What Are Influencer Payments?

Learn Everything You Need to Know about Influencer Payments here

As companies invest heavily in influencer marketing, they face a competitive scenario where top influencers seek streamlined onboarding and optimized payments. Compensating influencers involves various payout structures, payment methods, and pricing tiers. Without a standard performance measure, choosing the right influencer, platform, and payment method can be complex.

What Are Influencer Payments?

Influencer payments are a way to streamline the payment process and bring it in line with the rest of your influencer marketing workflow. Including a payment option in the Influencity platform allows clients to transition from search and analysis to reporting and the transactional stage of a campaign.

Top Ways to Pay Influencers

Influencers are flexible with different payment methods and income streams. Most influencer payments include sponsored content, where the influencer receives payment or free products from the business. Influencers may also form partnerships with brands, making commission-based payments suitable.

Here are some common ways to pay influencers:

Sponsored and Pay-per-Post

This is the most popular payment method for influencers today. It involves paying for each piece of content individually, resulting in a broad price range influenced by factors such as:

• Follower count
• Type of content
• Partnership duration (short term/long term)
• Audience engagement
• Content quality
• Budget

Performance-based Payments

Performance-based payments are exactly as they sound—compensation tied to specific metrics. This method allows for assigning significant value to content, particularly benefiting top-tier influencers.

In a performance-based model, influencers promote products or brands through various channels like their feed, stories, or reels. The primary objective is to gather user data and convert interactions into sales. Payment is contingent upon user actions that indicate success, such as:

• Purchase: Buying a product or subscribing to a service
• Subscription: Enrolling in a program or monthly service
• Account Creation: Registering for a service or joining a community
• Download: Providing details to access gated content

Gift or Rewards

Paying influencers through gifting is one of the most cost-effective methods. Even prominent influencers often welcome collaborations based solely on receiving gifts from brands.

Typically, influencers are sent products to try out and showcase to their audience. This approach appeals to followers who trust the influencer's recommendations and enjoy seeing products in action before making a purchase. Additionally, it allows influencers to expand their portfolio and often leads to enduring collaborations.

Fixed Rate and Bonus

Combining elements of pay-per-post and performance-based payments, this method offers the best of both worlds. It ensures a solid return on investment while providing influencers with a guaranteed base payment.

This approach benefits both parties, as influencers receive compensation for their work upfront, with additional rewards tied to achieving sales targets. Bonus criteria may vary and include factors such as:

• Contact Form Submissions
• Order Value
• Conversions
• Specific Sales
• Clicks

Discounts and Store Credit

Discounts and store credits operate similarly to gifting and are typically aimed at smaller influencers, such as nano and micro-influencers. 

While many well-compensated influencers may not entertain offers of store credit, exceptions may arise if the product offered is of significant value or fulfills a personal requirement.

The Benefits of Influencer Payments

• Pay influencers directly through the Influencity platform – no need to subscribe to another payment management software.
• When you create a payment, you can select influencers directly from the IRM, no need to upload influencer data or add their details by hand. 
• Instead of making separate payments and transfers for all the influencers in your campaign, Influencity lets you include multiple payments in one consolidated invoice. As such, you can pay a group of 50 influencers (or more!) in one single transaction. 
  
  

• Track your payment details in one place and see updates in real-time. 
• Pay your influencers in 143 different currencies and in 186 different countries.
• Influencity’s payment system is compatible with financial systems in the EU, USA, Canada, and 180 other countries.