look like organic content), have wasted
no time in leveraging influencers for
their coveted target audiences. After
all, a testimonial from someone whose
life you want to emulate is exceedingly
more valuable than a message that
comes directly from a brand, which
consumers often tune out. According to
Forbes, “a brand’s owned and operated
account will receive 90 (percent) less
positive sentiment compared to a talent/influencer’s
branded post.” In 2019,
brands’ marketing budgets reflected
this with the standard to dedicate up to
20 percent to influencer marketing.
Beyond native advertising content,
there are two other main revenue sources
for social media influencers. Kelly
Burns, director of technology at creative
agency and influencer platform Socialyte,
breaks them down: “The first way
would be advertisements that feel like
organic content, called native content.
The second is affiliate revenue. An influencer
often will work with an affiliate
platform, something like RewardStyle or
ShopStyle … where if somebody clicks
through from an influencer’s website
to (a store), checks out and buys that
product, they’ll make a percentage of the
sale. The third way is banner content,
which is more of a traditional website
or digital ad buy. If you’re on YouTube,
that could be a pre-roll, 30 seconds you
have to watch about whatever brand it
is.” She estimates that an influencer with
100,000 followers could make $50,000-
$100,000, and one with 1 million followers
can make $500,000-$1 million from
their social media content alone. This is
dependent on many factors, and it takes
most influencers years of hard work to
become as profitable.
Burns, a former Sacramentan who
now lives in New York, once referred to
herself as an “influencer for hire.” In
the early 2010s, “I would do ghostwriting,
styling assistance, negotiate brand
deals for them, social media management,”
she says. “It really ran the gamut.”
At the time, Burns was also trying
to become an influencer herself, but
recognizing that it requires a certain
passion to do all the work involved, not
to mention that she was already doing it
for seven other influencers, she resolved
that her “strong suits were much more
behind the scenes.”
For some, it takes just one successful
project to gain traction as a
profitable influencer. Mike Diamond, a
Sacramento-based content creator and
self-described “guy on the internet,”
broke into the space in the early days
of social media advertising with two
consecutive 2013 campaigns — first, a
Pax vaporizer campaign, followed by a
$75,000 Ford contract. “Promoting the
Pax product was kind of the kick-start
to everything,” Diamond says. “And
then, that same year, I went on a campaign
for the 2014 Ford Mustang, which
was the first international social media
project by a huge brand that was ever
done. So that was massive.”
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July 2020 | comstocksmag.com 71