I’ve seen countless posts (and I’m sure you have, too) all about how to become an influencer. So many of these posts focus on likes and followers and while those are great, you also deserve to make an income. I grew up in a small town and came from no money. I was living in a trailer park, counting my quarters in 2014. However, in 2015 I started my journey to become an online content creator and have never looked back. I have consistently made 6 figures for the past three years and have since grown an online audience of 1.7 million monthly viewers on my Pinterest, 330,000 YouTube subscribers, 60,000 Instagram followers, and 40,000 Tik Tok Followers. I moved from my small town in Georgia to Los Angeles, California, and just recently moved to New York City. I’ve been able to do things I never dreamed of. And I’m so grateful for my beautiful, supportive online community.
And guess what!? If I can do it, you can do it. You deserve this financial abundance, while sharing your passions online. Here are my biggest tips for making an amazing income while making an impact.
- DON’T niche yourself. Woah, not the typical statement you hear about growing an audience. However, when you put yourself into a small box it becomes hard to keep an audience for a long time. Everyone’s interests change and the problem they are trying to solve will also change. When you diversify your topics, you keep the interest of your audience and have a better chance at your audience becoming attached to YOU. You also can take many more types of brand deals. There are only so many brand deals for each niche, but when you aren’t super specific, you take advantage of being able to share a wide array of products.
- Diversify in your platforms! The more places you are, the more brand deals you can be offered. Also, it’s a much faster way to grow. If you only have Instagram, you only have so many chances to be found. Each platform is a funnel for a new audience! Worried about creating too much content if you are posting on all platforms?
- Create less content and start to market more. Burnout is real. And when you are constantly creating, it can become exhausting trying to think of new ideas. I cut down my content creation by about 70% and instead started marketing more. I share everything to Pinterest and repurpose content to ALL platforms. You can turn captions into blog posts, the audio from a youtube video into a podcast, tik toks to reels, etc! Marketing is where growth happens and it gives you a chance to chill the F out and let your creativity come back naturally.
- High-quality content = higher-paying brand deals. Lately, it seems like most people are ditching their DSLR cameras for iPhones to be more relatable. I did it, too. I’ll admit, it was fun and a lot easier. However, this is my job and I definitely have to treat it like one. Obviously, it’s not all about the money. If I lost all money doing this, I would still do it. Because I love it. However, as of now, brand deals play a big part in my income. Brands will easily pay more for DSLR quality photos/videos than they will a simple iPhone picture. When I was shooting with my iPhone I was being offered around $1000 for an Instagram post and $500 for a Tik Tok. I am now getting around $3000 or more for each. This leads me to step five!
- USAGE RIGHTS. This is something that is not talked about nearly enough within the influencer community. Usage rights mean you give the brand rights to USE your content for themselves. Basically, you are giving them your content to use in their marketing campaigns. Brands (especially large brands) have MASSIVE budgets for their own advertising campaigns. So, they will often add in usage rights to a contract with an influencer and if that influencer doesn’t charge extra for it, they just got free advertisement. You can use sites such as Getty image calculator to find out how much brands pay for this usually. I will add on an EXTRA $1000-$3000 for 3 months of usage rights. This is another benefit of high-quality content. If a brand is more likely to want to use your photos in the advertisement due to the quality, they are more likely to agree to the charge. When I was shooting iPhone, they would typically take out the usage rights when I would add on the extra rate. Now, I get it every time.
- Start utilizing Pinterest. No matter what platforms you are on, Pinterest is one you shouldn’t be skipping. It is a visual search engine with 500 million people using it monthly. Pinterest can jumpstart your career QUICKLY! Once I started sharing all of my content to Pinterest, I noticed a much steadier following growth. I can now also charge for sharing content to Pinterest and link the pins back to their product site.
- Pitch for long-term contracts with brand deals. Brands are constantly looking for influencers and it’s proven that someone wants to hear you talk about something around 3-7 times before they will buy it. So, by partnering with a brand for 6 months or longer, you give your audience time to trust the product. This may sound tough to get a brand to sign to this, but it’s easier than you think. I have charged upwards of $30,000 for a year-long partnership with a brand. With individual brand deals, you need to be constantly pitching every month. With long-term partnerships, all you need is one or two brands to say yes!
- Lastly, affiliates! I was pretty late on the affiliate game. I didn’t think anyone would buy from me. Anyone else struggle with imposter syndrome? Well, I was wrong! your audience doesn’t follow you without reason. As long as you create know, like, and trust within our community.. they will use your links! A friend of mine told me she made around $3,500 in affiliate sales just from Rakuten! I immediately hopped on the affiliate train (Amazon affiliates, RewardStyle, MagicLinks) and that is now where about 30% of my income comes from!
Well, there you have it! 8 ways you can make more money as an influencer. Don’t forget that your creativity, your words and your talents are worth something. Charge what you are worth! You deserve abundance. Happy influencing!