In this post we’ll cover how to make money as a social media influencer.
By the middle of 2020 it’s been estimated that half of the world’s population will be using some form of social media. That’s around 3.6 billion people spread across every continent uploading, liking, following, commenting, sharing and subscribing every day. For most people, social media is amongst the most convenient ways of staying connected with our friends and family. On the flip side, it provides businesses from small scale retailers and start ups to the big tech giants the perfect means of communicating directly with their target market. This in turn has given rise to the social media influencer, a new breed of dot-com celebrity for the digital age.
Getting paid to use social media seems like a pipe-dream for the average user but, with time and commitment, monetizing your accounts and influencing peoples’ buying habits is a realistic and achievable goal. If you’re serious about becoming a social media influencer, it’s important to understand exactly what it is and what the role entails. After all, putting yourself into the public eye has its advantages but can be simultaneously testing.
How to Make Money as a Social Media Influencer
What is an influencer?
We’ve all seen social media posts from our favorite actors, sportsmen or women and musicians in which they plug a product or advertise a service through a paid partnership. Essentially, this is influencer marketing in a nutshell; businesses utilizing the scope of somebody’s online following to generate not only interest in their brand but also credibility.
However, not all social media influencers are bred in Hollywood – Influencers are active in almost every market imaginable and finding a suitable niche is crucial to becoming successful. Similarly, influencers need a specialist knowledge or a pre-established background in their niche in order to create a credible sales relationship with their audience. For example, it wouldn’t make sense for an influencer with no expertise in skateboarding to represent a skating brand whereas a professional skater’s audience would be a more realistic representation of the target market.
There are different types of influencer and we can categorize them by the scope of their audience.
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers are people with over 1 million followers on a single social media platform and often have a pre-existing celebrity; think pop stars and elite athletes. Their potential market reach is incredibly valuable and a single post can be extremely profitable for a mega influencer. It’s for this precise reason that mega influencers are more likely to promote the products of huge multi-nationals or occasionally show support for their passion projects.
Macro Influencers
There are different tiers within the sphere of what constitutes a macro influencer, but typically we can define a macro influencer as anyone with between 50,000 and 1 million followers. They’re a great option for mid-sized brands as their services aren’t as expensive as mega influencers yet they still have a huge reach to a wide and diverse audience. Macro influencers don’t always have a celebrity status and more often than not they’re social media users who have built their profile from the ground up with engaging and entertaining content. They may be YouTubers and bloggers who have been in the game for a while, giving them the time to grow their following
Micro Influencers
For brands looking to promote their products in a specific market, micro influencers provide an affordable and reliable solution. With between 2000 and 50,000 followers their market reach isn’t huge, but generally micro-influencers will have an expertise in their area and a strong relationship with their subscribers meaning a high engagement rate. The more that an audience engages with the content, the higher the chances of generating interest and sales. It’s this level of authenticity that makes micro influencers an attractive prospect for business. Having someone credible with expertise and an organic following can provide brands with a stronger stream of revenue than other influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers.
Becoming an influencer
In order to become an influencer, you’re going to need to work at it and follow a few critical steps and before starting out, it’s important to remember that it won’t happen overnight. As with any project, dedication and patience are going to be your allies. Here’s what you’ll need to do:
- Find your speciality.
Choosing your area of expertise should be relatively simple. Whatever you’re passionate about, whether it’s music, sport, film, beauty, fashion, gaming or something else completely can be utilized as your niche. Choosing something that excites you will make the rest of your journey into influencer marketing easier. If you choose to post about something that you don’t find interesting, it’s going to become a chore and you’ll be less likely to succeed. - Choose your platforms.
Finding the most suitable platforms to deliver your content is incredibly important. You’re going to need to base your choice around your skill set, for example if you’ve got a good grasp of video editing then creating a YouTube channel could be the best place to start. However, if you’re camera shy, appearing in video clips might not be the most effective strategy. If photography’s your bag, then creating beautiful content for Instagram is a sure-fire way to increase your chances of becoming an influencer. - Develop a strong profile.
It sounds fairly obvious, but choosing a suitable profile picture and writing an engaging bio will affect the success of your venture. Make sure your bio is snappy yet informative and use it to link in any other potential sales channels such as blogs.
- Create content.
Don’t be hasty in your content creation. Taking your time editing videos or toning photographs can be the crucial when optimising your chances of engagement. Take advantage of the wide range of apps and content editing software available online and in your app marketplace. Creating beautiful content is one thing but don’t forget to keep it relevant to your niche. Check out Canva for easy to use, drag and drop content creation. - Be consistent.
