32 ms·

Just How Much Money Do “Influencers” Make?

203 points by pmcpinto 8y ago

sicnus 8y ago
So is an "Influencer" simply just another word for a YouTuber?
- freehunter 8y ago
  An influencer is someone with a strong social media presence, who has a large number of real human followers and the ability to "influence" the purchasing decisions of those followers. If Linus from Linus Tech Tips says not to buy the latest AMD Radeon X921gtstx, a large number of people won't buy it. That's an influencer.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    How do they measure their ability to "influence" the purchasing decisions of their followers? How do their clients calculate ROI?
    - Thersites 8y ago
      My understanding is that the metrics used to calculate ROI differ from client to client. It's more an art (or scam) than a science, with a ton of grey area. Whatever metric the client's boss is really into at the moment can be marketed hard and inflated using unverifiable data if needed. A lot of people are incentivised to tell the story that influencers provide value to brands. I believe that this is less and less true every day.
    - megaremote 8y ago
      Same as with any ad.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- yasp 8y ago
  "Social media personality"
  - frockington 8y ago
    That's my favorite The Bachelor/The Bachelorette "job" title
freehunter 8y ago
My wife and I are considered local "influencers" in our city by virtue of a local lifestyle blog we run and our social media presence. We're part of a local bloggers group, we get invited to tons of exclusive social events, we attend branded events, brands reach out to us directly for help with marketing. People and companies we interact with tend to assume we're making great money doing this. Brands tell us the dollar value of the event they're inviting us to as a way of apologizing for not paying us for it, and our followers sometimes seem to expect we're owned by a major brand or at least under contract. In reality, in the three years we've been doing this we've made a grand total of $38.50 in cash. Just like how people expect artists to work for "exposure", "influencers" (I really dislike the term, we're just local bloggers as a side project) are often expected to work for free or for perks. We've tried to collect cash for obvious advertisements we're asked to make, and nothing shuts a brand up faster than asking for payment. The reason for that, I'm speculating, is that when we ask to be paid, there are a dozen more "influencers" in the area willing to do it for a free sample of the product. We've since pretty much determined that we're doing this for fun and for the local influence/access and perks we get, and not for cash. We started as a hobby without the intent to make money, so it's not like we're losing anything. As an added benefit to this approach, we can afford to be super picky and only advertise the brands we actually enjoy using and the places we actually enjoy visiting. If a place/brand we hate asks us to promote them, well... we take cash or card. And 99% of the time, that's the end of the conversation. Too many people are willing to shill for free, which hurts anyone trying to do it for money.
- exelius 8y ago
  Buy a few thousand followers from a click farm and see if the responses start to change. That’s honestly the best way to establish yourself if you’re serious; everyone is defrauding everyone and nobody cares because they’re all getting rich.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    I've thought about it. It's a risk/reward thing, though. I like doing this, and I'd hate to be exposed as a fraud because then my passion project comes crashing down and what do I have left? I guess that's the downside to trying to make money from a hobby. Either it stays a hobby that you don't make money from, or it becomes a second job and stops being a hobby.
basseq 8y ago
> 96.5 percent of YouTubers don’t make enough annual ad revenue to reach the U.S. federal poverty line... $12,140. I'm surprised it's that low, honestly. May be a question of definition of a "youtuber", which I didn't see in the article. There's a long tail of "influencers" who actually make a living at it—and some a very good living—but I bet it's way less than 3.5%.
- dyarosla 8y ago
  Ad revenues only make up a portion (generally small portion) of influencers’ total revenue.
  - malchow 8y ago
    This. Many can soi-disant influencers attract sponsorship dollars, but some research we did in indexing Amazon links in product reviews is that the real earnings are in commissions resulting from consumer purchases.
    - basseq 8y ago
      Right, I'm not even talking about other revenue streams. In other words, what % of content creators on YouTube earn more than $10k/yr, even including other revenue sources? I bet it's less than 3.5%.
