Dreaming of Becoming a Social-Media Influencer? Don’t Expect to Get Rich
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Here's your money briefing for Thursday, June 20th. I'm Arianna Espuru for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whalen. Social media stars like Charli D'Amelio and MrBeast have become household names from posting videos online. But in reality, getting rich from content creating only happens to a small percent of influencers. And it's getting harder to bring in the cash.
So it used to be that having a large amount of followers meant that in theory, these people were solely engaged with you. And if you had a million followers, in theory, you'd have a million eyeballs. But that has just clearly not become the case. You could be making a lot of money one month and the next month something changes and all of a sudden that drops. So it's not a very steady channel.
We'll talk to WSJ reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara after the break.
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How common is it for social-media creators to earn a full-time income?
Making a name for yourself online is one thing, but making a living? That's becoming harder for creators. WSJ reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara joins me. Anne-Marie, I, like so many people who scroll through TikTok and Instagram, have thought about what it's like for creators to make a living off of it. What are some of the main ways that they earn income?
Some of the ways include maybe more traditional advertising channels, sponsorship deals, the SpawnCon content that you might come across that looks... Like it's not sponsored, but totally is, as well as platforms paying out the creators as well.
Your story looks at the reality behind being a creator. How many influencers can actually financially sustain themselves from posting online?
So last year, for example, 48% of creators made 15K or less and only 13% made more than 100K. Depending on what state and where you're living, 100,000 might be what you need to make and only 13% were able to achieve that. So it's not exactly a fast path or a fast track to fame and success.
It's not the, oh, I'll just post a little bit and then I can quit my job and go ahead and become an influencer.
Precisely. I spoke to two creators who primarily post on TikTok and they One of them used to be able to support himself and was making over $4,000 a month. But that has become not so sustainable anymore. It's been declining, even though his follower account keeps growing. And then I spoke to another creator where she has been posting for many years now and has only been paid $12,000 total. This wasn't just one year. It's been for many years and only $12,000. So it's not exactly a lot of money for people.
Yeah, it seems like every platform is different. But from those people you spoke to, how long roughly did it take for someone to start earning money from creating online?
Yeah, it really ranges on yourself, the content you're creating. I spoke to one person who just started. He's been documenting his life living in a van with his wife, and he's already doing this full time. He started in this past month and he's making a range of money. But even for him, he said if he just makes $2,000 a month, that's totally fine because he lives in a van.
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