Pricing your first gig (with real PKR numbers)

Price your first gig off the format and the effort it takes, not off your follower count. A single in-feed Reel from a 10,000-follower creator in a defined niche is worth meaningfully more than the same post from a 40,000-follower account with a general audience, because the brand is buying relevance. Start from what the work costs you in hours, sanity-check against the band your niche trades in, and quote a number rather than asking what the budget is.

Why follower count is the wrong starting point

The per-follower rule of thumb is popular because it is easy, and wrong because it prices the audience rather than the outcome. Brands do not buy reach; they buy the probability that a relevant person acts. A food creator with 12,000 followers in Karachi who can fill a restaurant on a Tuesday is worth more to that restaurant than a lifestyle account ten times the size whose audience is scattered across four countries.

Concentration is the variable that matters and it is the one a follower count hides. When you quote, you are pricing relevance and reliability. Say so, because a brand that understands what it is paying for argues less about the number.

Work out your floor first

Before looking at any benchmark, price the job as a job. Count the hours honestly: concept, shoot, edit, revisions, and the posting-day admin nobody counts. Multiply by what an hour of your time needs to be worth for this to be a business rather than a hobby. That is your floor, and the useful property of a floor is that it tells you when to decline.

Most first-time creators discover their floor is higher than the number they were about to quote. That gap is the single most common reason a first gig feels like a bad deal in hindsight — not that they were cheated, but that they never calculated it.

Then sanity-check against the band

Once you have a floor, check it against the typical range for your niche and follower band. Rate ranges vary widely by category — tech sits at the top, food toward the bottom, with beauty and fashion in between — and by city, since campaigns with a physical component concentrate in Karachi and Lahore. The directory pages carry typical per-city and per-niche rate ranges; they are editorial estimates, not averages of marketplace orders.

If your floor is far above the band, you are either in a niche with a smaller ceiling than you assumed or you are over-scoping the work. If it is far below, raise it. Nobody is served by a creator who resents the deal halfway through.

Quote a number

The last step is the one people avoid: state a price rather than asking what the budget is. Asking hands the anchor to the buyer, and the buyer's anchor is always lower than yours. It also reads as inexperience, which invites negotiation you would not otherwise have had.

Quote the number, show what it includes, and be explicit about what is extra — revisions beyond the agreed round, usage as a paid ad, exclusivity in your category. Those add-ons are where a first gig quietly turns into three gigs' worth of work at one gig's price.

Use an influencer rate calculator as a check, not a price list

Shaheeno's free influencer price calculator does the band check for you: pick your niche, your city and your follower band, and it returns the typical PKR range for one deliverable. As a reference point, a micro creator with 10,000–50,000 followers typically charges PKR 12,000–45,000 per deliverable nationally. Treat the result the way you treat any benchmark — a sense check on your floor, not a number to copy — because the ranges are editorial estimates, not averages of marketplace orders.

UGC is the exception to the band. When a brand wants a video for its own ads rather than a post on your page, nothing rides on your audience, so UGC rates are priced on the production — format, length, revisions and how long the brand may use it — and usually sit below your posted rate, rising with paid-ads usage. The UGC creators guide covers how brands buy it.

What a brand means when it asks how much to pay an influencer

From the other side of the table, "how much do influencers charge in Pakistan?" is really three questions: what does a deliverable like this usually cost, what does this particular creator's engagement justify, and what is included. A quote that answers all three in one message — the price, the deliverable, the extras — gets a faster yes than one that answers only the first. It is also why public gig prices work: a brand reading your gig already knows the answer before it messages you.

Frequently asked questions

How much do influencers charge in Pakistan for one post?

A micro creator with 10,000–50,000 followers typically charges PKR 12,000–45,000 for one in-feed post or short video nationally, before usage rights or exclusivity. Tech and education quote above that, food below it, and Karachi and Lahore run above smaller cities. The rate guide has the full table by follower band.

What are typical UGC rates in Pakistan?

UGC is priced per video on production — format, length, revisions and the usage licence — rather than on followers, because the creator does not post it. It generally quotes below the same creator's posted rate, and paid-ads use or a longer licence is what pushes the price up.

Is there a free influencer rate calculator for Pakistan?

Yes — the Shaheeno price calculator is free and needs no account. Choose a niche, a city and a follower band and it shows the typical PKR range for one deliverable, using the same editorial rate tables as the directory pages.