TikTok. I wrote down the views for each of those 20 posts. So, over the last 20 posts, this user has driven 55,945 views on TikTok, which is great.

Calculating your average views per post

That is an average of 2,797 views per post or a 16% average viewership. One, it's good to know that number for yourself. It's on Fohr. But you can also just do the calculation yourself.

Look at the last 20 or 30 posts, add them all up, divide it by 30.

When I say that the equation is more complicated, I mean that here at Fohr, we're determining whether views are being driven by a couple of high performers, posts that overperformed wildly, or do you get consistent performance?

Some accounts might have an average viewership of 16%. Most of the content they create gets 5% viewership. And then every 10th post, they get 200% viewership. So that pulls the average up. In this case, this account is pretty consistent. They're consistently getting between 1 and 3,000 views on each video, which is great.

They've got an audience that's kind of locked in. There are a couple of posts that performed higher. There were some in the past that did millions, but generally, it's pretty consistent.

Pricing factors for influencers: The market vs. personal costs

As you think about pricing yourself, there are market factors, and then there are personal considerations, right?

If you're trying to understand the market and what other people are charging, it's helpful first to know what it would cost a brand to purchase those views without you.

Let's say 3,000 views, so the math is easier. It's going to cost about $30. Of course, there is the factor of them having to create the content.

They have to have some piece of content that they want to put that paid behind. As you consider what you are pricing yourself, it's good to know what they could buy this for without me. Then, consider how valuable I think my audience is, my connection with that audience, my point of view, and then how I need to be compensated for my time for just creating this content.

When you are in that 5 to 50,000 followers range, the CPM calculations like the one we just did don't make a huge amount of sense because even for us, if on average we're giving influencers 20 or 30 CPM, with 2700 views, you're talking about $50 to $80 for a post. It just doesn't make a huge amount of sense when you are in that sub-100K following range, especially on TikTok. The focus should be on creating more content that does really well, reaching new audiences, and growing that following.

I don't want creators who are more up-and-coming and trying to establish themselves to focus too much on how I make money off these 17,000 followers that I have on TikTok. The focus should be on how can I turn 17,000 followers into 100,000 followers, and then we can really think about money.

"I don't want creators who are more up-and-coming and trying to establish themselves to focus too much on how I make money off these 17,000 followers I have on TikTok. The focus should be on how can I turn 17,000 followers into 100,000 followers, and then we can really think about money." - James Nord, Negronis with Nord Ep. 70

Of course, that's a privilege and a luxury to be able to do that. Maybe you need to make money on this in the short term, and that's totally understandable. If brands are reaching out and asking to pay you, you should come up with a price. I'm just saying what the focus should be, what you should be waking up maniacally focused on every day.

If this is what you want your career to be, focus on creating better and better content, trying to reach more people, and growing that following. Don't focus on figuring out how to leverage it into paid opportunities with brands just yet.

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