      - malchow 8y ago
        Yep. Although I would say the numbers (in % succeeding and in the absolute $ of their success) is much higher outside the walled garden of YouTube. You've got strong affiliate marketing programs, you've got retargeting ad companies, you have "sponsored editorial" copywriting, you have VSCO, etc. Overall the world of "advertising" is probably better than it's ever been. Every time I see a traditional 30 second TV spot these days (rare) it's like a flashback to the early 90s.
- iRideUnicornz 8y ago
  One also has to take into account other revenue streams that Youtubers will often have. Most channels nowadays will start up a Patreon account once they get a core following, and even a monthly dollar per Patron is more than all the adclicks that viewer would give. Merchandising is also big (1 T-shirt > 1000s of views), and bigger channels (100k+) can get a decent amount of revenue through sponsorship where they give in-video advertisements (like what Squarespace and a lot of VPNs do). After the instability of Youtube's ad platform this past year ("Adpocalypse 1, 2 and 3"), many on the platform have given up on the idea of depending solely on adclicks as it's just too risky to leave your future to the discretion of a black box algorithm.
paulwithap 8y ago
I can say from experience that an Instagrammer with 100k followers is unlikely to get anything near $2700 to post a photo. This was probably true several years ago, but these days the number is closer to $1000.
- dyarosla 8y ago
  I’m curious how brands come up with these numbers- is the ROI really that good?
  - freehunter 8y ago
    Basically the same way SV companies come up with their valuation. You ask someone to pay $1000, and if they say yes... that's the price. Now every company who asks the price is told $1000.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    The ROI used to be that good, and then the market became crowded and the consumers became more savvy. Now the ROI is worse, the advertisers start lowballing, and the content creators keep accepting (because rent is due and nobody else is offering any higher, sooooo)
    - paulwithap 8y ago
      This is spot on. It's just like any other marketing tactic - it works well until everyone else starts doing it. As for the pricing of posts, the lowballing is getting more and more dramatic, because there are many more "influencers" now. The only brands really shelling out are large corporations with large budgets looking for something very specific. Smaller brands can just reach out to a bunch of influencers offering only product in exchange for a post, and someone will say yes.
      - anoncoward111 8y ago
        Totally agree, thanks for writing :) I think we should all tread carefully here. In reality, monetizing content is not particularly easy and usually isn't ethical or sustainable.
wlkr 8y ago
I wonder whether the advertising reach of 'influencers' is due to the lack (or absence) of enforcement of advertising regulations. I don't know about the rest of the world but in the UK many 'influencers' certainly seem to skirt the line and the Advertising Standards Authority is increasingly paying attention [0]. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43470227 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43470227
dokein 8y ago
As far as anecdata goes, I know someone who makes around $800K a year even without some crazy-impressive a follower count on Youtube (around 600K). This is not factoring in free trips, etc. As with any commercial exchange, there's a lot of variables other than size of audience, including the composition of the audience, how good the channel is at moving a specific product, whether there are side-opportunities related to the main influencer role, how good of a B2B salesperson one is, etc. This particular person works as hard as anyone in a startup, around 100 hours a week, and treats it as such. She also happens to be pretty good looking which helps with the videos. It used to piss me off a little bit, given how hard I have had to work to get to this stage, but one can think of it as very similar to modeling with probably a similar income distribution too (and I seem to intrinsically understand that top tier models make a lot and am ok with it). My question is -- of all the people making a lot in their 20s and early 30s, how many are going to be making the same amount in their 40s and 50s? I suppose by then their peer generation will also be the same age so it's hard for me to project. I also expect it to be much more of a mature market at that time.
- freehunter 8y ago
