Is it hard to become an influencer or YouTuber like Logan Paul, Addison Rae and Alix Earle?

In 2021 a The YouGov survey found that the dream job for American teenagers is a professional vlogger or YouTuber. Male or female, 9% of US youth want to spend their lives online – ahead of careers like medicine, acting and law.

Yet achieving true stardom is a difficult balance to find, experts warn, and even harder to maintain.

How much money do influencers make?

The average influencer earns $2,970 per month according to HypeAuditor‘Influencer Income Survey’ – but once you break through the ‘micro influencer’ (10,000 followers) stage.

Those trying to build their following can expect to earn around $1,420 per month – although some seem to drop out in the middle of the stage.

A recent example of an individual taking social media by storm is University of Miami student, Alix Earle. According to Social Bladethe New Jersey native gained nearly three million followers on his platforms in the past 30 days, while studying for his last semester of college.

When the likes start moving, there can be a “temptation” to forget your roots, warns Lucy Birchall, senior influencer marketing manager at UK agency Social Shepherd.

He adds that staying true to your original audience is the key to bringing in big bucks: “If you’re charging $10,000 or more for a post you need to have a large audience that’s highly engaged and authentic enjoying the content you put in. except.

“We consider a variety of tools that tell us roughly the audience split between men and women, age, demographics, location and things like participation rate. We usually say if someone has 3% engagement rate is great, and we look forward to seeing the content created for our clients to achieve that kind of engagement.

“If someone is charging $50k for a post then they need to be more relevant to that brand and their audience generally needs to be engaged. Alix Earle used to have a following but she seems to have come out and really exploded. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the US he could charge at least $40,000 for a post.

“I think she needs to prove that she can continue this growth path for the next three to six months. She will definitely – she’s very much the girl next door, like chatting with a brother .

To be sustainable content creators need to know their audience, the influencer expert added: “You need to see yourself as a brand. Ask yourself: ‘Who is my audience? What do they want to see, what will be relevant to them and what will be relevant to get new people to follow me?’

“It can be tempting to suddenly see dollar signs and grab opportunities while you can, but if you’re partnering with the wrong brands that your original audience doesn’t want to see then you’re going to get flash-in- bread moments.”

Canceling culture is “very real” he added, and is one of the reasons why Luke Hodson, founder of London-based youth marketing specialist Nerds Collective, said creators should focus on commercial and ethical growth.

Hodson, who founded the company out of his garage in 2013 and is named in between Forbes’ 30 under 30 for media in 2016, said: “Being a social media influencer is not sustainable. When you’re on a platform you’re at the peaks and troughs of algorithms that have a lot of impact. After the arrival of new technology you need to try and get your audience to switch to the new platform which can be very difficult.

“People who have achieved this are what we call ‘cultural insiders’. They’re not influencers, they’re people who move culture – whether that’s music or fashion or entertainment. They create this community and then they have to work out how to monetize it. That could be creating a new platform or finding a way to gate their content so people have to pay to see it. You should try how to go directly to your community. “

He added that the nature of social media works against the good, both for the creator and their audience. “You always have this group of angry young people who want to fit in, or they want to stand out. They are very vulnerable to influence and then they get sucked into this algorithm bubble where they think everything they see is real.

“Cultural insiders have to think of themselves the way brands do and establish some kind of code of conduct on how they operate ethically as well as commercially, so that they are cared for but they also care to their audience.

“There should be some kind of regulation or parameters, but that cannot be control because the free speech that we see on these platforms is an important part of democracy,” he explained.

Protecting influencers from online trolls can be helped by verification, he added: “Most of the time when people sit anonymously behind a keyboard they can be Machiavellian, and get them verified “Whoever they are can reduce that.”

Is it easy to become an influencer?

The simple answer is no, far from it.

Hannah Anderson is the direct manager of Kyma Media which represents talent such as KSI, Soft White Underbelly and GKBarry, and said creators must build their careers on “rented ground”.

He said: “This career is very hard work and can disappear overnight. It’s easy to watch a ten-second video and think it took 60 seconds just to sit down and film, but the creators must have an element of psychology in thinking: ‘How will this thumbnail go to my audience, will they stay engaged throughout the video, how can I film this video or transitions?’

“And that’s before you even get into the fact that creators and influencers work on their own. As well as filming, editing, uploading, responding to comments and engaging with viewers , they also need to manage accounts on platforms, manage their finances, their sales, their campaigns, their projects.

“One thing that is also discussed more is the mental impact this work can have on influencers. It’s part of human nature to focus on the negative to some extent and even if you get a hundred positive ones comments, when you get a negative one it can be hard not to think about it.”

How long is an influencer career?

The average influencer’s career is about eight years long for a variety of reasons, experts explain.

In part that’s because audiences are growing and influencers are struggling to stay relevant to younger audiences or lose touch with their original audiences. Other reasons may include cancellation, with many “never coming back”.

“Platforms can also turn you off at any point,” Anderson said. “Using the analogy of a painting, you can own a painting and hang it in your house but if your house is rented out then you have to take that painting with you somewhere else – you take your content on another platform.

“If you want to be an influencer my advice is to just start creating – there’s nothing wrong with just making things for fun. Working in a creative career doesn’t have to mean making videos, it’s a path that more people are beginning to recognize.