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 250,000 followers
250,000 followers is the entry point of the Macro tier — 250,000 to 1,000,000 followers, with Reels views typically running 100,000 to 800,000 — where Lumanu's annual figures jump sharply from mid-tier's $185,000 average, though the spread inside this band is enormous: a 250,000-follower account and a 900,000-follower account are both "macro" and can be worth very different numbers on the same brief. At this size, expect brands to negotiate through a manager or agency more often, expect usage-rights and exclusivity asks to be the largest line items on the quote rather than an afterthought, and expect perpetual-usage requests — which our rate guide prices at a 200% floor, not a fair price — to show up more frequently than at any smaller tier. Decline perpetual rights or price them at that floor; a brand large enough to be at this stage of the conversation has the budget to pay for a long fixed term instead, and offering one protects your ability to work with a category competitor later.