How Do Influencers Make Money?
“How do influencers make money?” “Do influencers actually make money?” “Is being an influencer a real job?” I get these questions all the time.
I quit my career as a corporate lawyer back in 2018 to run my Instagram and blog full time. It’s been the most amazing and wild ride ever since, filled with trips around the world, glamorous events and more. But, I have bills to pay so it hasn’t all just been free trips and gifted clothes.
Full-time influencers, including me, absolutely do make money. The key to having a stable business as a full-time influencer is setting up multiple income streams.
This post covers 17 ways that influencers make money. Most full-time influencers, including me, earn their living via a combination of 4-5 different income streams. Or sometimes more.
Keep reading to answer that burning question – how do influencers make money?
Why Multiple Income Streams?
Multiple income streams are important because influencers don’t get paid a salary from an employer. Our income/revenue isn’t always smooth throughout the year.
For example, I might have one month where I book $6000 in brand partnerships, followed by a month where I book $16,000 in brand partnerships. It’s not evenly distributed month by month.
There are certain months where I expect to land more brand deals, like December for the Christmas marketing push and February leading up to Valentine’s Day. But there are other months, like January, where brands don’t have a lot of budget left to spend on influencers. Having multiple income streams makes months like January a bit easier because I’m not stressing about whether money will be coming in.
Most influencers also bring in a combination of active income and passive income. That helps us have a flexible lifestyle where we don’t need to work 9-5 from Monday to Friday.
What is Passive v. Active Income?
Most influencers make money via a mix of passive and active income. Active income is money you earn by actively working – it’s where you have to exert time and energy to make that money.
Passive income is money you earn with minimal effort to keep it flowing in. That said, calling it passive income is a little bit misleading because you typically have to do a lot of work upfront to set up your systems for earning passive income. And they do need maintenance and attention to keep them up over time.
In this post, I’m sharing 17 ways influencers make money and I identify whether each strategy is active or passive income.
How Do Influencers Make Money?
1. Brand Partnerships
That leads me to the first way that influencers make money. Brand deals.
Most influencers earn a portion of their income from brand partnerships, or #ads. This is when an influencer is paid by a brand to create and share content about the brand (e.g., Instagram posts, Instagram stories, blog posts, YouTube videos, TikTok videos, ads during a podcast, etc.).
Brand deals are active income. Sometimes these are one-offs – for example, I might get hired to create and share one Instagram post about a brand.
Other times, I’m hired for a longer term partnerships or ambassadorships where I promote the brand through a certain number of pieces of content over a set amount of time.
Brand partnerships are a significant portion of many influencers’ income, including me. But, since they can be inconsistent, most influencers do have other revenue streams to make sure they have money coming in consistently throughout the year.
Influencers can earn thousands of dollars per sponsored post, depending on a variety of factors including the size of their following, their engagement, the quality of their content, and which platform they’re posting on.
I’ve made as much as $5000 from a single brand partnership and have booked up to $16,000 in brand deals in a single month.
I’m passionate about helping others do the same. Which is why in my online course for aspiring influencers, The IGInfluencer Guide, I teach my students exactly how to land brand partnerships and how much they should be charging for their Instagram content (including posts, stories, etc.).
I also share tips for getting paid to promote brands you love on Instagram – even if you don’t have a large following – in my free influencer masterclass, which you can sign up for here.
2. Display Advertising
What is Display Advertising?
Display advertising, or placing banner ads, is when an influencer works with a third party ad network to run advertisements on their blog.
This is different than sponsored posts, where an influencer creates content about a brand and shares it with the influencer’s audience. Display advertising is where you place third party ads on an influencer’s blog. In that case, the ad images/video and copy are created by the brand and dropped into the influencer’s site in the sidebar, within blog posts, etc.
As an example, you will find display ads scattered throughout this blog post.
Usually, an influencer will sign up for an exclusive relationship with a display advertising company. That display advertising company places the third party ads on the influencer’s website.
I work exclusively with Mediavine who places ads on my blog for reputable brands like Amazon, Revolve, etc. Those big brands bid for the advertising space on my blog, meaning the ads look different throughout the day and different blog readers will see different ads based on their preferences.
You can also earn a share of display ads that run on your YouTube videos. In this post, I focus on website ads because I’m not a YouTuber.
How Does Display Advertising Work?
Display ads are passive income. I gave my display ads company access to place ads on my site and the ads appear to readers. I don’t have to do anything other than write blog posts and maintain my blog.