  You're right that there are lots of variables. I'd imagine the ad revenue of Pewdiepie is far eclipsed by the sales of his merchandise. You're also right that looking good goes a long way on Instagram. People want to see good looking models. In the world of blogging, that's far less important. All the people in our bloggers group are decidedly average looking individuals, and their appearance doesn't change how much money they're able to make. Like you said, the main differentiation there is the ruthless business spirit. You have to play dirty to make it in the big leagues. I hope that we're not still following influencers when we're in our 40s and 50s. Kids will, of course, but they're not going to be influenced by 40 and 50 year old people on Snapchat. Save your income while you're young, it's not gonna last.
  - TheBeardKing 8y ago
    Young people seek new ideas and trends more for self discovery, to impress friends and potential partners, create new identities, etc. Once we're settled and established we don't seek new things as much and most things appear more mundane. I'll always look for aggregate opinions on reddit, tripadvisor, amazon, etc., but I doubt I'll ever find a single other person so much like myself to trust them for everything.
mullen 8y ago
This article missed discussing the real influencers: niche influencers. I follow a number of Sailing and Hiking YouTube vloggers and I know they aren't getting rich but it does allow them to keep doing what they love to do. Sailing Delos and Sailing La Vagabonde are the two power house sailing vloggers that make enough money off of Patreon, YouTube and sponsorships to keep sailing around the world and living a really great lifestyle. I know that Sailing La Vagabonde did well enough to get a good deal on a new catamaran, free clothes and bathing suits to keep them going for a long time. I would not be surprised if Sailing Delos got a good sponsorship from Amel boats to keep sailing for many many more years.
- busterarm 8y ago
  > good deal on a new catamaran You mean free? Notice how that channel hardly ever goes as in depth on major maintenance requirements as the other sailing channels do? It's all fun and adventure. Not to say that's wrong -- I enjoy watching that channel. There are soooo many sailing channels right now (I can think of at least 40 somewhat popular ones) and the vast majority of them are filming low quality content and sticking their hands out. Side note: If you want to gauge which channels aren't getting heavy sponsorship dollars, it's the ones that _almost always_ anchor vs tie up at the marina.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    > Side note: If you want to gauge which channels aren't getting heavy sponsorship dollars, it's the ones that _almost always_ anchor vs tie up at the marina. Can you explain this for someone who doesn't know anything about boats?
    - dhruvkar 8y ago
      To tie up at a marina, you usually need to pay the marina for the slip. To anchor, you just need an area where anchoring is okay, no need to pay anyone.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      Marinas generally charge by the foot (and sometimes additionally by the hull, as in 2x for catamarans). A one month tie-up in a marina will run you several hundred to several thousand dollars depending on the above factors, the location and the season. Anchoring is free, but then you need to come to shore in (and store) a dinghy Basically yachting is very expensive. A Panama Canal crossing in your pleasurecraft these days will run about $2k. Those youtube channels are basically lifestyle advertising -- some of those cruisers are heavily (financially) supported.
skumaster 8y ago
This thread seems like the perfect place to plug a side project. WP Commission (https://wpcommission.com https://wpcommission.com) is a WP plugin which helps influencers maximize affiliate revenue. The plugin makes sure all Amazon.com links are tagged with an affiliate tag - and we even follow, expand, and tag shortened amzn.to links as well. Additionally, we provide a shortcode which creates a carousel displaying products that have been linked to in prior posts. We've found that showing a pretty carousel can lead to substantial revenue improvements, especially when on the home page of a blog. WPC charges a token fee to keep the servers running, but anyone doing a few thousand in revenue should see a net profit from the service. At the end of the day, we're publishers who want to help quality content creators monetize so they can support themselves. We're putting together some case studies about sites who most effectively use the Amazon Associates program. The study is up here: https://medium.com/@sku_67047/how-kinja-earns-so-much-in-commission-revenue-af69d3e7a952 https://medium.com/@sku_67047/how-kinja-earns-so-much-in-com...
- malchow 8y ago
  I was a beta user and it is very good indeed.
jedberg 8y ago
It's very much a power law curve. There are a few at the top making most of the money, and pretty much no one else is. It's true for fake internet points too -- there are a few top users on reddit who have most of the karma.
