Kylie Jenner and the end of the Instagram influencer business model

[csdude55]

I don't know if any of you have been keeping up with this, but I have. I've been saying for YEARS that these "influencers" have to be flat-out lying and that there's no way to be an influencer unless you're already famous... and now I've finally been vindicated.

Worth $1 billion? Umm, more like $100 million in gross annual sales (not profits, just gross sales). Which is still a lot, sure! But nowhere near what we've been led to believe.

179 million social media "fans", yet had a 62% decrease in sales? That certainly implies that followers don't translate in to buyers. Of course, about half of those followers are fake (bought and paid for), just to make herself look more popular than she really is...

[nypost.com...]

[iamlost]

I do agree that many/most/all of the famous for being famous brigade are more hype than substance, however ~$100mm in revenue is still more than chump change...

What I’ve been fascinated with isn’t the K fam and clones but an astonishing number of young (mostly) women in many different verticals who cross link, leverage, for instance Instagram and YouTube accounts plus cross produce content with ‘competitors’.

I first noticed this with musicians, i.e. Lindsey Sterling (2012ish), but, especially past 5-years, is prevalent in many niches now. I’ve watched channels grow from a few thousand subscribers to many hundred thousand, sufficient to fund going full time.

I note that, approached properly, there are website marketing opportunities especially when a channel is in the cusp of getting traction.
Note: approached properly. Not SMM as SEO as usual bs. These folks are generally open to cross production and reference... gently gently and lose the hard sell and the hype.

The mixup of podcast and video cast, super chat and discord server, Instagram and/or TikTok and YouTube, ads/af, Patreon, branded merch, etc. is fascinating - and most often nary a website present. Yes the web is more than sites and search, lift up your eyes.

Finally, whether one considers a SM personage an influencer depends on whether they meet ones particular marketing requirements. Some have done quite well, for me, in this regard. YMMV.

[navala]

In fact, the market for advertising on instagram is dying, I think because the price of advertising is now too high, and the ability to buy something has dropped dramatically.

[LifeinAsia]

I don't know if any of you have been keeping up with this,

I pride myself in being one of the (apparently few) people who does NOT keep up with the Khardasians.

But I have also been one of the ones who never believed the ridiculous amount of money some of these influencers supposedly brought in. Not that many of their followers were real.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Unfortunatly, I don't think the end of influencers is near. sigh.

[tangor]

Unfortunatly, I don't think the end of influencers is near. sigh.

Sadly have to agree. Influencers will probably survive as many years as Flash survived "the death of Flash" ...

[csdude55]

Meh, I don't know. The whole concept is really nothing more than an affiliate program, and I would be surprised if Insta / FB aren't actually paying the big influencers to just say that they're doing better than they really are.

A long, long time ago I worked for a company that sold satellites... those great big 9' dishes. We met every Monday morning for a sales meeting, and there was this one guy that was always pulling in these ridiculously huge numbers! He would sell 10-20 dishes a week, while I was selling like 3 a month. But we all felt like it was just out of reach, ya know... if HE can do it then I can, too, it's just a matter of figuring out the magic trick.

I didn't realize until MUCH later that he actually worked for the company, acting as a shill so the rest of us would try harder.

And that's what I think most of the big influencers are: shills. Who really benefits from these celebrities pushing everyone to follow them on their Insta page? Insta.

I have a close friend that has about 10,000 followers on Insta, and she tries her best to be an influencer... she's constantly promoting her favorite products, hoping that one day she'll have enough followers to get paid for it. In about 3 years of doing it, I think she actually got one company to give her a free sample in exchange for promoting it on her page, and even that was a company that she frequented a lot. So it has personal value to her and makes her feel important, but financially? Nothing, really. She's spent a LOT more on it than she'll ever get in return.

[Monicaxxa]

I don't think that there is the end of influencers....