Get brand deals as a micro-influencer in India

Most small creators in India get their first brand deal by asking, not by waiting. Some brands do message creators first, but waiting is slow and it exposes you to fake offers. The dependable route is to pick small brands you already use, send a short pitch with a one-page media kit, and agree the scope and the payment date in writing before you post anything. No official follower minimum for brand deals could be confirmed for this post, so do not trust anyone who quotes you one. What brands weigh is whether your audience looks like their customers and whether people respond to you. Nothing here is an income promise: many first deals are product only, and some accounts wait months for a paid one.

“Micro-influencer” has no official definition. In this post it means a small account with a focused audience, often a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of followers. That is our working meaning, not a rule from any platform.

Brands set their own criteria and none publishes a universal list, so what follows is what a brand can see about you, and therefore what is worth preparing. It is not a leaked checklist.

• Audience fit: where your followers live, their age range and their gender split. Meta’s Insights documentation lists country, city, age and gender breakdowns for followers, and says they are not returned for accounts with fewer than 100 followers.
• Real reactions: comments that answer your question, saves and shares, and people asking where to buy. A brand can read your comments in seconds, so a thread of single emojis tells it less than ten real questions.
• Topic fit: a skincare brand looks for a creator who has already talked about skin, not one who posted a skincare Reel yesterday for the first time.
• Reliability: posts that go out when you say they will, and a profile that is not a mix of ten unrelated topics.
• Past work: even unpaid examples help, such as a Reel about a product you bought yourself, if you labelled nothing as an ad that was not one.

Notice what is missing: a big follower count is not on the list. Followers show how many people chose to follow you once; reach and reactions show whether they still pay attention. Buying followers or joining engagement pods breaks Instagram’s rules and will make your numbers look odd to anyone who checks, so do not do either.

Inbound offers are welcome but unreliable. Treat any first message as a lead, not a deal: look up the brand’s real website, check the sender’s email domain matches it, and ask for a written brief. If a “brand” asks you to pay a registration fee, buy the product first on a promise of repayment, or hand over your Instagram login, stop. Instagram’s monetisation rules ban asking for other people’s logins, and no real brand needs yours.

Meta’s own tools are a second source. Instagram’s earn-money page lists Creator Marketplace and Partnership ads among its ways to earn, and Meta for Creators describes brands finding creators through Creator Marketplace. Instagram’s Help Center asks for a professional, public account, age 18 or over and at least 1,000 followers for Creator Marketplace, and says it is available in all countries where Meta advertising operates except Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Russia. It may still not be available to your account yet, so open your professional dashboard and see what it offers instead of relying on a blog, including this one.

Marketplaces and agencies that match creators with brands exist, but we are not naming any, because we could not verify them for this post. Before you register on one, check four things: who runs it, who pays you (the platform or the brand), when you are paid and what it keeps. A genuine intermediary will tell you all four before asking for your documents.

The route that is fully in your hands is your own pitch. That is where most small creators should put their time.

Treat pitching like a weekly habit, not a one-off. Brands receive many offers, and a calm, specific message from a real customer stands out.

1. Make a list of 20 brands you already buy from, ideally small or growing ones whose customers look like your followers. Large brands tend to work through agencies, so a direct pitch can go nowhere.
2. Find a person, not an inbox: a founder, a marketing lead or a brand-collaboration email shown on their site or profile. Do not message personal accounts of staff.
3. Write a pitch of five or six lines: who you are, why this brand, one concrete idea for a Reel, one proof (a number from your Insights, or a post where you already used the product) and your media kit link.
4. Attach or link your media kit, a one-page summary of audience, numbers, past work and rates. Our guide on how to make a media kit covers it.
5. Follow up once, a week later, with something new, such as a fresh post using the product. Then move on and keep a sheet of who you contacted, when and what they said.

Tip: Pitch the idea, not the favour. “I would like a collaboration” gives the brand work to do. “Here is a 20-second Reel showing how I use your cold brew bags on a train commute, with three Story frames, for ₹X” gives it something to say yes or no to.

Nobody publishes an official price list, so you set the number. If the brand names a budget first, you have saved a round of guessing. If it asks for your rate, give a quote for a defined bundle, never a bare price. Our guide to charging for a sponsored Reel shows how to work out the number. Here the point is the wording.

Something like this works as a starting point: “Thanks for the brief. For one Reel and three Story frames with your link, my fee is ₹X (use your own figure). That covers the concept, shooting, editing and two rounds of changes, and the content stays on my account. If you would also like to run the Reel as a partnership ad or want exclusivity for a set period, I can quote that separately.”

Three points matter more than the amount. First, write the deliverables down: how many posts, which format, which day, how long it stays up. Second, list what is not included, so usage in ads and exclusivity are priced and not assumed. Third, say how many rounds of changes are included. When a brand says the budget is lower, cut the scope instead of the rate: fewer Story frames, no exclusivity, no ad usage. Our guide on influencer contracts lists what else to check before you sign.

This part is general information, not legal or tax advice. For your own case, ask a lawyer or a chartered accountant.

In India, the advertising self-regulator ASCI says a disclosure is needed when there is a material connection between you and a brand, and that this is not limited to money. Free or discounted products or other perks count, even if the brand never asked you to mention them. ASCI’s permitted labels include “Ad”, “Sponsored”, “Collaboration”, “Free gift” and the “Paid Partnership” tag on Instagram. The label must be hard to miss: ASCI says one only in your bio, at the end of a post or behind a “more” tap is likely to be missed. That is from ASCI’s 2024 influencer guidelines, which were opened for this post in October 2026.

On tax, the Income Tax Department’s pages could not be opened for this post, so no rate, threshold or deduction rule is stated here. Fees from brands are income, and a brand may ask for your PAN and bank details. Our posts on income tax and GST for creators cover the questions to take to an accountant.

To get paid on time, put the terms in writing before work starts. Examples of terms creators commonly ask for are a part advance for first-time brands, the balance a fixed number of days after posting, and a named person who approves the invoice. These are examples, not rules, and a brand may say no. Send an invoice the day you post, keep screenshots of the live post and the brief, and chase politely on the due date. Do not give raw files or extra deliverables until the agreed payment arrives.

DMFast is our product. It can answer DM keywords on an Instagram professional account, so a keyword such as COLLAB can reply with a short message that asks what the brand has in mind and then shares your media kit link once they answer. It does not find brands for you and it does not work with WhatsApp or personal accounts. Keep one place, such as your link-in-bio page, where the latest kit always lives.

• Open Insights and write down your last 30 days: reach, interactions and the audience breakdown you can see.
• Make a one-page media kit with only numbers you can show.
• List 20 brands you already use and find one named contact for each.
• Send five pitches this week, each with one concrete idea.
• Prepare your quote as a bundle, with exclusions and rounds of changes written out.
• Never pay to take part, and never share your login.
• Label every post with a material connection, and keep the brief and invoice together.