Summary List Placement
Instagram influencers often rely on brand deals as their main source of income.
With a variety of monetizable features on Instagram — like in-feed posts, Stories, Reels, IGTV, and Lives — influencers can offer advertisers a range of content types.
Brands are set to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022, according to Business Insider Intelligence. And they’re hiring creators with big and small audiences across a wide range of categories.
“Micro” influencers (who generally have fewer than 100,000 followers) have become a high priority for many brands. Micro influencers — and even some “nano” influencers with fewer than 10,000 followers — have turned their social-media hobbies into paid side hustles by working with brands.
To get these deals, influencers often use media kits to showcase their value to a company, providing audience metrics and listing the advertisers they’ve worked with. Some kits also include pay rates.
“I update my media kit probably monthly because it’s literally your resume or your portfolio that you’re sending into brands,” Macy Mariano, an Instagram influencer, told Insider in December.
Here are seven examples of real media kits that influencers use to land brand deals on Instagram (ordered from least followers to most):
This post has been updated to add more media kits.
Kayla Compton: about 1,900 Instagram followers
Kayla Compton, 23, is a part-time influencer based in San Diego. She has about 1,900 followers on Instagram and about 3,400 subscribers on YouTube.
While YouTube is Compton’s primary social-media platform, her Instagram plays an important role in her brand sponsorships.
Compton told Insider in March that her starting rate for a brand sponsorship package (which usually includes a YouTube video, Instagram post, and a few Stories) was $250.
“A lot of people might think, ‘Oh, if you have a thousand followers, no one’s going to pay you for that,'” Compton said. “But if you have a very engaged audience and you can target people really well and have a good connection with your audience, brands will pay for that.”
In Compton’s media kit, she highlights that she has a 5.6% engagement rate on Instagram.
Check out the full media kit here (obtained in March 2021):
A YouTube nano influencer shares the exact 8-page media kit she uses to get brand deals
Jen Lauren: about 3,000 Instagram followers
Jen Lauren is a 24-year-old nano lifestyle influencer on Instagram and YouTube with 1,000 to 3,000 followers on each platform.
Lauren has started to make money by partnering with brands on sponsorships, she told Insider in November.
Lauren is considered a “nano” influencer on YouTube and Instagram. Nano influencers often specialize in a specific niche, with a small and engaged community. They generally have fewer than 5,000 subscribers on YouTube and between 2,500 and 10,000 followers on Instagram.
Check out the full media kit here (obtained in November 2020):
Laur DeMartino: about 5,000 Instagram followers
Laur DeMartino, 19, is a college student who’s also a part-time lifestyle content creator. She told Business Insider that she treats her content as a “mini internship.”
DeMartino is a nano influencer, and while she has a larger audience on Instagram (5,200 followers) and TikTok (4,200 followers), she primarily focuses on YouTube, where she had about 3,300 subscribers as of November.
In 2020, she secured a brand deal worth $4,000, which included a $1,000 gift card to purchase the product. The deal included deliverables across all three of her primary social-media platforms, she said.
Her media kit highlights her previous brand partnerships and audience demographics.
Check out the full media kit here (obtained in November 2020):
Jade Darmawangsa: about 51,000 Instagram followers
Jade Darmawangsa is a YouTube creator (380,000 subscribers) and Instagram influencer (51,000 followers) who’s developed a full-time business through brand sponsorships and collaborations.
On average, she charges between $500 and $2,000 for a sponsored Instagram post, she told Insider in October.
In her media kit, Darmawangsa details her Instagram demographics and analytics. Her account has a total reach of 118,899,860, which is a compilation of the full following of all her followers and shows the total potential reach her page has.
The Los Angeles-based creator launched her YouTube channel in 2015.
Check out the full media kit here (obtained in October 2020):
Macy Mariano: about 111,000 Instagram followers
Travel and style influencer Macy Mariano is an Instagram creator who has worked with brands like Lululemon, Champs Sports, and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.
Mariano said many advertisers will ask to see her media kit when negotiating terms for a sponsored content deal.
“I think it’s super important if you want to take this seriously,” Mariano told Insider in 2020. “I send them now to everyone I get in touch with. It’s just a good way to express who you are and what you’ve done so they can see your past and current work.”
Mariano had 105,000 Instagram followers when Insider obtained the media kit in February. Today, she has 111,000 followers.
Check out the full media kit here (obtained in February 2020):
Marina Mogilko: about 720,000 Instagram followers
Entrepreneur and creator Marina Mogilko has worked with brands like Audible and Skillshare on sponsored videos. She lives in San Francisco and is the cofounder of a travel agency, LinguaTrip.
Her media kit includes case studies of past campaigns and her audience analytics. It begins with her channel categories: business, education, languages, life in Silicon Valley, and personal development.
It also lists the audience demographics for her language channel: Her audience is 18 to 44 years old, 52% male and 48% female. Her top sources of viewers are the US, UK, Canada, Russia, and India.
Check out the full media kit here (obtained in May 2020):
Alexa Collins: about 1.2 million Instagram followers
Alexa Collins is a Miami-based influencer with 1.2 million Instagram followers.
Since kicking off her Instagram account in March 2016, Collins has posted a stream of swimsuit and dog photos, clothing (and occasionally tax accounting) promotions, and product placements that provide the 25-year-old with a steady income.
“I started this a while ago, and it takes a really long time to build a following on an app,” Collins said. “I work with a lot of clothing and swimwear and makeup and hair brands — a lot of girly stuff.”
Collins now works with the talent management agency Johnson Sports Entertainment, which also represents NFL players and professional golfers, to secure brand deals. She also pitches advertisers directly using an 8-page media kit.
Check out the full media kit here (obtained in November 2020):