Are you listening? The Influencer.co team has a very important question to ask you… Would you love your dog more if he or she made you $15,000 a month?
Oh my goodness, you should be ashamed!
Don’t worry, we won’t tell Princess.
On a serious note, there is a dog that brings in its owner over $15,000 a month. Yes, that equates to $180,000 a year — just $9,000 below the average salary for a family-practice doctor.
We are sure you are wondering, who on God’s green earth is this wealthy sophisticated pooch you speak of?
His name is Bodhi, he is a slightly chubby Shiba Inu that enjoys slipping into super-stylish human clothes when his owner isn’t looking and he happens to be one of Instagram’s hottest influencers.
Influencer.co first featured him in 7 Creative Ways to Grow Your Influencer Business and our jaws have remained dropped ever since.
Anyways, we have noticed a question that everyone seems to be asking as of late — How much do social media influencers really make?
Sure, the Inu is raking in the big bucks, but what about us humans?
Show Me the Money
The career title, Social Media Influencer, is but a few years old. So, it is difficult to pinpoint just how much the average social media influencer is cashing in.
Influencer.co first featured him (Bodhi) in 7 Creative Ways to Grow Your Influencer Business and our jaws have remained dropped ever since.
Brands like Payless Shoes have been reported paying influencers up to $1,900 for a few blogs posts. Whereas, fashion influencers with large followings won’t even talk to brands that can’t afford to pay 6-digits.
Inc. Magazine attempted to create a formula that could calculate how much influencers could charge for an endorsement. Their range was $25-$75 per one thousand followers. This range depends on how niche their audience is and the level of follower engagement (likes and comments).
Let’s take a conservative stance and say an individual with a relatively engaged audience has 10,000 followers and charges $25 a post, tweet, etc.
Now, let’s say they don’t want to wear their audience out — so, they only post once a week.
10 x $25 = $250
$250 x 52 weeks = $13,000 a year.
Okay, so this certainly isn’t enough to live off of, but it most definitely can cover the grocery bill.
Take a moment and imagine what you could do with $13,000 in your pocket every year? You could finally afford to buy a motorcycle or perhaps that pet pony you have always wanted. If you were craving a $5 Starbuck’s Caramel Frappe, you could buy 2,600 of them.
Anyways, you get the point. It is a lot of money.
Wait, what was that? You want to make more money?
Show Me More Money: Influencers Making Over a Million Dollars a Year
If you were wondering, there are some influencers who are making millions of dollars a year. Actually, well above that. They are in a number of different industries, ranging anywhere from fashion to business.
Chiara Ferragni — Net Worth, $12,000,000
Chiara is a famous Italian Influencer who has built her large following, vast wealth and success through harnessing both Instagram and her blog, The Blonde Salad, which kind of sounds disgusting, but whatever.
Gary Vaynerchuck — Net Worth, $10,000,000+
Gary ‘Vee’ is an outspoken entrepreneur who is setting the industry on fire by sharing his message with his massive social following. Having built many businesses, The Wine Library and VaynerMedia, just to name a few, his entrepreneurial insight runs deeper than his pockets.
The Difficult Part About Making Money as an Influencer
While making money as an influencer is great, it’s not always easy. The power has always been in the advertisers hands, not the influencers. On top of this, it has always been a challenge for influencers to track down the right advertisers with the right products. Currently, most influencers only make money when brands or agencies approach them, or when their manager/agent lands a deal by approaching brands. This is highly limiting to their ability to generate income.
Influencer.co changes this dynamic, providing hundreds of thousands of products to choose from in a single place, short links and reports to measure and track progress, payment automation where every sale means additional commission. Whatever your level of influence is, it’s a tool that’ll grow with you.
