How a paid partnership with Entrepreneur works, what it cost, and what it got: 26,000+ views for a video where some of the best-known entrepreneurs we knew answered one question.

Quick answer

You can pay to run a video on a major outlet’s own social page. In 2018, Influencer Press paid Entrepreneur $5,000 to run a 3-minute video on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page, labeled “Paid partnership.” We asked entrepreneurs one question, what it means to be an entrepreneur, and cut their answers together. It posted September 10, 2018, and has 26,210 views. That works out to about 19 cents a view. It was sponsored, not editorial. What we paid for was the placement on Entrepreneur’s page, not the views: no ad spend went behind the post, so the views came organically.

Key facts

Where it ranEntrepreneur’s official Facebook page
TierPaid, sponsored placement on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page. Not editorial coverage
Label”Entrepreneur with Influencer Press,” Paid partnership
PostedMonday, September 10, 2018, 12:25 PM Pacific
Length3 minutes 20 seconds
Cost$5,000
Views26,210 (as of November 4, 2026)
Reactions227 (as of November 4, 2026)
Cost per viewAbout $0.19 ($190.77 per 1,000 views)
Cost per reactionAbout $22
Cost per person featuredAbout $385 ($5,000 across the 13 entrepreneurs named)
FeaturedBedros Keuilian, Ed Mylett, Mitch Miller, Ben Lee, Stefano Mongardi, David Zhao, Steve Tan, Shadi Paterson, Jeff Samis, Gusten Sundovist, Wesley Virgin, Ryan Stewman, J. Trevor Chapman
Women featuredNone. That was my mistake

Watch on Facebook: What it means to be an entrepreneur, on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page

What is a paid partnership on a major outlet’s social page?

It’s sponsored content that runs on the outlet’s own channel instead of yours. You pay, the outlet posts it to its audience, and the platform labels it. On Facebook the label shows at the top of the post: “Entrepreneur with Influencer Press,” then “Paid partnership.” Anyone watching can see it’s sponsored.

On this video, the header reads “Entrepreneur with Influencer Press,” then “Paid partnership,” then the date: Monday, September 10, 2018 at 12:25 PM.

That label is the point. Sponsored content only becomes a problem when readers can’t tell it apart from editorial. A labeled paid partnership is a clear trade: you pay for reach on a trusted brand’s page, and the audience knows it.

Is a paid partnership on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page the same as being featured in Entrepreneur?

No. This was a sponsored placement on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page. Entrepreneur’s editors didn’t choose it. We paid for it to run, and the post says so. It isn’t an article on Entrepreneur.com, and it isn’t editorial coverage.

I called it what it was at the time. Eight days after it posted, I described it in an email as “a paid partnership with Entrepreneur.com.” The honest way to describe it now is the same: a sponsored video on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page.

Why did we pay instead of pitching?

Because paying controls the outcome. A pitch can get ignored, cut or rewritten. A paid placement runs. For a video featuring several clients at once, that certainty mattered more than whether an editor picked it.

The video was built to promote the people in it. Running it as a sponsored post meant it would go up on Entrepreneur’s page, in front of Entrepreneur’s audience, with all of them in it.

How did we make the video?

One question, many answers. We asked each person what it means to be an entrepreneur, then cut their answers into a single 3-minute piece. A single question works because every answer is different, and the contrast carries the video.

Who’s in it: Bedros Keuilian, Ed Mylett, Mitch Miller, Ben Lee, Stefano Mongardi, David Zhao, Steve Tan, Shadi Paterson, Jeff Samis, Gusten Sundovist, Wesley Virgin, Ryan Stewman and J. Trevor Chapman, several of them Influencer Press clients.

More than a dozen people, one question, 200 seconds. That’s less than 20 seconds each on average, which is why one question matters. There’s no time for a second one.

How did Entrepreneur describe the video?

The caption on Entrepreneur’s post opens with the hard part. It says entrepreneurship is hard, warns against believing it’s glamorous, and says most of the time it isn’t. Then it sets up the video as a closer look at what entrepreneurship really is: some of the top entrepreneurs of this generation, each answering what it means to be an entrepreneur.

What did $5,000 get?

26,210 views on Entrepreneur’s page as of November 4, 2026, and 227 reactions. That’s about 19 cents per view, or $190.77 per thousand views, and about $22 per reaction. Across the 13 entrepreneurs named in it, that’s about $385 per person. None of that $5,000 went to ads or boosting, so every view came from Entrepreneur’s own audience finding the post. It also gave every person featured a credible clip to share: a video on Entrepreneur’s own page with their name on it.

Entrepreneur.com’s Facebook Page Showing the Video We Paid For

What do the numbers mean?

Three things.

Most of the views came early. Our own records from November 2019 put the video at over 24,000 views, about 15 months after it posted. As of November 4, 2026, it has 26,210. That means no more than about 2,200 views came in the roughly seven years after that. A sponsored post on a social page does most of its work in its first months. After that, it’s mainly a link people can check.

Reactions were low compared with views. 227 reactions on 26,210 views is about 1 reaction for every 115 views, under 1%. People watched more than they engaged.

The cost per view is the easy number, not the whole number. At about 19 cents a view, the reach was cheap. What the views don’t measure is the clip each person kept, on Entrepreneur’s own page, eight years later.