I get paid a certain amount of money per thousand sessions on my blog (which is called my RPM). I dont get paid per click. My ad network then pays me by direct deposit every month. I don’t have to send an invoice or really do anything.
I do have some control over how the ads are set up on my blog. But it’s overall very hands off.
How Much Money Can You Make with Display Advertising on Your Blog?
On a good month, I make nearly $700 from display advertising with about 35,000 page views, even if I don’t write a single new post. And, there are bloggers and influencers who make a full-time income just from display ads alone.
The photo above is from a popular blog post of mine that earns hundreds of dollars a year completely passively.
The amount of money you can earn varies depending on a number of factors including the number of views on your blog (or sessions if you’re with Mediavine), how much advertisers are willing to pay for ads on my site (e.g., this spikes up in Q4 around the holidays), how long readers stay on your blog posts, whether you run videos, and how many ads you choose to have on each page.
What are the Best Display Advertising Networks + What are The Requirements to Join?
There are 3 premium display ad networks that bloggers and influencers work with and they all have different requirements to join them. Those networks are Monumetric, Mediavine and Adthrive. I don’t include GoogleAdsense because they pay so much less.
These premium ad networks all have their own requirements to join. To join Monumentric, you need to have at least 10,000 page views a month. To join Mediavine, which is the network I’m part of, you now need a least 50,000 sessions a month, which for most people is about 60,000 page views (I joined Mediavine back when the threshold to apply was 25,000 monthly sessions – the threshold was increased in June 2020). To join Adthrive, you need at least 100,000 page views a month.
There are other factors these ad networks also consider when reviewing your application and they make their decisions on a case-by-case basis.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you earn commissions by recommending other people’s products or services. They can be physical products like clothing, digital products like someone else’s online course, and even services like tours and hotel stays.
Affiliate marketing is a form of passive income. You do the upfront work of recommending a product or service in your content, for example in blog posts, emails to your email list, or shoppable links in your social media posts. And when people click your affiliate links and buy through them, you earn a set percentage from that sale.
The percentage commission you earn is pre-agreed with the brand and the brand generates your custom affiliate tracking link. Every affiliate program has its own rules and comissions (for example, members of the affiliate program for my online course for aspiring influencers, The IGInfluencer Guide, earn 25% per sale, which is nearly $100 in commission per sale).
I earn affiliate commissions through a few different programs, including RewardStyle (where I usually recommend things I use like my camera gear), Booking.com (I recommend my favorite hotels in my blog posts) and BlueHost (where I host this website).
RewardStyle is a great affiliate program for fashion, beauty and lifestyle influencers because so many big brands are part of the program. So instead of having to apply to each brand’s separate affiliate program, you can manage them all under one umbrella (the RewardStyle program).
If you’re interested in becoming a RewardStyle affiliate, feel free to DM me on Instagram and I can refer you into the program’s application process. That doesn’t guarantee your acceptance but it can speed up the process of getting your application reviewed.
Affiliate marketing is only a small part of my monthly revenue ($0-300, depending on the month), but I do plan to increase my focus on it down the road.
4. Digital Products
Many influencers create and sell their own digital products, such as Lightroom presets (I don’t sell my presets but you can download one of my custom Lightroom presets for free here), online courses (like my course for aspiring influencers, The IGInfluencer Guide), ebooks, printables and more. I earn up to $5500 a month from digital products.
Digital products can be active income or passive income, depending on how you to choose to create and market them. I market The IGInfluencer Guide, my online course for aspiring influencers, using a combination of active and passive strategies.
5. Physical Products
Some influencers sell their own physical products. It could be anything from selling jewelry, hard copy books, a fashion line, an Etsy store for their photography prints, doing dropshipping, or selling any other phyical product you can think of.
Dropshipping is where you design a product to sell to your audience but you don’t handle the physical creation and shipping. You work with a partner who makes the physical goods and send them out. That way, you aren’t responsible for handling inventory or mailing the goods out yourself.
Most sales of physical products are active income, while dropshipping is passive income.
6. Coaching + Consulting
Influencers are social media experts, and many of them offer their expertise to other people and business through consulting/coaching services. This is a form of active income.
This is a small portion of my business, but I do offer Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok consulting services to select clients. You can contact me at vicki@fashiontravelrepeat.com if you’re interested in learning more about my consulting services.
7. Social Media Management
Some influencers leverage their social media expertise to manage and run social media accounts for other businesses. This can be lucrative if you are able to manage the accounts for multiple clients.
Social media management is active income.
8. Tipping/Gifting
Some platforms allow influencers to receive gifts/tips directly from their followers. For example, on TikTok you can earn “coins” from your followers during your live streams that you can exchange for cash, making it a form of active income.