- benatkin 8y ago
  I think it varies by industry, and would probably be hard to see the power law curve if not accounting for this. Paul Graham found that the #1 startup for art galleries in the 90s wasn't worth a whole lot. http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
CryoLogic 8y ago
YouTuber with 30k subs, 50k on twitter. Programming content. My sponsored offers from random marketing firms are almost always $100-$250 / video. Not sure how it scales up to larger channels.
akeck 8y ago
I've always wondered how accounting/taxes work for being a US-based influencer. If I'm comp'd a hotel room and meal in return for an IG feature, I assume I have to report the net dollar value of that somewhere. Doing that year 'round seems like an accounting mess, even with an accountant helping.
- smaddox 8y ago
  I'm not an accountant, but my understanding is that gift tax is paid by the gifter. I'm not sure if that applies to perks, though.
  - akeck 8y ago
    I think it could also be interpreted as a barter transaction. [1] [1] https://www.wicproject.com/ponderings/blog-taxes/ https://www.wicproject.com/ponderings/blog-taxes/
mlrtime 8y ago
Instagram influencer with 30k +150/day. Can confirm that it is difficult to get paid. I do get about $5k in premium products a year. I'm also picky on what I post to not dilute the feed with ads.
- justboxing 8y ago
  > 30k +150/day. What does this mean? You have 30K followers and are adding 150 new ones / day?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
perceptor 8y ago
Single datapoint: Asking rates from a young white attractive female with 65K+ Instagram followers https://megnoelheaton.com https://megnoelheaton.com
overcast 8y ago
I work for "free", posting beautiful photos of food, and cocktails on Instagram. In exchange I get fed, I get invited to every social event, every new restaurant opening, every special sit down, and I'm now well connected to every major player in the local food scene. When I release my new product(the reason for the last two years of work), I'll have that network to deploy it to.
- tropshop 8y ago
  Care to share your Instagram username? I don't see anything in your profile, but I am interested in the niche community/local business space, and how to drive customers to those places that I am proud to recommend.
jkuria 8y ago
Here is some info for YouTube celebs: https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/414/how-much-do-youtube-celebrities-charge-to-advertis.html https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/414/how-much-do-youtu...
netman21 8y ago
I read this since "influencer" is roughly the business I am in. While I use number of followers on Twitter to demonstrate my reach, I do not think of social media as the primary channel for influence. Tech industry analysts, bloggers, and writers are hugely influential and derive a living wage from their work. Other than Walt Mossberg I have not heard of anyone making seven figures.
degrews 8y ago
> “an influencer with 100,000 followers on Instagram can charge around £2,000 per picture (approximately $2,700), while celebrity influencers with between four million and 20 million followers can charge £5,000-£13,000 ($6,700-$17,500).” So 2.5x the price for 40x the reach? These numbers just don't seem to make sense.
- jtwebman 8y ago
  I agree I don't think they know how to do basic math.
Thersites 8y ago
This is a form that a high end hotel requires potential influencers to fill out when asking for free stuff. Cognitive dissonance generator. https://twitter.com/hels/status/954404411425607681 https://twitter.com/hels/status/954404411425607681
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Revenue is not ROI. I personally know someone with 500k YT subscribers and his / her eyes go blank when asked about less obvious KPIs. Their #1 strategy for increasing revenue is to spit out more content. Rat on a wheel doesn't feel like much of a biz model to me.
dwags 8y ago
influencers !== content creators
jtwebman 8y ago
I think their math is off. Flipping burgers at McDonalds full time in Portland, OR, USA would make you $19,240 a year.
erik_landerholm 8y ago
Omg, what a waste of time. I’m so glad almost no one is making money doing this stuff. Shill for free, shill for money, the shilling part is the common part.
rdiddly 8y ago
I don't know about anything else, but those three quoted Instagrams are perhaps the most tedious thing I've ever seen, and they make me feel sad inside.
sireat 8y ago
I wonder how does someone like KM Music on Youtube make money. They have near 400M views and 600k subscribers but all their videos use big commercial pop hits. Do they actually get a cut or does all the ad revenue flow to music authors and Youtube?

