Becoming an influencer in Belgium.
Most advice about becoming an influencer comes from the United States and is about five-figure brand deals. That is not the reality of someone with 1,200 followers in Antwerp, Ghent or Hasselt. This guide describes the route that does work here: start small, start local, and be compliant from your very first collaboration.
Door Thierry Fondu, oprichter van Kollaborate · bijgewerkt op
Het korte antwoord.
Becoming an influencer does not start with more followers, but with one recognisable topic, a profile that reads like an offer, and a first collaboration with a business in your own neighbourhood. You do not need tens of thousands of followers: local businesses prefer nano accounts from roughly 500 to 10,000 followers, because those have a real audience in the right city. Rules do apply in Belgium from your first paid post: advertising must be recognisable with an unambiguous word, and anyone earning from it regularly must register with the company register.
What an influencer actually is today.
An influencer is someone with an audience that listens. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less. The word conjures travel and gift parcels, but the vast majority of collaborations in Belgium are about a restaurant that wants a full Friday, a hair salon launching a treatment, or a shop opening on a street where nobody knows it yet.
That is why the size brackets matter more than the word itself. Nano creators have a small but highly engaged audience that often lives in the same city. Micro creators reach more people and work more often with regular partners. Anything above that becomes a media channel with its own rates and agencies in between.
For anyone starting out, that is good news. You are not competing with accounts of a hundred thousand followers, because a business on the Kammenstraat has little use for those. You are competing on whether your audience lives nearby and whether your content looks well made.
How many followers you need.
There is no legal threshold. What does exist is the threshold platforms and businesses apply themselves. This is what the market looks like in Belgium.
Sleep de tabel opzij voor de andere kolommen
| Type | Followers | What businesses use them for |
|---|---|---|
| Nano | 500 to 10,000 | Local collaborations: hospitality, beauty, shops and events in the same city. Often paid in cash, a product, or a combination. |
| Micro | 10,000 to 100,000 | Recurring collaborations and ambassadorships, often with a fixed amount per month or per run of posts. |
| Macro and larger | More than 100,000 | Campaigns for large brands, usually through an agency, with contracts and exclusivity clauses. |
On Kollaborate you are welcome from roughly 500 real followers. Real is the key word: you connect your Instagram through the official connection, which means your number comes from Instagram itself and not from an input field.
The step-by-step plan.
Seven steps, in this order. Anyone who skips step four and emails brands straight away usually gets no reply.
- 01
Pick one topic you want to be known for.
Food in your city, hair and beauty, fitness, parenting, interiors, second-hand fashion. Not three at once. A business looks for someone who fits its product, and it can only see that if your profile is about one thing.
- 02
Make your profile read like an offer.
Put in your bio who you are, what you post about and which region you are in. A business in Mechelen wants to see within three seconds that you are in Mechelen. Add a way to reach you.
- 03
Post consistently before you think about collaborations.
A steady rhythm you can keep matters more than a high frequency you drop after two weeks. Businesses look at your last twelve posts, not at your best post from last year.
- 04
Build a small portfolio with your own work.
Make two or three pieces of content about places you genuinely like, without an assignment and without labelling them as advertising, because they are not. That is immediately your showcase when a business asks what you can do.
- 05
Put a price on your work.
Count in work, not in followers: preparation, filming, editing, publishing and the usage rights the business receives. Anyone without a price gets handed someone else’s.
- 06
Find your first collaboration where demand already is.
Cold emailing brands rarely works for small accounts. What does work: businesses in your neighbourhood that already work with creators, and platforms where businesses post an offer and you respond.
- 07
Sort your paperwork once it is no longer a one-off favour.
From the moment you earn from it regularly, that means registering with the company register and an invoice or expense note per collaboration. See the rules below.
What you can earn, and in what form.
Payment is not always cash, and that is not a consolation prize. A restaurant with thin margins rarely has two hundred euros lying around, but it does have a table for two that costs it little and gives you an evening out. As long as the agreement is clear upfront, that is a full deal.
