The Instagram economy is real: The influencer marketing industry is predicted to be a $5 to $10 billion dollar market by 2020. These billions go to the influencers you love to follow, for the affiliate links and sponsored Stories you see on your feed. But just how much can you make from influencing? In our new series My Insta Income, some of Instagram's biggest stars are (anonymously) sharing what that last Instagram ad they did paid for.
Today, we're talking to a former Bachelor contestant turned full-time influencer who visited the auto body shop.
The ad: “The last ad I did was an Instagram Stories campaign for an online resale site. It was about five to seven Story posts.”
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Paycheck: $4,000
Time involved: "About 15 minutes."
Getting the deal: "I have an agent who handles my brand collaborations, and I've done some of the deals on my own. You get the hang of it pretty quickly. It helps to talk to bloggers and other influencers. My agent has a general formula you can use based on your engagement to figure out how much you’re worth."
External costs: "One of my friends is a professional photographer, but we’re pretty good friends. Anytime I have an ad post that I need a professional photo for I just throw him $150, and he’ll come over and take a couple of pictures and edit them for me. My agent generally takes 15% but sometimes that’s built into the deal, which it was for this ad."
How I spent the money: “I did a lot of body shop repair on my car. My bumper had been falling off because I hit a bear — that’s a whole other weird story — and the suspension on my car was messed up, so basically I did a whole car makeover with that money. I think it all ended up coming out to $3,800.
“It was something I had been waiting to do for awhile, until I could afford it. After doing Instagram advertising, I’m pretty good with rent, so it was time to get some of these sort of chores done.”
Usual rate for Stories: “It just depends on the brand and what they’re asking from me. With bigger brands like the resale site, they have really exact specifications of how many slides, what hashtags you have to use, and how you have to include a swipe-up and specific directives of what you have to say for the ads. Those generally pay more — $3,000 to $4,000.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
“Sometimes I’ll do things with smaller brands, like swimsuit brands, for as little as $1,500 because they’re a little bit more natural and authentic, and they don’t necessarily have as many posting requirements.”
Usual rate for profile posts: "Again, it just depends on the brand. I’m doing a post for a small jewelry company but the only thing they asked me to do is mention their brand really naturally. 'Since everyone is gonna ask, this necklace is from blah-blah-blah.' That one I’ll be doing for $3,000, which is significantly less than normal. Whereas if I do a profile post and a Story for a brand similar to the resale site, I’ll charge $9,000."
The other ways I've spent my influencer income: "I’ve definitely just been eating out a lot more than normal. [I've done some] different home improvement stuff — buying new furniture and getting things framed. Since influencing is fairly new to me, I’ve been saving up money and checking off my to-do list of expenses I’ve been holding out on."
Are you making a living off of Instagram? We want to hear from you. Email us with your story.