I’ve also seen influencers on some platforms include their Venmo account names in their bios to solicit gifts. This isn’t something I see on Instagram (my primary platform) and it’s not part of my strategy. I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it, but it seems to work for some people.
9. Patreon
Patreon is another way that influencers can receive contributions directly from their followers/fans. It is quite popular with podcasters. Fans can subscribe, usually monthly and at different tiers, to regularly support their favorite creator. Usually the creator/influencer gives their Patreon subscribers access to exclusive content in exchange.
For example, I’m a Patreon supporter of one of my favorite white collar crime podcasts, Swindled. I pay $5 a month and receive access to special bonus episodes in return.
A Patreon is passive income because your subscribers are billed monthly, but if you promise a certain amount of monthly benefits that you’ll have to create, it becomes more active for the influencer.
10. Content Creation + Photography
Many influencers are skilled photographers, videographers and other forms of content creators. They work with brands directly to create photos and videos for them. This is a form of active income.
This is different than sponsored content because this custom content isn’t always shared on the influencers’ channels. It’s shared by the brand in more traditional forms of advertising and also on the brand’s social channels. I occasionally create and sell content to brands for use on their channels or in paid ads.
Other influencers create content for non-brand clients, such as influencers who offer wedding photography and videography.
11. Freelance Writing
Freelance writing is a great gig for influencers who are skilled writers. Some influencers have relationships with publications they occasionally write for, others regularly pitch themselves to land writing jobs with publications, and others use websites to search out and secure writing gigs.
Freelance writing is a form of active income.
12. Virtual Assistant Services
A virtual assistant is someone who provides administrative, technical, or creative help to other businesses or entrepreneurs from a remote location.
A virtual assistant is usually self-employed and works part time for each of their clients, rather than working 9 to 5 as an employee. This is a form of active income.
You can be a virtual assistant for a “traditional” business, but many bloggers and online entrepreneurs also use virtual assistants. Influencers are highly qualified to help other online businesses with their administrative, technical, or creative tasks (for example, getting paid to design Pinterest pins or manage a Facebook group for another busy blogger).
13. Other Freelance Work
Many influencers had a previous career before they decided to pursue social media and/or their blogs full time. I used to be a corporate lawyer. Some influencers still take on freelance projects in other fields as part of their business. This is a type of active income.
14. Remote Work
Wondering how your favorite influencer lives in Bali but also seems to have a 9-5? They may be a remote worker who convinced their “traditional 9-5” that they can do their job completely remotely. This couples the stability of a paycheck with the ability to work from anywhere. This is an active income job.
15. Teaching English Online or Abroad
Teaching English online or abroad is a popular active income stream for digital nomads. If you’re a native English speaker or near-native English speaker who meets the other requirements for the job, you can either move abroad to teach English or teach English online from anywhere in the world.
16. Group Trips + Tour Guides
Some influencers run tour guide businesses in their home cities (be sure to check your local regulations to see if you need a license to do this). Others organize group trips, and/or educational, wellness or other types of retreats.
In many instances, influencers don’t own the tour or retreat company. But they are paid an affiliate commission when members of their audience sign up using the influencer’s affiliate link.
17. Get Creative!
Do you have another skill you’re proud of? Get creative and find a way to monetize it!
If you love animals, consider being a dog walker or dog sitter. If you’re responsible and trustworthy, try housesitting so that you can live rent free in an amazing destination.
If you love to travel and are great with people, apply to work on a cruise ship. If you have some other unique skill or talent you can share with or teach other people, create an AirBnB Experience around that activity.
The possibilities are limitless!
That wraps up my answer to that big, burning question so many people have: “How Do Influencers Make Money?”
Most influencers make their living from a combination of multiple passive and active income streams.
I personally make my living primarily from 4 of the income steams mentioned in this post: sponsored content, display ads, digital products and affiliate income.
Did I miss an income stream that’s part of your influencer strategy? Let me know in the comments!
And if you’re looking to level up with your Instagram content, you can check out my post on posing for photos, how to become an influencer, how influencers make money, and sign up for my free influencer masterclass with I share industry secrets to help you get paid to promote your favorite brands without having a huge following.
Want to Keep in Touch?
- Come say hi on Instagram!
- Or why not join my free Facebook group for female influencers/Instagrammers?
- And sign up for my free influencer masterclass and learn to get paid to promote your favorite brands even if you don’t have a huge following
Love This Post? Save it on Pinterest!
