Engaged reach is the number brands buy
Multiply followers by your engagement rate for the engaged reach per post - 100,000 followers at 3% is 3,000 engaged people. That figure, not the follower count, is what a sponsor is actually paying to appear in front of.
The engagement field defaults to 3% and accepts anything from 0% to 100%. Under 1% is usually read as a largely passive audience, and no follower count rescues a dead engagement rate: a 500,000-follower account at 0.8% reaches the same 4,000 people as a 100,000-follower account at 4%, and the page prices them identically.
That is the quiet argument of the page. Buying followers raises the first number and does nothing to the second, while improving engagement raises the number the arithmetic actually multiplies.
A CPM prices the engaged reach
The rate per post is engaged reach divided by 1,000, multiplied by the sponsor CPM - what a brand pays per thousand engaged people a post reaches. At an $80 CPM, 3,000 engaged people are worth $240 for the post.
Two extras come out of the same numbers. The monthly figure assumes four posts, so the default case reads $960 a month, and the band is fixed at 60% to 140% of the central figure, giving $144 to $336. Those boundaries are part of the model rather than a market observation, which is why they move in proportion when the CPM moves.
The CPM is the negotiation variable. Micro-influencers with tight niches often command the top of the band because their audience converts, while large accounts with low engagement sit at the bottom - and the arithmetic shows the same thing, because a low engagement rate shrinks the reach the CPM is applied to.
A band, not a rate card
The calculator returns a band because deliverables move the real number: a story set, a video, platform exclusivity, usage rights and the brand category all add or subtract from a single feed post. A flat rate would pretend those negotiations do not exist.
The band is deliberately fixed at 60% to 140% of the center - forty percent either side of it - so it widens with the central figure rather than with the difficulty of the job. A creator whose work needs three rounds of approval and a sixty-day exclusivity window should be reading the top of the band as a starting point, not as a generous outcome.
Treat the center as an anchor for the first number in the conversation and the band as the room you have to move. Neither is a price the page can defend on your behalf, because the page has never seen the brief.
Your niche and deliverable set the real quote
A finance, technology or parenting audience with strong conversion value pushes a quote up; a one-off feed post in a broad lifestyle niche sits lower. The same follower count can carry a two-fold difference in rate for that reason alone, and nothing in the arithmetic can see it.
What the page can see is the interaction between reach and price. Doubling the CPM doubles the quote, but doubling engagement at the same CPM also doubles it, which is why the cheaper growth lever is usually the audience rather than the ask.
It is a negotiation anchor, not a promise of what a sponsor will pay. The platform, the format and the category all shift the band, and the page is arithmetic on three numbers you supply rather than a survey of what brands actually signed. An estimate, not a return, and not tax advice.
What the CPM leaves out, and how to price it back in
The CPM prices one post that reaches the engaged audience once. It does not price what brands usually ask for on top: a story set the same day, a link in bio for a month, usage rights to run your video as a paid ad, or exclusivity that keeps you away from a competitor for sixty days. Each is a real cost to you and a real value to the brand, and none of them sits in the headline.
The way to price them is to convert them into the same unit. A three-post package at the same CPM is three times the rate, because the reach is delivered three times. Whitelisting is usually quoted against the media spend the brand will put behind it rather than against your rate. Exclusivity is priced by what you give up: if one category is a third of your sponsorship income for the quarter, a sixty-day lock has to cover that third plus a premium for the handcuffs.
That is why the band on this page runs from 0.6 to 1.4 of the center rather than being a single number. The low end is one post, no extras, fast turnaround; the high end is a post with usage rights and a category lock. Quoting the low end for a package with rights is the most common way creators underprice a deal, and the most common way a brand later finds out that a cheap creator was the expensive option.
Danfio