u/KBoZoo

I always assumed that once someone got to 100k followers they were probably making really good money from social media.

Then I started looking at influencer rates for work and realized follower count is probably one of the worst ways to guess how much someone is making.

You can have two creators with basically the same audience size and one can charge 5-10x more than the other.

From what I've seen, these are the things that actually seem to matter:

1. Niche:

100k followers posting memes and 100k followers talking about finance or tech are completely different audiences from a brand's perspective.

Some niches simply have more expensive products, higher customer values or people who are more likely to buy something, so brands can justify paying way more to reach them.

The rate differences by niche are actually pretty crazy. I found estimates ranging from around $5k-$20k for finance sponsored content to $2k-$5k for gaming/tech, while other categories sit somewhere in between.

2. Engagement:

This is where follower count starts becoming almost meaningless on its own.

An account with 100k followers and 0.5% engagement might be less valuable than a 10k account where 6% of the audience consistently engages with the content.

Brands are buying attention of the audience

3. Real performances:

Views, reach and how your content performs matter a lot.

If you have 100k followers but your videos normally get 3k views, that's a very different proposition from a 30k creator consistently pulling 100k+ views.

And if a creator has previous campaigns showing they can actually drive clicks, installs or sales, they have a much stronger argument for charging more.

4. Platform:

A sponsored TikTok from a micro influencer can be around $50-$500, while a sponsored YouTube video from a creator in the same follower tier can be around $500- $2,000.

Makes sense when you think about it because watching someone explain a product for several minutes on YouTube is completely different from seeing it for 15 seconds while scrolling TikTok.

5. What the brand can do with the content:

This becomes especially important with UGC.

A creator might make a video that never even gets posted to their own audience. The brand is paying for the asset itself and might want to run it as an ad, put it on a product page or reuse it across different channels.

In that case follower count basically doesn't matter at all, while the number of deliverables, complexity and usage rights do.

This is a detailed breakdown of influencer rates by follower count, platform and niche here:

https://sideshift.app/blog/how-much-influencers-make

So, 100k followers can obviously be extremely valuable, but apparently it can also mean surprisingly little financially.

The audience behind those 100k and what you can actually do with their attention seems to matter way more than the number itself.

There’s this whole trend that has blown up over the last couple years where brands pay normal users to make short form videos for them, is called UGC (user generated content)

They are not influencers with millions of followers, a lot of these creators start with tiny accounts, make content for apps or consumer brands, get paid per campaign or based on performance, and eventually turn it into pretty serious monthly income.

I recently watched a breakdown from Canyon and Drew, the founders of Sideshift. They've worked with and paid thousands of UGC creators and have also worked with a huge number of important brands (Apps, brands business, etc) creator campaigns, so they have a unique view of both sides of the market: what brands look for when hiring and what the creators making real money tend to do differently.

This was probably the clearest breakdown I've seen of how the progression works: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kk6jcv7l0Y&pp=0gcJCWoCo7VqN5tD&ra=m
so I tried to turn it into a roadmap:

1) Get good enough to be hired

When you’re starting, a few good videos are enough to show that you can talk naturally to camera and tell a story.
They specifically recommend having around three strong examples

2) Get your first real case studies

When you have zero results, being insanely picky about rates can slow you down a lot.

So for the first months accept also smal campaigns, short trial. These deals can be worth much more than the initial payout if it gives you an important case study you can show the next brand.

3) Take a lot of reps

In the first weeks the game becomes volume, you need to work with different brands, test formats, learn what performs and figure out what you're good at. The guys mention that someone chasing their first $10k month might initially be working across 10 campaigns at once. (Insame but doable)

Btw the point isn't to keep doing ten campaigns forever, but find the few where you're valuable.

4) Give brands a reason to keep paying you

Brands will keep paying you if your content is bringing results.
Views are nice, but if you're helping drive installs, signups or sales, the relationship becomes much more valuable. The creators who last are usually the ones who understand the product, bring new ideas and care about making the campaign work, not just delivering the videos.

5) Turn the best campaigns into long-term deals

Once you have proof behind you, you can start dropping weaker campaigns and focusing on the brands where you've already shown you can perform.

That's where better retainers, CPM deals, view bonuses and longer-term relationships start making a much bigger difference.

Canyon and Drew go much deeper into the whole process here, especially portfolios, CPM deals, campaign managers and what they see from the brand side so check the video.

The overall pattern is pretty simple: get good enough to be hired, build proof, take a lot of reps, learn how to make brands money and then turn the campaigns that work into longer term relationships.

cooked

R.I.P Dario Amodei