Influencers Speak Honestly About How They Earn Money: Part 2
"I’m very happy with my rates, but sometimes I wonder if these brands would actually pay me more."
Twitter recently disabled retweets and other features on posts with Substack links. I am fortunate that I don’t use Twitter much and have not built the audience of this publication by relying on it in any way. But this is still terrible — being a professional writer is hard enough in 2023 without one of the top social media platforms conspiring against us. Anyway, Substack just launched a new Notes feature, which I’ve started posting to. I hope you’ll come find me there.
xo
Amy
This is the second part in a series about how influencers earn money. Read the first part here.
This series began as a personal quest to understand how influencers were valued in the marketplace in 2023. If I get frequent emails asking me to apply for campaigns paying $100 or $150 with, like, 15 requirements for each one, I wondered what others were being offered. (So in case any of you were worried I’d leave Substack for influencing, well, there you go.) What I learned is that every influencer earns different rates and rates are not standardized.
Today’s focus is TikTok fashion influencers. I’ll have a third part coming your way next week, and may keep it going as a recurring feature beyond that. So far, the response has been great. If you’re an influencer open to sharing how you get paid, reply to this email or DM me on Instagram.
All interviews have been edited and condensed.
Meytal Algranti AKA Fashion Mom
TikTok following: 1.1M
Instagram following: 124K
YouTube subscribers: 124K
Started as a content creator in 2017
I was never good in the picture-perfect grid on Instagram. When people actually get to know my personality, that’s what they follow.
In 2017, I started on Instagram. I was having not a great time in my life, I was a little depressed, so it was just for fun. I was posting Chiara [Ferragni] and other random fashion influencers, and just slowly getting a following. Every fifth post, if I was going out and I had an outfit on, I’d take a selfie, and those photos would do the best engagement-wise.
I didn’t even know that I wanted to make money with it. At that point, I had two babies, and I was just really ecstatic about getting on a PR list. My background is as a wardrobe stylist. At the age of 19, I was assisting other stylists. In my twenties, I became a stylist and worked on set for music videos; I even did prop styling. After having babies is when I felt like, I’ve got to keep busy and wanted to do something creative. I thought I’d get a job, but just kept doing this.
The money started coming in on YouTube and that’s when I thought, There’s money to be made here. Someone with 30,000 subscribers could be making more money than someone with 500,000 because someone could have a lot of subscribers but not get a lot of views. On months where I had a bigger video, I suddenly had way more [money from programmatic ads via] Google AdSense. One month I got $3,100 from Google AdSense. It was insane to me. I probably had around 30,000 subscribers.
Now, I won’t even do YouTube unless it’s sponsored only because it really is a lot of work and it’s very hard to be across three platforms, it’s really a lot of time. I had a YouTube deal with Urban Revivo which is a company that I really like a lot that was $6,500 for a two-minute integration a month and that lasted a whole year. But now TikTok is my top-earning platform.
I started on TikTok in early 2020. I used to post everything all the time, and I just don’t think that’s a strategy, so I started fine tuning my content, posting more the Fashion Mom angle. Sometimes I don’t feel like being Fashion Mom, so I’ll do a vlog or something eye candy-ish.
With Fashion Mom, I’m an actor. Fashion Mom is a mood. She is confident, she is off-the-cuff, she does not care if you like her or not, and she does not care if she offends you or not within reason. If I’m offending you over a pair of leggings, that’s on you. It’s Fashion Mom’s world and you’re just living in it.
I’m very happy with my rates, but sometimes I wonder if these brands would actually pay me more. I got a good [deal] from eBay, $22,000 for two TikToks. That’s the most I’ve ever been paid and they sent me two watches, a Rolex and a Cartier, so that’s mind-blowing.
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