203 points by pmcpinto 8y ago

sicnus 8y ago

So is an "Influencer" simply just another word for a YouTuber?

freehunter 8y ago
An influencer is someone with a strong social media presence, who has a large number of real human followers and the ability to "influence" the purchasing decisions of those followers. If Linus from Linus Tech Tips says not to buy the latest AMD Radeon X921gtstx, a large number of people won't buy it. That's an influencer.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  How do they measure their ability to "influence" the purchasing decisions of their followers? How do their clients calculate ROI?
  - Thersites 8y ago
    My understanding is that the metrics used to calculate ROI differ from client to client. It's more an art (or scam) than a science, with a ton of grey area. Whatever metric the client's boss is really into at the moment can be marketed hard and inflated using unverifiable data if needed. A lot of people are incentivised to tell the story that influencers provide value to brands. I believe that this is less and less true every day.
  - megaremote 8y ago
    Same as with any ad.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yasp 8y ago
"Social media personality"
- frockington 8y ago
  That's my favorite The Bachelor/The Bachelorette "job" title

freehunter 8y ago

My wife and I are considered local "influencers" in our city by virtue of a local lifestyle blog we run and our social media presence. We're part of a local bloggers group, we get invited to tons of exclusive social events, we attend branded events, brands reach out to us directly for help with marketing. People and companies we interact with tend to assume we're making great money doing this. Brands tell us the dollar value of the event they're inviting us to as a way of apologizing for not paying us for it, and our followers sometimes seem to expect we're owned by a major brand or at least under contract. In reality, in the three years we've been doing this we've made a grand total of $38.50 in cash. Just like how people expect artists to work for "exposure", "influencers" (I really dislike the term, we're just local bloggers as a side project) are often expected to work for free or for perks. We've tried to collect cash for obvious advertisements we're asked to make, and nothing shuts a brand up faster than asking for payment. The reason for that, I'm speculating, is that when we ask to be paid, there are a dozen more "influencers" in the area willing to do it for a free sample of the product. We've since pretty much determined that we're doing this for fun and for the local influence/access and perks we get, and not for cash. We started as a hobby without the intent to make money, so it's not like we're losing anything. As an added benefit to this approach, we can afford to be super picky and only advertise the brands we actually enjoy using and the places we actually enjoy visiting. If a place/brand we hate asks us to promote them, well... we take cash or card. And 99% of the time, that's the end of the conversation. Too many people are willing to shill for free, which hurts anyone trying to do it for money.

exelius 8y ago
Buy a few thousand followers from a click farm and see if the responses start to change. That’s honestly the best way to establish yourself if you’re serious; everyone is defrauding everyone and nobody cares because they’re all getting rich.
- freehunter 8y ago
  I've thought about it. It's a risk/reward thing, though. I like doing this, and I'd hate to be exposed as a fraud because then my passion project comes crashing down and what do I have left? I guess that's the downside to trying to make money from a hobby. Either it stays a hobby that you don't make money from, or it becomes a second job and stops being a hobby.

basseq 8y ago

> 96.5 percent of YouTubers don’t make enough annual ad revenue to reach the U.S. federal poverty line... $12,140. I'm surprised it's that low, honestly. May be a question of definition of a "youtuber", which I didn't see in the article. There's a long tail of "influencers" who actually make a living at it—and some a very good living—but I bet it's way less than 3.5%.