On Kollaborate a business can offer five forms: cash, a product or service, a combination of both, a base amount with a performance bonus, or an ambassadorship across several months. You see upfront which form it is and what it is worth, and you can counter-propose if it does not add up.
What is a normal fee for a local collaboration? For hospitality in Belgium we work with roughly 80 to 150 euros per creator for a smaller account, in cash or in value. Treat it as a starting point rather than a rate: a run of four posts with exclusivity is not the same as one story.
One thing is not a detail: agree when you get paid. On Kollaborate the fee is fixed as soon as the collaboration starts and is released once you have delivered the content. Working outside a platform, put in writing what you deliver, when, and when the money lands in your account.
Mistakes almost every beginner makes.
Buying followers.
It shows immediately in the ratio between followers and comments, and platforms that check real figures will keep you out. You lose exactly what you are selling: credibility.
Working for free without an agreement.
A free product in exchange for content is fine, but fix what you deliver and what you get. Without an agreement, asking for three posts after one was agreed becomes entirely normal.
Hiding the advertising label among the hashtags.
That is precisely what the FPS Economy advises against. The label belongs immediately in view, not at the bottom between twenty hashtags.
Only writing about yourself in a pitch.
A business would rather read what is in it for them. One sentence on what you make, one on who sees it, one on what you propose.
Waiting for a round number.
The first collaboration rarely arrives at 10,000 followers. It arrives at the business where you are already a customer, on the day you dare to ask.
The Belgian rules: advertising, company register and VAT.
In Belgium advertising must always be recognisable as advertising, including on social media. The FPS Economy is specific: use unambiguous words, which in Dutch are reclame, publiciteit or advertentie and in French publicité, réclame or annonce. Terms such as sponsored, collaboration, partner or ambassador are explicitly discouraged, as are abbreviations like ad and adv.
The label also has to sit in the right place: immediately visible without clicking through, clearly legible, in the same language as your post, and not tucked away at the end or between the hashtags. Using Instagram’s Paid partnership label helps, but according to the FPS is often not enough on its own. This applies as well when you received no money but a free product or a free treatment.
Anyone who regularly posts advertising falls under the definition of an undertaking and must register with the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises. That includes making your company number, address and email address findable, for example through a link in your bio to a page holding those details. A one-off collaboration does not make you a business, an ongoing run does.
For the tax authorities, what you receive in kind counts too. A dinner, a treatment or a product received in exchange for content is income and not a gift. Whether you are a student, working on the side or full time mainly changes your social contributions, not the principle. Check your own situation with an accountant or a social insurance fund before your first paid collaboration rather than after.
Sources for the rules.
The rules above do not come from experience but from official communications.
- FPS Economy: content creators must clearly identify advertising
Recommended and discouraged labels, placement of the label, and the obligation to register with the company register.
- FPS Economy: influencers do not clearly identify advertising
Results of the Economic Inspectorate’s checks on Belgian content creators.
What your first collaboration looks like.
A business posts an offer: who they are, what they want, what fee comes with it and by when. You see that offer if you are nearby and fit the niche, and you respond with what you would make. If the fee does not match the ask, counter-propose instead of walking away.
If it clicks, you settle the details together: how many posts or stories, when you come by, when you publish and what the business may do with your content. Then you make the content, deliver it, and the fee is released. Afterwards you both leave a review, and that builds your reputation for the next application.
On Kollaborate a creator profile is free and you keep 100 per cent of your fee. You can have up to three open applications at a time. If you want to appear at the top and apply without limit, Creator Pro exists at 7.99 euros a month. The first 200 creators get two months of Creator Pro free with the code FIRST200, plus a founding badge that stays.
Veelgestelde vragen.
How many followers do you need to become an influencer in Belgium?+
Do I need a company number to be paid for content?+
How should I label a paid collaboration on Instagram?+
Does a free product or dinner count as income?+
What do you earn from a local collaboration?+
Does it cost anything to sign up as a creator on Kollaborate?+
Ready for your first collaboration.
Create a profile, connect your Instagram and see which local businesses have an offer open. Free, and you keep 100 per cent of your fee.