Instagram Influencer Marketing: The 1 Billion Dollar Industry & Where Do We Go from Here?

Since Instagram was created back in 2011, it has revolutionized influencer marketing, making it into an industry worth 1 billion dollar. Being the fastest growing social media platform with 1 billion monthly active users, as of June 2018, an increase of 25 percent since September 2017, justifiably brought Instagram quite a lot of notice from brands who consistently pour more and more money into sponsorship deals with influencers with the goal of reaching the Millennial and “Gen Z” audiences. The mass reach combined with a significantly better ROI (influencer marketing is said to generate 11 times the ROI of traditional advertising), assured this industry’s position as the FIST marketing strategy used by most companies, increasingly growing the share allocated for influencers out of the companies’ overall marketing budget.

Let’s Talk about Money

Probably every single one of us at some point thought, at least in passing, about the possibility of making a lot of money from simply posting on Instagram, however, how much money can you realistically make from your Instagram account? As of now, almost all money earned on Instagram originates from sponsored posts, where brands pay influencers to promote their products. The formula to calculate the value of each post, and therefore, how much brands are willing to pay, is both simple and complicated and combine both the number of followers, the followers’ demographic, and their engagement.

Instagram post’s potential value = Engagement Rate + Follower Growth Rate + Follower Demographic and Lifestyle Match — Sponsored Post Promotion Rate

Influencers’ Average Charge per Sponsored Post, Divided by Audience Size

While big celebrities with millions of followers like Kim Kardashian West, with her 125 million followers, can charge over $500,000 per Instagram post, the majority of influencers’ earning per post are not even in the ballpark of said figure. Novice influencers usually charge about $25-$50, while more established influencers with about 30k-80k followers charge $200-$500 per post. Once influencers break through the 100k followers’ barrier they tend to up their charge to at least $1,000, as we can see with Sam Ushiro who has 282k followers and charges $1,500 a post. The cost continues to grow the more followers they have, though influencers with a highly engaged following can sometimes afford to charge more even with a bit of a smaller audience.

The Struggle is Real

Dreamy as an influencer job might seem, to become one, you must first travel a long road paved with struggles. On the surface it sounds so easy, just post a few cool pictures, add some hashtags, and the people will come, wrong! Building a significant following is a lot of work, for one the influencer needs to find an unoccupied niche, so to provide the Instagram masses with original content, a task nearly impossible with the information overload we are constantly exposed to. They also need to post regularly and be active on the platform in order to maintain your community and get traction. Furthermore, you always need to be on trend, whether it is the hashtags you use, the topics you post about, or the brands you promote, you always need to stay relevant.

Finally, even if you do everything described above to the teeth, there is a very good chance you still won’t rise to the social media top. After all, for every influencer success story, there are thousands of people trying to make a name for themselves. Most never get to reach those dizzy heights. As Sai de Silva said becoming an influencer “is no overnight success unless you happen to go viral, and that’s very hard to do, especially if you are starting out and you want to make money, please don’t expect to see money for one to three years into it.” This statement is only growing truer with time, as social platforms get more crowded, and thus making it harder for influencers to stand out and grab the audience and the brands’ attention. In fact, platforms like TapInfluence, which helps connect brands and influencers, report that the monthly average earning of TapInfluence influencers is $763.50, which is while not bad in term of pocket money, is hardly an equal of a full-time salary.

New Player in Town- inFASH

Now that we have established the problem, the next logical step is to think of a solution. While partnering up with brands to produce a sponsored post is the most direct way to get paid on social media. It’s not the only way, influencers can also turn to affiliate marketing, using brands links to promote their products and get a cut of the sale. This new monetization strategy paved the way for new platforms such as inFASH to come forward. inFASH, a fashion social community that connects fashion lovers, online shoppers, and retailers in a seamless and direct peer-to-peer marketplace, aims to offer a fresh perspective on social media. inFASH provides all its members with an equal opportunity to become an inFASH “model” and be rewarded for sharing their style. Utilizing innovative Ai technology all “LOOKS” (videos and pictures) posted are seamlessly broken into items and auto-tagged with shoppable items from thousands of retailers and brands affiliated with inFASH. This allows influencers to leverage their audience and monetize posts even without a direct connection with the brand and with minimal effort.

The Proof is in the Influencers

So how do we know it works? After all, many have claimed to develop the new, cool, social app on the block but have failed to deliver on results. The best proof is looking at the influencers’ behavior, after all, they are the trendsetters. inFASH have recently welcomed to its family 3 big and interesting influencers, 2 of which with over half a million followers and one with a bit less than a quarter of a million. All with significant influence over their audience.

The first and largest is Bar Zomer, the 25 years old Israeli reality TV persona and model. Bar is best recognized for having competed on the series Survivor: Palawan and for being featured on the cover of Blazer magazine in 2017. Bar currently has 548k followers on her Instagram account, having posted 952 times.

The second is Julia Yaroshenko, the 29 years old travel model, as she likes to describe herself, globe-trots around the world, sharing her work and travel with her 523k Instagram followers.

Last but certainly not least is Shon Balaish, the 28 years old Israeli model and fashion blogger, who has previously appeared on the cover of Marie Claire, Men’s Fashion, and MUSE. Shon currently has 237k devoted followers and is an avid poster.