Nowadays, when you ask a young person The question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, more and more of them say, famous YouTubers, famous TikTokers, Instagram models, or Gamers. It makes sense, these are high-paying jobs without a college degree necessary. In this article you will find a guide on how to make money as an influencer.
So many people believe that being an influencer is their dream job but a lot of parents are worried that their children are never going to move out of their basement because they will never make any real money. In all fairness, content creators are able to make large amounts of money in various different ways. The most common way that influencers make money is through advertisements.
AdSense
AdSense is the oldest revenue stream, the way that people used to make money on YouTube when it first became monetizable. Only 10 years ago, nobody was really making money online, at least not enough money to quit your day job. There wasn’t any established infrastructure that allowed people to utilize the online space in this way.
AdSense physically revolutionized the way that content creators on YouTube specifically had access to money. AdSense uses advertisements as a way to pay influencers online. The person who owns the blog or website will be paid in a couple of different ways.
A creator can charge a brand a certain fee per month to have their advertisements displayed. These creators get paid in PPC, which stands for pays per clip (or in YouTube’s case, pays per view). The more people that clicked on the advertisement, the more revenue that company got (even more so if those who clicked on the ad actually ended up buying something).
So when an advertisement company is paying the content creator in PPC, they are paying them based on how big a contribution those visitors had on the total revenue of the business. The process of AdSense is somewhat similar to how affiliate links work today on social media platforms. The actual rate of how much content creators make through AdSense is not as high as you might think.
The current rate per 1000 views is $3.62 or £2.70. That is a really low rate, but when you consider content creators that have millions of views per video, all of a sudden that AdSense can become the wages to a full-time job.
Affiliate Links
Briefly mentioned before, an affiliate link is an actual link to other accounts on Instagram or generally on the Internet where you can purchase the exact same item that the content creator linked for you and probably used in their video. A lot of makeup artists and fashion gurus use affiliate links as their major income because they can passionately and honestly talk about products that they themselves use, as well as have used on camera before.
An audience is more likely to buy a product if their favorite creator has used it and said good things about it. Content creators that use affiliate codes often get a certain percentage as a bonus/commission in their “paycheck“ based on how many audience members clicked the link to a company’s website and used the affiliate code. An affiliate link can be for anything and it can come in any form. For example, in the case of Lensa a job searching platform located in the USA, their affiliate program allows influencers and editors to gain passive income through clicks.
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding affiliate links where audience members believe that they are paying more for products when they use these links, but that could not be further from the truth. You are either paying the exact same amount as you would in retail or sometimes you actually get discounts through using affiliate discount codes. At the end of the day, the creator gets a small commission based on how many people used their link, how many products, and the number of purchases.
Brand & Revenue Streams
These brand and revenue streams are the best self-employed businesses today, as being exclusive to a content creator‘s own personal products allows them to keep most of the profits. This usually includes merch, but it can include things like a book they wrote, a tour they were doing, music that they released, collaboration with a larger brand (fashion or beauty).
Brand and revenue streams are important to content creators because they are not selling something they were told to sell because it looks good in future deals, or any other reason other than they are proud of the product that they created and want their audience to enjoy those products. Content creators usually genuinely care about the products that they created. It’s usually because they created said products for their viewers.
Sponsorships
There is a lot of value when it comes to content creators and selling products. First of all, content creators have an actual relationship with their audience and they are not simply billboard cutouts or random strangers on a magazine that were photographed and frozen in time. There is an added dimension to selling a product from one person to another, it adds the human touch.
This was something that has been lacking in advertising and as soon as content creators started becoming very popular in late 2013. Companies started realizing that they are invaluable sales reps. Many business officials sponsor a lot of different content creators online because no one else can push their products like a content creator can.
The added dimension is, a content creator has a somewhat personal relationship with their viewers whereas billboards, television ads, magazines, the radio, could never fully achieve. All of the most popular content creators have a significant amount of followers who adore them, would do anything for them, and believe that they have a personal relationship with that influencer.
This personal touch makes a content creator absolutely invaluable to a company. In addition to influencers being invaluable to these large companies, a lot of them actually care about the products that they are selling. There are plenty of very popular content creators online who vocalize that they would never push a product that they didn’t believe in. This kind of relationship with the audience makes these potential buyers more open and comfortable to actually engage in purchasing products from companies.
