How Much Does an Influencer Manager Charge?
Today, I’m going to talk about how much an influencer manager charges. So, what is the commission percentage that a manager will take from any of the compensation received by an influencer? First,
the distinction between an agent and a manager
let’s talk about the distinction between an agent and a manager. So, an agent normally is thought of in kind of the actor realm, and there are specific laws that dictate how much an agent can charge an actor, they have to be a member of a licensed agency, and there are some specific rules that dictate what they can and can’t do.
The influencer market is, at this point, pretty much unregulated. So, I find that actors have kind of dual roles of an agent and a manager who do separate things for them, whereas I find most influencers think of an agent and manager as kind of the same thing, and that would be somebody who facilitates business opportunities for the influencer and then assists in negotiating the price, dealing with the contract.
I think most influencers think of that in the same capacity simply because there’s no need to have both as an influencers. I mean, I guess an influencer who’s just one of the biggest influencers could have a manager who generally handles the day-to-day issues for talent, whereas the agent generally handles kind of the nuts and bolts business stuff. But for most influencers, that’s unnecessary, one person can do the job, and so it can be known as both an agent or a manager.
How Much Does an Influencer Manager Charge?
Alright, so as far as a percentage goes, as I said before, agents for actors in California are capped at ten percent, whereas the influencer market is essentially unregulated at this point. So, I find most management agencies or managers charge around 20 percent commission. It can be less, can be a little bit more, but somewhere between 10 to 20 is a standard amount.
Now, that certainly is negotiable. It is probably based on the experience of the manager, the client base they have, and the proven track record. If you have a manager who doesn’t have much experience, you simply shouldn’t pay them as much, at least initially, until they prove themselves. So, how the compensation would work is the influencers designated as an independent contractor, and then the sponsor will pay, usually, the payment will go through the agency or manager.
The manager will take their cut, and then the rest of that will go into whatever designated bank account that the influencers wanted the money to go into. And then one consideration is after the contract terminates, there’s almost always going to be a clause in there that states the manager will continue to receive a percentage of any deal that they brought to the influencer even after the contract terminates.
So, let’s just give an example. So, let’s say it’s a fitness influencer, they have a sponsorship with an apparel company, the manager negotiated the deal, you know, got 20 from whatever it was the influencer, for whatever reason terminates the contract with the manager. Well, that clause will then state for normally a year after the contract ends,
the influencer still has to pay 20 percent if they decide to stay with that apparel company back to the manager. The reason why managers do this is what they don’t want to do is get a deal, and bring it to the influencer, maybe it’s an awesome opportunity, but the influencer terminates the agreement, still takes the deal, and then avoids having to pay the manager any commission. Now, everything’s negotiable,
so you can certainly try to negotiate reducing the amount of time you have to pay the manager after the contract terminates or maybe reducing the percentage, maybe by a quarter.
So, if you go 20 and Q1, 15, 10, 5, something like that. But you’re rarely going to get a management contract that doesn’t have some kind of language like that. I mean, honestly, it’s a reasonable request by a manager. It just would be unfair if they would bring a deal to someone and then have that person avoid having to pay them anything. Another thing to think about is if the manager has an exclusive relationship with talent.
So normally any kind of management contract is going to be exclusive, which means the influencer cannot use anyone else to kind of facilitate/negotiate any of the sponsorship opportunities, meaning even if a friend, another influencer, if were reached out to directly by a sponsor, anything that comes to the influencer has to go back to the manager, and then the manager would be the one who negotiates the deal and would get the percentage. Once again, a manager doesn’t want an influencer from getting around having to pay them by having stuff funneled through either a friend or contacting the places directly.
I mean, the role of the manager is to one, find opportunities that the influencer couldn’t do for themselves, but then to negotiate the price, and hopefully, they’re going to bring in 20 percent more than they’re taking. So, in the long run, it’s a win-win for both parties. So that’s how much most influencer managers make