Why did Instagram star Meghan Young turn her back on law to be a full-time social media influencer?
The 33-year-old American is paid US$50,000 to $100,000 a year to endorse firm’s products, and began posting about outdoor life only as hobby while a student
Meghan Young is a professional Instagram star.
She gets paid to climb beautiful mountains, photograph their glittering summits and post comments about her adventures to her followers.
“My job is to make it look effortless, to look like it’s the most fun ever and it’s never a job,” the American says. “But it is a job.”
Young, 33, makes money from companies that pay her to endorse their products on her Instagram feed.
My job is to make it look effortless, to look like it’s the most fun ever and it’s never a job. But it is a job
She is part of a burgeoning ecosystem of social media influencers – a job that did not exist a decade ago – made possible by billions of users eager for their content and advertisers hungry for new ways to reach a youthful audience.
Companies may end up spending US$1.6 billion this year on this kind of marketing on Facebook’s Instagram alone, and as much as US$6.3 billion when including other platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, the marketing agency Mediakix estimates.
That money has fuelled the rise of influencers around the world, flooding Instagram with millions of #sponsored and #ad posts a year.
Yet most people declaring their sponsorship are unlikely to be earning enough to be making a living from it, says Evan Asano, CEO of Mediakix.
Young is an exception: she is on track to earn between US$50,000 and US$100,000 over the next year as a full-time influencer, from sponsorships as well as photo licensing fees.