Micro-influencers have 10K to 100K followers, and their followers still talk to them. Search a topic like fitness or skincare to find them.
There are two routes. One costs nothing but your time. The other costs money but saves time. Most brands start with the free methods and move to a paid tool once the list gets long enough to be annoying. Here is the honest version of both.
Search your niche hashtags and scroll the Explore or For You feed. When you find a good profile, check its suggested accounts for more like it. It's free, but slow, and the app tends to show you creators who are already too big for a micro budget.
Go through your followers and your customer list for anyone with an audience of their own. They already use your product, so their posts convert better than cold picks. The catch is size: expect a handful of names, not a long list.
Look at the accounts tagged in your competitors' posts and the creators using their branded hashtags. All of them have done paid work in your category, so they know how a brief works and their audience already buys products like yours.
Creators know other creators in their niche. At the end of a campaign, ask who else they'd recommend. It's the cheapest sourcing there is, and creators who come recommended are far more likely to answer your emails.
Filter by follower range, engagement rate and location, and see real engagement before you reach out. The search at the top of this page is free, with no account needed.
Go to the search ↑Tools like Modash, Upfluence and HypeAuditor charge a monthly fee for bigger databases, deeper audience data and campaign management in one place. They're worth it when you run several campaigns at once or need audience data to show a client. For ten creators and one launch, they're more than you need.
On marketplaces like Collabstr and Fiverr, creators list themselves at fixed prices and you book them like any other service. It's the fastest way from search to a signed deal, because they've already said yes to brand work. The trade-off: you only see creators who chose to list, a small slice of what's out there.
An agency finds creators, negotiates and reports for a retainer or a percentage. It makes sense when nobody on your team owns influencer marketing and the budget is big enough that the fee barely registers. On micro-influencer budgets, the fee usually eats a large share of the spend.
Most brands mix these. Start with method 2, because it's free and those creators already like you. Use the search above to fill out the list. Only pay for a platform once you run enough campaigns that the time saved is worth more than the fee.
Once you have a list, the real work begins. Here's what a campaign involves, and how much time impulze saves you.
By hand, you check profiles one by one and copy them into a spreadsheet. That takes five to eight hours. With impulze, it takes ten to thirty minutes.
Before paying a creator, you need to know where their followers live and if they're real. Checking by hand takes two to four hours per creator. An impulze report takes about a minute.
Contacts, briefs, contracts, discount codes and payments often end up scattered everywhere. impulze keeps them all in one place, so nothing gets lost.
Without a tool, you chase creators to see what went live. With impulze, posts and results show up on one dashboard. A client report takes one click.
Your team is probably doing all of this already, in spreadsheets and screenshots.
impulze cuts the search for creators from hours to minutes. Checking a creator takes about a minute instead of an afternoon.
It's free to start. The search on this page uses the same data.
A micro-influencer has about 10,000 to 100,000 followers. There's no strict rule, and some people start counting at 5,000. At this size, creators still read and reply to their comments.
On Instagram, accounts under 10,000 followers usually get 2–4% engagement. By a million followers, 0.9–1.9% is normal. Bigger accounts don't have less interested fans. Each post just reaches fewer of them.
Nano-influencers have under 10,000 followers. They get the most engagement but reach the fewest people. Macro influencers have a million or more. They reach lots of people but get less interaction. Pick based on your goal: conversations or reach.
We worked these out with our pricing calculator. Each row is a creator with 50,000 followers and normal engagement for that platform.
| Platform | Typical engagement | Rate per post |
|---|---|---|
| 2.25% | $536 – $725 | |
| TikTok | 6.00% | $935 – $1,265 |
| YouTube | 2.65% | $1,577 – $2,133 |
TikTok costs more than Instagram here, because TikTok engagement is much higher. YouTube costs the most, because videos take longer to make and keep getting views. The final price also depends on what you ask for. Creators set their own prices.
Smaller isn't always better. But in these cases, a micro-influencer is usually the smarter choice.
Ten creators at $500 each reach ten different groups of people. You also get ten pieces of content. One creator at $5,000 reaches one group, once.
Some products need explaining before people buy. A creator who replies to comments can answer questions. A huge account usually can't.
Want photos and videos for your ads? Then you need lots of good content, fast. Micro-influencers are cheaper for that.
In a small niche, the biggest account is often a poor fit. Most of its followers won't care about your topic. A smaller account where everyone shares the interest is better value.
Micro-influencers usually get more engagement. Their followers share their interests and trust them.
Most micro-influencers charge around $100 to $500 per post. Three things change the price.
Tip: an impulze report shows where a creator's followers live and how old they are, so you can check fit before you reach out.
They're Instagram creators with 10,000 to 100,000 followers. Their followers still interact with them a lot.
Most charge $100 to $1,200 per post. It depends on their followers and engagement. Set your budget first. Then check quotes with our free pricing calculator.
From under $100 per video for small accounts, to over $2,000 near 100,000 followers. Followers and engagement make the biggest difference. TikTok engagement is often high, which pushes prices up.
You can search Instagram for city hashtags or place names. Or use impulze to filter creators by country. You can try it free on this site.
Searching by hand is slow, because you have to open every profile. With a free impulze account, you can filter by followers, topic and engagement in seconds.
Paste a creator's handle into the impulze search. It finds creators with similar followers. It's much faster than scrolling through TikTok.
Send them a direct message or an email. Email is usually better for business. impulze shows creators' public email addresses, so you don't have to hunt for them.