dyarosla 8y ago
Ad revenues only make up a portion (generally small portion) of influencers’ total revenue.
- malchow 8y ago
  This. Many can soi-disant influencers attract sponsorship dollars, but some research we did in indexing Amazon links in product reviews is that the real earnings are in commissions resulting from consumer purchases.
  - basseq 8y ago
    Right, I'm not even talking about other revenue streams. In other words, what % of content creators on YouTube earn more than $10k/yr, even including other revenue sources? I bet it's less than 3.5%.
    - malchow 8y ago
      Yep. Although I would say the numbers (in % succeeding and in the absolute $ of their success) is much higher outside the walled garden of YouTube. You've got strong affiliate marketing programs, you've got retargeting ad companies, you have "sponsored editorial" copywriting, you have VSCO, etc. Overall the world of "advertising" is probably better than it's ever been. Every time I see a traditional 30 second TV spot these days (rare) it's like a flashback to the early 90s.
iRideUnicornz 8y ago
One also has to take into account other revenue streams that Youtubers will often have. Most channels nowadays will start up a Patreon account once they get a core following, and even a monthly dollar per Patron is more than all the adclicks that viewer would give. Merchandising is also big (1 T-shirt > 1000s of views), and bigger channels (100k+) can get a decent amount of revenue through sponsorship where they give in-video advertisements (like what Squarespace and a lot of VPNs do). After the instability of Youtube's ad platform this past year ("Adpocalypse 1, 2 and 3"), many on the platform have given up on the idea of depending solely on adclicks as it's just too risky to leave your future to the discretion of a black box algorithm.

paulwithap 8y ago

I can say from experience that an Instagrammer with 100k followers is unlikely to get anything near $2700 to post a photo. This was probably true several years ago, but these days the number is closer to $1000.

dyarosla 8y ago
I’m curious how brands come up with these numbers- is the ROI really that good?
- freehunter 8y ago
  Basically the same way SV companies come up with their valuation. You ask someone to pay $1000, and if they say yes... that's the price. Now every company who asks the price is told $1000.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  The ROI used to be that good, and then the market became crowded and the consumers became more savvy. Now the ROI is worse, the advertisers start lowballing, and the content creators keep accepting (because rent is due and nobody else is offering any higher, sooooo)
  - paulwithap 8y ago
    This is spot on. It's just like any other marketing tactic - it works well until everyone else starts doing it. As for the pricing of posts, the lowballing is getting more and more dramatic, because there are many more "influencers" now. The only brands really shelling out are large corporations with large budgets looking for something very specific. Smaller brands can just reach out to a bunch of influencers offering only product in exchange for a post, and someone will say yes.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      Totally agree, thanks for writing :) I think we should all tread carefully here. In reality, monetizing content is not particularly easy and usually isn't ethical or sustainable.

wlkr 8y ago

I wonder whether the advertising reach of 'influencers' is due to the lack (or absence) of enforcement of advertising regulations. I don't know about the rest of the world but in the UK many 'influencers' certainly seem to skirt the line and the Advertising Standards Authority is increasingly paying attention [0]. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43470227 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43470227

dokein 8y ago

As far as anecdata goes, I know someone who makes around $800K a year even without some crazy-impressive a follower count on Youtube (around 600K). This is not factoring in free trips, etc. As with any commercial exchange, there's a lot of variables other than size of audience, including the composition of the audience, how good the channel is at moving a specific product, whether there are side-opportunities related to the main influencer role, how good of a B2B salesperson one is, etc. This particular person works as hard as anyone in a startup, around 100 hours a week, and treats it as such. She also happens to be pretty good looking which helps with the videos. It used to piss me off a little bit, given how hard I have had to work to get to this stage, but one can think of it as very similar to modeling with probably a similar income distribution too (and I seem to intrinsically understand that top tier models make a lot and am ok with it). My question is -- of all the people making a lot in their 20s and early 30s, how many are going to be making the same amount in their 40s and 50s? I suppose by then their peer generation will also be the same age so it's hard for me to project. I also expect it to be much more of a mature market at that time.