Producing regular posts, videos or stories is going to keep your audience engaged and help build a relationship with them. The influencer market is growing every minute with more and more people trying to break through, so irregular activity will lose the attention of your followers. However, consistency is key to keeping a strong foothold in the marketplace. - Build relationships with your followers.
There’s a few ways that you can keep your followers engaged with your profile. Asking questions will allow your audience to directly interact with you and your content and will send your engagement levels through the roof making you more desirable for potential marketing collaborations. - Do your research
Setting up your account as a business account, or switching to a business account will give you access to audience analytics. This data is a great help when planning future posts – by knowing which hashtags have been worked successfully and having a good understanding of the demographics of your engagements, you’ll be able to tailor future posts to optimise their engagement potential.
How do I make money as a social influencer?
So you’ve developed your profile, created some beautiful content and you’re generating a hive of dedicated followers. The next step is to turn your profile into a revenue stream. In order to do so, you’re going to need to choose a specific strategy to start generating income. Your method is going to depend on the social media platform that you’ve chosen and some methods are going to require a pro-active attitude whilst others will be more passive.
- Create branded content.
Branded content comes in the form or organic content from an influencer which features a product or a service of a business in their social media posts. Essentially, you’ll be getting paid to plug a business to your followers through product placement. These are the kind of posts we see on Instagram that are labelled as ‘paid partnership with…’ - Become a brand ambassador.
If you’ve had a few gigs successfully collaborating with companies to create branded content or you’re profile looks like it would fit in nicely with a brand’s image, you might be offered the chance to become a brand ambassador. This involves getting regularly paid through promoting a brand’s image much in the same way that an athlete would be sponsored for exclusively wearing one brand of sneakers. However, it may begin through receiving freebies from your sponsors before becoming a job with a salary. - Online Ads.
If you’ve got a YouTube channel with a large following, you’ll be able to start earning money through ad revenue. This comes in the form of those banners that appear within videos. The more subscribers you have, the higher the chance of generating money. If you’ve got a blog linked to your social media accounts, it can also be a great space to place adverts and provide an easy side earner. - Affiliate Marketing.
By promoting a brand through affiliate links, you’ll basically become a sales agent making a commission on any purchases made through your referral. Affiliate marketing requires you to partner with appropriate brands. Base your choices on the attitudes of your followers to maximise your potential earnings. - Webinars.
Hosting a live event online in order to teach or explain something to your followers is a great way to plug a product. If you’ve got enough people watching live, or even after the recording, brands may pay you to simply mention or actively plug and review a product. - Digital products.
If you’ve got a large social media presence, it might be worth creating a selling digital products. These can be anything from e-books and work-out plans to ‘how-to’ guides. If you’ve got the expertise, it’s completely viable to share your knowledge with your followers and, in doing so, create a fresh stream of revenue. - Sponsored blogging.
How often have you seen ‘link in bio’ when scrolling through social media posts? Often these links re-direct you to an influencer’s personal blog or website where they may have been paid to create a sponsored post. These sponsored posts are a great means of reviewing products or creating back-links to a brand or product’s web page.
Promoting yourself
It’s important to remember that simply creating a profile and producing content isn’t going to start earning you money. You’re going to need to actively look for brands to collaborate with and gain a reputation as a professional before brands start approaching you.
Outreach is key to your success, so don’t be afraid to directly approach companies through your social media platform or email to promote yourself. Be sure to outline why working with you will benefit them, after all that’s what they’re looking for. As a rule, you should approach brands that best represent your outlook, ethics and style.
Another great way of promoting your social media profiles to potential brands is through influencer market platforms which link businesses to the most suitable influencers. These platforms work like employment agencies and provide businesses with detailed data about potential influencers to best match them and saves influencers time in the outreach process.
Final Thoughts
The influencer market is constantly growing and more and more opportunities for collaborations between brands and influencers are being generated all the time. Would-be influencers need to be pro-active and savvy in order to succeed but by following the steps listed above and putting in the work, anyone can start their journey to making money from their social media profiles.
It’s important to remember that influencing doesn’t need to be a full-time gig, it can also be a sweet side hustle done on top of other jobs. The beauty of influencing is in the broadness of niches that it covers – there really is potential for anyone anywhere in the world to become an influencer, so whatever your passion is, you can get into the game and start working with brands that you care about and want to represent because they really mean something to you.
We hope you enjoyed this post on how to make money as a social media influencer. Let us know in the comments below any feedback you have!
