How to Know If You Can Make Money As an Instagram Influencer
It’s tempting to quit your day-to-day job and create sponsored content on your Instagram timeline dedicated to trendy diuretic teas. At least it would if you had enough followers. Wait. You? Now, there is a website that can tell you exactly how close you really are to becoming an influencer.
Business Insider reports that Inkifi.com allows you to submit your Instagram handle and get an exact number of how much your post might be worth. Writer Rosie Fitzmaurice has added hers to the website, and with just about 400 followers, the sponsored post will net her about $ 2.35. Not very much, but the amount of money you can make is growing exponentially rather quickly.
Inkifi.com’s metrics are sourced from a report called The State of Influencer Marketing 2017 , which estimates that each subscriber is worth around $ 0.01. But Lisa Targett, general manager of Tribe, a UK-based company that links brands to influencers, told Business Insider that companies often look for more than just followers. You can buy them.
“Now the metric that brands need to look at is the cost of engagement – the cost of publishing divided by the number of comments, likes, and reposts, because anyone can buy reach these days,” Targett said.
While there are certainly people like Kim Kardashian with millions and millions of followers making a lot of money from posting, brands are also looking for people with 3,000 to 50,000 followers. Smaller influencers are more “powerful” because the people who interact with you likely have a sense of closeness, or what you focus on is more specific – vegan fitness, holistic dog care, plants. I personally follow a lot of people who post photos of plants and when they recommend buying a certain type of plant stands, I see them. For example, Hilton Carter, which has about 50,000 followers, including me:
The tribe also offered a rough estimate of what people can do, which is less specific than Infiki.com, but gives you an idea of where you need to get to in order to pay for the car:
3-10 thousand – 50-100 pounds sterling
10-25 thousand – 100-180 pounds sterling
25-50 thousand – 180-250 pounds sterling
50-100 thousand – 250-350 pounds sterling
100k + – £ 350 +
But beware: if you start making money from sponsored posts, you should tag them. The Guardian reports that brands and influencers have traded hugely, but Instagram personalities are starting to struggle with not using hashtags for their images like #ad or #spon, which has been a UK Advertising Standards FDA rule since 2014. In the US, the FTC has also pushed influencers to explicitly label their paid content:
FTC letters to celebrities reminding them of their commitments noted that many of the disclosures were not clear enough. “Many consumers will not understand that a disclosure like ‘#sp’, ‘Thank you [brand]’ or ‘#partner’ means the post is sponsored,” the post said.
This could mean that things are starting to change and how easy it is to get money in exchange for a cup of tea in front of the camera. So go there now.