In a mansion on Sydney’s north shore, a group of influencers gather to make new content and grow their followings.
The ‘ring leader’ is 27-year-old Jamie Zhu who’s been working as an influencer for almost 10 years.
He’s carved out a massive following by making prank videos.
“I’ve got 10 million followers combined on all platforms. I guess my strongest is Facebook with 5.2 million,” Jamie told The Feed.
Jamie claims a viral video of him pranking his dad made earned him a “high five figures”.
“I’m making really good money, and it comes from advertising and stuff.”
“You can make millions of dollars. I’m not making millions of dollars but I’m making… it’s good.”
According to Jamie, you can grow a following from almost anything “as long as you do it in the right way.”
The post that made Jamie Zhu "high five figures". Source: Jamie Zhu/YouTube
“You can grow a following from licking glass windows,” he said.
“You’ve got to create content that’ll spark a reaction. That can be laughter, that can be sadness, that can be anger.”
Tiaré Simonis has almost 300,000 followers on Snapchat, Tik Tok and Instagram.
“My most popular content, I would say, is my dancing content,” Tiaré told The Feed.
“In my first month, I made 20k, just off Snapchat,” she said.
The influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth up to USDby 2022.
Tiaré Simonis is an influencer who posts dance videos on Snapchat, Instagram and Tik Tok. Source: The Feed
But it’s not just so-called “mega influencers” like Jamie or “mid-tier influencers” like Tiaré who are making bank from their large followings.
Jules Lund runs Tribe, an influencer marketing platform that has over 50,000 creators on its books.
Brands aren’t just chasing mega-influencers. They’ve started filling the pockets of micro and nano-influencers to advertise their products, Jules said. These influencers could be anyone you know, with less than 100,000 followers.
“Our top creators make about $30,000-50,000 a year,” he told The Feed.
“On average, they make $500 a month,” he said.
Advertising: Influencer’s ‘dirty little secret’
With over half a million followers on Instagram and partnerships with premium brands, Australian Essena O’Neill “had it all” when she quit social media.
Before she signed off for good, she deleted thousands of photos and edited captions of the remaining posts to reveal the ‘truth’ behind them.
One edited caption of Essena in a bikini read: “NOT REAL LIFE - took over 100 in similar poses trying to make my stomach look good. Would have hardly eaten that day. Would have yelled at my little sister to keep taking them until I was somewhat proud of this. Yep so totally #goals.”
Essena told The Feed that at the height of her fame she was living in Los Angeles and making $500 to $1000 on average for each post.
Essena edited the captions of hundreds of photos to reveal the 'truth' behind them. Source: Essena O'Neill/Instagram
“Every social situation, every day, every meal was thought about for content,” she said.
“I really didn’t like who I’d become. To sum it up, just really really vain. I had almost a compulsion to take photos of myself.”
Essena said she quit social media for her 12-year-old self.
Essena deleted over 2,000 photos on her account before deleting her account completely. Source: Instagram
“I knew that was the bulk of my audience because you have analytics on that stuff. I just kept thinking ‘Damn, if I was 12 or 13, I would want to know this’,” she said.
Since Essena left, the industry has gone into hyper speed and the number of sponsored posts has skyrocketed.
She said, “the dirty little secret” of influencers is that these days they exist only to push products and luxury services on their followers.
“I think it’s pretty icky that we’re kind of just selling each other everything and saying we’re being so authentic,” she said.
Suddenly everyone around you is making money off of you. I think that money really is running the whole thing.”
Catch the first episode of ‘Like, Subscribe, Follow ’ on Tuesday at 10pm on The Feed.
