Instagram Reels, priced by audience size
Instagram Reels are the highest-volume paid placement most creators sell, and Lumanu's payments data shows why brands keep buying them: the average settled Reels payment sat at $3,618 — more than three times a feed post's $1,013 — because Reels get pushed to non-followers by the algorithm the way a feed post rarely does. Price from your trimmed 30-day Reels average, never your best-performing clip; a single viral Reel is not the deliverable you can repeat next month. Reels also carry the sharpest engagement signal on the platform, so a strong save rate or a 6%+ engagement rate is the clearest argument for pricing at the top of the rate range below rather than the middle. Because a Reel keeps surfacing in the algorithm for weeks after it posts, brands ask for usage rights on Reels more than on any other format — price that request separately, on top of the base rate, never folded into it.
Negotiating at 100,000 followers
At 100,000 followers you're mid-tier by any brand's definition — the 50,000 to 250,000 follower band where Reels views typically run 25,000 to 250,000 — and you've likely crossed the point where brands stop treating your rate as negotiable-on-a-whim and start comparing it against other channels in their media plan. That's exactly why quoting in CPM rather than a flat number matters most here: a media planner comparing your rate to a paid social line item wants cost-per-thousand, not a follower count. This tier is also where usage-rights requests get more aggressive — a brand at this scale is more likely to want 90 days or 12 months of paid usage rather than the standard 30-day organic post, and that premium (50–150% of base, per our rate guide) is frequently worth negotiating harder than the base rate itself. Never quote first if you can help it; ask what's been budgeted, and let the itemised breakdown, not a single number, carry the negotiation.