One of the most popular questions on the internet these days is this. How much money do influencers make? This profession has exploded in recent years and many people with "conventional" jobs question the money these young people earn from working on the internet. Today we explain how and how much money those YouTubers, Instagramers or TikTokers that you follow on the networks earn.
How does an influencer make money?
The first thing you should keep in mind is that there are different ways to receive income on the internet and that, if the influencer in question knows how to scale his business correctly, this person will have quite diversified sources of monetization. Now, what are these ways to receive money in exchange for that content creation on the network? Well, even though there are tons of ways to do it, the main sources are:
- Google Adsense: For creators who work for Google services, such as YouTube, this is one of them. How do they do that? In the case of the big red internet button, this income comes from the ads that are displayed before and during the playback of the videos that we see on the platform. It does not come from the likes or the number of followers that each channel has, no, they come exclusively from said ads. Although, yes, within the videos the creator has different ways to increase these earnings, let's continue looking at monetization methods.
- Subscriptions: In the case of platforms such as Twitch, whose company belongs to Amazon, the method used to earn money is user subscriptions to the channels of this service. What benefits do these subscriptions get? Well, they range from personalized stickers, VIP chat in which the creator only reads people who pay, sending live messages, private direct... A series of benefits that support the creator to continue creating live content for their subscribers.
- Affiliates: Another of the great ways to monetize that any influencer can use are affiliate systems. One of the best known is Amazon, although they all work practically the same. The creator recommends a product or service from a company and leaves his followers a personalized link. If these users enter from this url and make a purchase, the creator takes a part of the benefits that the company has earned with each payment. Does it seem easy? It is, but to receive a "salary" from these affiliate platforms, the sales numbers have to be relatively high to achieve it.
- Advertising campaigns for products or services: another of the great known and criticized by users who consume the content of influencers. Although this could be similar to the affiliate system we have just discussed, this time it is a single payment (in most cases) in which the creator agrees to promote a product or service in exchange for a certain amount. Of course, it is up to the integrity of each creator to recommend or not something that he likes, or to limit himself to earning money in exchange for this advertising action.
- attendance at events: a great form of monetization, especially for those creators with more mainstream content. In this case, the companies reach an agreement with that influencer to attend certain events and announce it to their subscribers. An example could be fashion influencers, gamers, or vlogger content channels.
- Merchandising: Surely you have noticed that many creators make products with their logo, name or hallmark and then sell it online. This is what is known as merchandising.
- Sale of products: it is something similar to the previous one but with a higher added value
, or not, depends on the influencer. Creations such as courses, master classes or, for example, books that are not based solely on the image of the creator, would enter this form of monetization. This is often associated with creators who have channels more dedicated to teaching of some kind.
How much money does an influencer make?
Now that you know some of the main ways an influencer can monetize their content, it's time to talk about how much they earn. Feeling very sorry, we have to tell you that it is quite difficult to know what each of these content creators earns on the internet, since it depends on many factors. For example, whoever is dedicated to being an Instagramer will not receive a single euro from the platform (although the possibility of doing so using IGTV is already being discussed), however, YouTubers do enter from the platform itself. Now we will talk about this in more detail so that you understand it well.
Although, to lower this issue more to the ground, we can know an estimate of how much some of these users charge. One of the ways to know the earnings is that the creator himself decides to talk about it or show it, something that influencers like Paula Gonu o Jaime Altozano placeholder image. However, not everyone decides to deal with these issues for obvious reasons.
Another way is to use platforms such as Social Blade which gives us an estimate of the earnings of these people through YouTube revenue, for example. Even so, the range it provides is very wide and, as many users have already commented, the data tends to be closer to the lower value than to the upper one. In addition, there are different reasons why the same type of creator, with a similar influence, can charge much more money than another. Let's talk about this in more detail.
The influencer and the relationship with their numbers
The numbers of each creator are the benefit and the loss of it. In the end, the image given to the public may be that of another user who makes "stupid videos", talks about his life or makes tutorials for other people. But if they don't have an understanding of the numbers surrounding their project and how to use them to their advantage, their careers won't get very far.
There are different factors that affect the monetization of each of them:
- Type of content: depending on the kind of content they make and, therefore, for the audience they are targeting, their income will be different. At the end of the day it depends on the brands and the money they move and want to invest in ads. The money that moves a video game company, a cosmetics company or another for kitchen products is not the same. Therefore, this is one of the most important factors when it comes to monetizing a company on the internet.
- Origin of the public: unfortunately, the differences at the monetary level between the different countries is something that exists and that the creators have in mind. Therefore, at the level of advertisements and possible purchases, a user who is in Latin America is not the same for brands as another American or a Spaniard.
- Scalability and diversification: These are factors that mainly depend on what the creator decides to do with their project. If this person decides to scale it up or diversify into similar areas using his "influence" within that sector, obviously his income will be higher than that of another creator with the same number of followers, visits or likes. For example, the YouTuber Alvaro845 He took advantage of his fame within the YouTube gaming sector to found an eSports team called "Team Queso" to open a new path of monetization with him.
We hope that now you are a little clearer about how an influencer monetizes their content, despite the fact that we have not explicitly answered the question that surely led you to enter this article. Although now you know that this is impossible to answer, since each particular case is a different world.
If you have any questions about this topic, since this implies a lot of information that must be assimilated little by little, we would love to answer it in the comments that you can leave us here.