How do you run a sponsored video on a major outlet?

  1. Decide what you want the video to do. Reach, credibility for the people in it, or both. In this story: both. The video went to Entrepreneur’s audience, and everyone in it got a clip on Entrepreneur’s page.
  2. Build it around one question. It keeps the edit tight and makes each answer stand out. In this story: “What it means to be an entrepreneur,” answered by more than a dozen people in 3 minutes 20 seconds.
  3. Feature people the audience already knows. Familiar faces stop the scroll. In this story: names like Bedros Keuilian, Ed Mylett and Ryan Stewman. Check who’s missing too. In this story, no women were in it.
  4. Agree on the label. It should run as a clearly marked paid partnership. In this story: the post reads “Entrepreneur with Influencer Press,” then “Paid partnership.”
  5. Measure it afterward. Views and cost per view tell you whether it was worth it. In this story: $5,000 for 26,210 views, about 19 cents each, with most of them in the first 15 months.

What would I do differently?

Include women. Eight days after it went up, on September 18, 2018, I wrote to someone I worked with at Business Rockstars:

“About a week ago I did a paid partnership with Entrepreneur.com to create a video on “What it means to be an Entrepreneur”.”

And then:

“I messed up in not including 1 single woman Entrepreneur.”

“So in this next one, I want to feature just women entrepreneurs. Is this something you’d be interested in?”

The next video I planned was going to feature only women entrepreneurs.

Is paying for placement worth it?

It depends what you’re buying. Here it bought a guaranteed spot on Entrepreneur’s own page, in front of its audience, and a clip every guest could use. The views themselves were organic. It didn’t buy editorial endorsement, and the label says so.

For this video, the reach came cheap at about 19 cents a view, and most of it came in the first 15 months. The clip is still up on Entrepreneur’s page in November 2026. What it didn’t buy was a mention by Entrepreneur’s editors, and it didn’t fix who I left out. That part was on me.

How does this fit how I think about paid media?

It’s the same approach I use now, and it’s written down on my methodology page. The principle there is that paid placement at outlets that disclose sponsored content as sponsored is the part of PR you can control. The timing, the framing and the placement belong to you and the client. The reader sees the disclosure and decides what to do with it. The story and the people still have to be real.

This video was that principle in 2018, years before I wrote it down. We paid for the placement, not the views. Entrepreneur labeled it “Paid partnership,” so nobody watching was misled about what it was. The people in it were real entrepreneurs answering a real question. And because the spot was ours, the video went up when it was supposed to, said what it was supposed to say, and is still on Entrepreneur’s page eight years later.

Split across the 13 entrepreneurs named in it, $5,000 came to about $385 each, for a video on Entrepreneur’s own Facebook page that each of them can still point to. Earned coverage can carry more weight when it lands, but none of it is guaranteed to run. The full policy on disclosure, and what we will and won’t do, is on my transparency page.

FAQ

About $385. The $5,000 placement covered the 13 entrepreneurs named in the video, and it’s still on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page eight years later.

Yes. In 2018, Influencer Press paid Entrepreneur $5,000 to run a video on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page as a labeled paid partnership.

What does “Paid partnership” mean on Facebook?

It means a brand paid the page to post the content. Facebook shows the label at the top of the post with both names.

How many views did the video get?

26,210 views as of November 4, 2026, about 19 cents per view on a $5,000 spend.

Is sponsored content the same as editorial coverage?

No. Editorial coverage is chosen by the outlet’s editors. Sponsored content is paid for and should be labeled.

How much does a sponsored video on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page cost?

The only price I can speak to is ours: $5,000 in 2018, for one 3-minute 20-second video posted September 10, 2018.

Who is in the “What it means to be an entrepreneur” video on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page?

Bedros Keuilian, Ed Mylett, Mitch Miller, Ben Lee, Stefano Mongardi, David Zhao, Steve Tan, Shadi Paterson, Jeff Samis, Gusten Sundovist, Wesley Virgin, Ryan Stewman and J. Trevor Chapman, several of them Influencer Press clients.

Were any women in the video?

No. Eight days after it posted, I wrote, “I messed up in not including 1 single woman Entrepreneur.” I planned a follow-up featuring only women entrepreneurs. I don’t have a record that it was made.

Did the views keep growing after the video posted?

Slowly. It was at over 24,000 views by November 2019 and at 26,210 on November 4, 2026. Nearly all of the views came in the first 15 months.

Is the video still on Entrepreneur’s Facebook page?

Yes, as of November 4, 2026, still labeled “Entrepreneur with Influencer Press” and “Paid partnership.”

Work with us

Influencer Press places founders and creators in major publications, on TV, on podcasts, on Times Square billboards and on stages, and makes sure what search engines and AI say about them is accurate. If you want help with any of it, you can apply to work with Influencer Press.

About the author

Ulyses Osuna founded Influencer Press at 19 and has run it for nearly a decade, placing founders and creators in major outlets, on TV, on podcasts and on Times Square billboards. He has appeared on The Dr. Phil Podcast, been a panelist on Nasdaq TradeTalks, and spoke at Harvard Kennedy School in 2026. More: about, methodology, transparency.

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