Press trips, glitzy parties, free products and massive fees. Its no wonder a career in social media is now the dream job for the majority of American teens. Yet in between the highlights are some very real-world concerns: longevity, ethics and authenticity.
In 2021 a YouGov survey found that the dream job for American teenagers was being a professional vlogger or YouTuber. Male or female, 9% of young people in the U.S. want to spend their life online outstripping careers like medicine, acting and legal.
Yet to achieve true stardom is a tricky balance to find, experts have warned, and even harder to sustain.
How much money do influencers make?
The average influencer earns $2,970 per month according to HypeAuditors Influencer Income Survey but thats only once you get through the micro influencer (10,000 followers) stage.
Those trying to build up their followings can expect to earn around $1,420 per month though some seem to bypass the mid-stage.
A recent example of an individual taking social media by storm is University of Miami student, Alix Earle. According to Social Blade, the New Jersey native has gained nearly three million followers across her platforms in the past 30 days, all while studying for her final semester in college.
Once the likes start rolling in there can be a temptation to forget your roots, warned Lucy Birchall, senior influencer marketing manager at U.K. agency Social Shepherd.
She added that staying true to your original audience is the key to bringing in the big bucks: If youre charging $10,000 or over for a post you need to have a huge audience thats super engaged and genuinely enjoys the content youre putting out.
We take into consideration a range of tools which tell us estimated audience split between male and female, age, demographic, location and things like engagement rate. Typically we say if someones got a 3% engagement rate thats good, and wed expect to see content created for our clients to achieve that sort of engagement.
If someones charging $50k for a post then theyve got to be super relevant to that brand and their audience generally needs to be really engaged. Alix Earle had a following before but she seems to have come out of nowhere and has really blown up. I wouldnt be surprised if in the U.S. she can charge a minimum of $40,000 for a single post.
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I think she needs to prove shes capable of keeping up this trajectory of growth in the next three to six months. She will definitely do it shes very much the girl next door, its like chatting to a sister.
To be sustainable content creators need to know their audience, the influencer expert added: Youve got to see yourself as a brand. Ask yourself: Who are my audience? What do they want to see, whats going to be relevant to them and whats going to be relevant to get new people to follow me?
It can be very tempting to suddenly see the dollar signs and take opportunities while you can, but if youre partnering with the wrong brands that your original audience isnt going to want to see then you can get those flash-in-the-pan moments.
Cancel culture is very real she added, and is one of the reasons why Luke Hodson, founder of London-based youth marketing specialist Nerds Collective, said creators need to focus on both commercial and ethical growth.
Hodson, who founded the company out of his garage in 2013 and was named among Forbes 30 under 30 for media in 2016, said: Simply being an influencer on social media isnt sustainable. If youre on one platform youre subject to the peaks and troughs of algorithms which have a massive impact. Then as new tech comes along youve got to try and get your audience to migrate to the new platform which can be really difficult.
The people who achieve this are what are what we call cultural insiders. Theyre not influencers, theyre people who move culture along whether thats music or fashion or entertainment. They create this community and then they need to work out how to monetize it. That could be creating a new platform or figuring out some way to gate their content so that people have to pay to view it. Youve got to work out how to go direct to your community.
He added the nature of social media works in opposition to well-being, for both the creator and their audience. Youve often got this group of angsty young people who want to fit in, or they want to stand out. Theyre very vulnerable to influence and then they get sucked into this algorithm bubble where they think everything they see is true.
Cultural insiders need to think of themselves the way brands do and establish a sort of code of conduct for how theyre going to operate ethically as well as commercially, so that theyre being looked after but theyre also looking after their audience.
There needs to be some sort of regulation or parameters, but that cant go as far as control because the free speech we see on these platforms is such a key part of democracy, he explained.
Protecting influencers from online trolls could be aided by verification, he added: A lot of the time when people sit anonymously behind a keyboard they can become quite Machiavellian, and getting them to verify who they are would go some way to reducing that.
Is being an influencer easy?
The simple answer is no, far from it.
Hannah Anderson is the managing direct of Kyma Media which represents talent like KSI, Soft White Underbelly and GKBarry, and said that creators have to build their careers on rented ground.
She said: This career is really hard work and can vanish overnight. Its easy to look at a ten-second video and think it took 60 seconds to just sit down and film, but creators have to have an element of psychology in thinking: How is this thumbnail going to land with my audience, will they stay engaged throughout this entire video, how can I creatively film this video or transitions?
And thats before you get to the fact that creators and influencers are self-employed. As well as filming, editing, uploading, replying to comments and engaging with viewers, theyve also got to manage accounts across platforms, manage their finances, their sales, their campaigns, their projects.
Something which is also being talked about a bit more is the mental toll this job can have on influencers. Its part of human nature to focus on negativity to some extent and even if you get a hundred positive comments, if you get one negative one it can be really hard not to dwell on it.
How long is an influencer career?
The average influencers career is around eight years long for a range of reasons, the experts explained.
To some extent thats because audiences grow up and influencers either struggle to stay relevant with younger audiences or lose touch with their original viewers. Other factors could include getting canceled, which many never come back from.
Platforms can also just turn you off at any point, said Anderson. Using the analogy of a painting, you can own a painting and hang it in your house but if your house is rented then you have to take that painting with you somewhere else you take your content to a different platform.
If you want to be an influencer my advice is to just start creating theres nothing wrong with just creating things for fun. Working in a creative career doesnt necessarily mean making videos, its a pathway which more and more people are starting to recognize.
