Have you ever wondered if you could cut it being an Instagram influencer?
Now you can find out with more certainty on via Inkifi’s Earnings on Instagram calculator. Plug your Instagram handle into its calculator, and it spits out how much you could earn per post.
This writer could earn about $2.48 (or £1.48) for my 435 Instagram followers. It’s not enough to make advertising agencies take a bite, but apparently it doesn’t take that much more to make marketing firms want to sponsor your posts.
Some brands are looking for smaller impact to accompany the big follower count of Kardashians of the world. Niche brand interests may take on accounts with as little as 3,000 followers for promoting their specific content.
Considering that 48 percent of marketing groups plan on increasing budgets for Instagram influencers in the next year according to Inkifi, becoming someone with sponsored posts and a modest following seems within the realm of reality.
Other websites have more general estimates as to how much an individual could earn from their influencing. Someone with around 3,000 followers could earn almost 70 dollars per post, according to Tribe. The upper limit on micro-influencing? A post to your hypothetical 100,000 followers could earn you over 470 dollars.
However, one prominent concern with ascending to paid influencer status on Instagram is that of transparency in promotions. In the United Kingdom, an individual can get in big trouble if they don’t disclose if a post is promoted. The UK’s advertising watchdog agency, the Advertising Standards Authority, has made the it a rule since 2014 that individuals with post sponsors must clearly tag the posts with either the #ad or #spon hashtags.
The United States is also trying to clarify the blurred lines of the Instagram influencer method of advertising. The Federal Trade Commision (FTC), the US’s consumer protection agency, has tried to “encourage” individuals with post sponsorships to not just consistently tag their sponsored, but to use clearer hashtags that consumers can recognize to mean the post is an advertisement.
In this new climate of regulatory uncertainty, it is not clear if the FTC will try to be more strict on their regulation of the wild west of Instagram influencing. So if you’re interested in using your account as a virtual billboard, better get on it quick.
Alexandra Bohannon has a Master of Public Administration degree from University of Oklahoma with a concentration in public policy. She is currently based in Oklahoma City, working as a freelance filmmaker, writer, and podcaster. Alexandra loves playing Dungeons and Dragons and is a diehard Trekkie.