freehunter 8y ago
You're right that there are lots of variables. I'd imagine the ad revenue of Pewdiepie is far eclipsed by the sales of his merchandise. You're also right that looking good goes a long way on Instagram. People want to see good looking models. In the world of blogging, that's far less important. All the people in our bloggers group are decidedly average looking individuals, and their appearance doesn't change how much money they're able to make. Like you said, the main differentiation there is the ruthless business spirit. You have to play dirty to make it in the big leagues. I hope that we're not still following influencers when we're in our 40s and 50s. Kids will, of course, but they're not going to be influenced by 40 and 50 year old people on Snapchat. Save your income while you're young, it's not gonna last.
- TheBeardKing 8y ago
  Young people seek new ideas and trends more for self discovery, to impress friends and potential partners, create new identities, etc. Once we're settled and established we don't seek new things as much and most things appear more mundane. I'll always look for aggregate opinions on reddit, tripadvisor, amazon, etc., but I doubt I'll ever find a single other person so much like myself to trust them for everything.

mullen 8y ago

This article missed discussing the real influencers: niche influencers. I follow a number of Sailing and Hiking YouTube vloggers and I know they aren't getting rich but it does allow them to keep doing what they love to do. Sailing Delos and Sailing La Vagabonde are the two power house sailing vloggers that make enough money off of Patreon, YouTube and sponsorships to keep sailing around the world and living a really great lifestyle. I know that Sailing La Vagabonde did well enough to get a good deal on a new catamaran, free clothes and bathing suits to keep them going for a long time. I would not be surprised if Sailing Delos got a good sponsorship from Amel boats to keep sailing for many many more years.

busterarm 8y ago
> good deal on a new catamaran You mean free? Notice how that channel hardly ever goes as in depth on major maintenance requirements as the other sailing channels do? It's all fun and adventure. Not to say that's wrong -- I enjoy watching that channel. There are soooo many sailing channels right now (I can think of at least 40 somewhat popular ones) and the vast majority of them are filming low quality content and sticking their hands out. Side note: If you want to gauge which channels aren't getting heavy sponsorship dollars, it's the ones that _almost always_ anchor vs tie up at the marina.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  > Side note: If you want to gauge which channels aren't getting heavy sponsorship dollars, it's the ones that _almost always_ anchor vs tie up at the marina. Can you explain this for someone who doesn't know anything about boats?
  - dhruvkar 8y ago
    To tie up at a marina, you usually need to pay the marina for the slip. To anchor, you just need an area where anchoring is okay, no need to pay anyone.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Marinas generally charge by the foot (and sometimes additionally by the hull, as in 2x for catamarans). A one month tie-up in a marina will run you several hundred to several thousand dollars depending on the above factors, the location and the season. Anchoring is free, but then you need to come to shore in (and store) a dinghy Basically yachting is very expensive. A Panama Canal crossing in your pleasurecraft these days will run about $2k. Those youtube channels are basically lifestyle advertising -- some of those cruisers are heavily (financially) supported.

skumaster 8y ago

This thread seems like the perfect place to plug a side project. WP Commission (https://wpcommission.com https://wpcommission.com) is a WP plugin which helps influencers maximize affiliate revenue. The plugin makes sure all Amazon.com links are tagged with an affiliate tag - and we even follow, expand, and tag shortened amzn.to links as well. Additionally, we provide a shortcode which creates a carousel displaying products that have been linked to in prior posts. We've found that showing a pretty carousel can lead to substantial revenue improvements, especially when on the home page of a blog. WPC charges a token fee to keep the servers running, but anyone doing a few thousand in revenue should see a net profit from the service. At the end of the day, we're publishers who want to help quality content creators monetize so they can support themselves. We're putting together some case studies about sites who most effectively use the Amazon Associates program. The study is up here: https://medium.com/@sku_67047/how-kinja-earns-so-much-in-commission-revenue-af69d3e7a952 https://medium.com/@sku_67047/how-kinja-earns-so-much-in-com...

malchow 8y ago
I was a beta user and it is very good indeed.

jedberg 8y ago

It's very much a power law curve. There are a few at the top making most of the money, and pretty much no one else is. It's true for fake internet points too -- there are a few top users on reddit who have most of the karma.

benatkin 8y ago
I think it varies by industry, and would probably be hard to see the power law curve if not accounting for this. Paul Graham found that the #1 startup for art galleries in the 90s wasn't worth a whole lot. http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html
deleted 8y ago
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CryoLogic 8y ago

YouTuber with 30k subs, 50k on twitter. Programming content. My sponsored offers from random marketing firms are almost always $100-$250 / video. Not sure how it scales up to larger channels.

akeck 8y ago

I've always wondered how accounting/taxes work for being a US-based influencer. If I'm comp'd a hotel room and meal in return for an IG feature, I assume I have to report the net dollar value of that somewhere. Doing that year 'round seems like an accounting mess, even with an accountant helping.

smaddox 8y ago
I'm not an accountant, but my understanding is that gift tax is paid by the gifter. I'm not sure if that applies to perks, though.
- akeck 8y ago
  I think it could also be interpreted as a barter transaction. [1] [1] https://www.wicproject.com/ponderings/blog-taxes/ https://www.wicproject.com/ponderings/blog-taxes/

mlrtime 8y ago

Instagram influencer with 30k +150/day. Can confirm that it is difficult to get paid. I do get about $5k in premium products a year. I'm also picky on what I post to not dilute the feed with ads.

justboxing 8y ago
> 30k +150/day. What does this mean? You have 30K followers and are adding 150 new ones / day?

deleted 8y ago

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perceptor 8y ago

Single datapoint: Asking rates from a young white attractive female with 65K+ Instagram followers https://megnoelheaton.com https://megnoelheaton.com

overcast 8y ago

I work for "free", posting beautiful photos of food, and cocktails on Instagram. In exchange I get fed, I get invited to every social event, every new restaurant opening, every special sit down, and I'm now well connected to every major player in the local food scene. When I release my new product(the reason for the last two years of work), I'll have that network to deploy it to.

tropshop 8y ago
Care to share your Instagram username? I don't see anything in your profile, but I am interested in the niche community/local business space, and how to drive customers to those places that I am proud to recommend.

jkuria 8y ago

Here is some info for YouTube celebs: https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/414/how-much-do-youtube-celebrities-charge-to-advertis.html https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/414/how-much-do-youtu...

netman21 8y ago

I read this since "influencer" is roughly the business I am in. While I use number of followers on Twitter to demonstrate my reach, I do not think of social media as the primary channel for influence. Tech industry analysts, bloggers, and writers are hugely influential and derive a living wage from their work. Other than Walt Mossberg I have not heard of anyone making seven figures.

degrews 8y ago

> “an influencer with 100,000 followers on Instagram can charge around £2,000 per picture (approximately $2,700), while celebrity influencers with between four million and 20 million followers can charge £5,000-£13,000 ($6,700-$17,500).” So 2.5x the price for 40x the reach? These numbers just don't seem to make sense.

jtwebman 8y ago
I agree I don't think they know how to do basic math.

Thersites 8y ago

This is a form that a high end hotel requires potential influencers to fill out when asking for free stuff. Cognitive dissonance generator. https://twitter.com/hels/status/954404411425607681 https://twitter.com/hels/status/954404411425607681

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Revenue is not ROI. I personally know someone with 500k YT subscribers and his / her eyes go blank when asked about less obvious KPIs. Their #1 strategy for increasing revenue is to spit out more content. Rat on a wheel doesn't feel like much of a biz model to me.

dwags 8y ago

influencers !== content creators

jtwebman 8y ago

I think their math is off. Flipping burgers at McDonalds full time in Portland, OR, USA would make you $19,240 a year.

erik_landerholm 8y ago

Omg, what a waste of time. I’m so glad almost no one is making money doing this stuff. Shill for free, shill for money, the shilling part is the common part.

rdiddly 8y ago

I don't know about anything else, but those three quoted Instagrams are perhaps the most tedious thing I've ever seen, and they make me feel sad inside.

sireat 8y ago

I wonder how does someone like KM Music on Youtube make money. They have near 400M views and 600k subscribers but all their videos use big commercial pop hits. Do they actually get a cut or does all the ad revenue flow to music authors and Youtube?