An 8-year-old made US$22 million on YouTube, but most social media influencers are like unpaid interns
While elite YouTubers earned up to US$22m in 2018, most influencers will be lucky to earn as much as someone working at a fast-food restaurant. Dr Natalya Saldanha explains why in this crossposting from The Conversation.
Like any eight-year-old, Ryan Kaji loves to play with toys. But when Ryan plays, millions watch.
Since the age of four he’s been the star of his own YouTube channel. All up his videos have gained more than 35 billion views. This helped make him YouTube’s highest-earning star in 2018, earning US$22 million, according to Forbes.
That’s more than actor Jake Paul (US$21 million), the trick-shot sports crew Dude Perfect (US$20 million), Minecraft player DanTDM (US$18.5 million) and make-up artist Jeffree Star (US$18 million).
Ryan is apparently living the dream of many kids – and adults.
According to a Harris Poll/LEGO survey covering the United States, Britain and China, 29% of children aged eight to 12 want to be a “YouTuber”. That’s three times as many as those who want to be astronauts.
Other polls suggest an even higher percentage of teenagers aspire to fame and fortune via YouTube or another social media platform. An eye-grabbing news report out this month suggested a whopping 54% of Americans aged 13 to 38 would become an “influencer” given the chance, with 12% already considering themselves influencers.
These numbers might be questioned, but given the apparent fortunes to be made by goofing around, playing games, applying makeup or unboxing toys, it’s no surprise so many are besotted with the influencer dream.
But there’s a stark divide between the glossy façade and reality of this new industry. The fact is most wannabe influencers have as much a chance of walking on the Moon as they do of emulating Ryan Kaji. They’ll be lucky, in fact, to earn as much as someone working at fast-food joint.
Let’s take a look at the numbers.
Marketing’s new foot soldiers
Marketing literature defines an influencer as someone with a large following on a social media platform, primarily YouTube and Instagram.
As people consume less traditional media and spend more time on social platforms, advertisers are increasingly using these influencers to spruik their products. A mega-influencer like Kylie Jenner, with 139 million followers on Instagram, can reportedly charge more than US$1 milllion for a single promotional post.
In 2017 an estimated US$570 million was spent globally on influencer marketing. In 2020, according to the World Advertising Research Center, it will be between US$5 billion and US$10 billion.
A key driver of this booming market is that about half of consumers use ad-blocking technology, which limits the reach of traditional advertising.
Keeping up appearances
One company to really embrace the social influencer trend is cosmetics giant Estee Lauder. In August the company’s chief executive, Fabrizio Freda, said 75% of its advertising budget was now going to social media influencers, “and they’re revealing to be highly productive”.
But while part of the company’s budget is going to “micro-influencers” – those with fewer than 10,000 followers – it’s likely the bulk is still wrapped up in deals with big-name “spokesmodels” and “brand ambassadors” like Karlie Kloss, Grace Elizabeth, Fei Fei Sun, Anok Yai and Kendall Jenner.
In a sense these celebrity deals aren’t much different to what the cosmetics company has done for decades with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Elisabeth Hurley and Karen Graham.
Unpaid internships
So far most of the indications are that the new economics of influencer marketing are not too different to the old economics of marketing.
As in the acting, modelling or music industry, there’s a tiny A-list of superstar influencers making millions. Then there’s a somewhat larger B-list making a handsome living. But the vast bulk of influencers would be better off getting an ordinary job.
In 2018 a professor at the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, Mathias Bärtl, published a statistical analysis of YouTube channels, uploads and views over a decade. His results showed that 85% of traffic went to just 3% of channels, and that 96.5% of YouTubers wouldn’t make enough money to reach the US federal poverty line (US$12,140, or about A$17,900).
Cornell University associate professor Brooke Erin Duffy suggests the lure of being a social influencer is part of a larger myth about the digital economy providing the opportunity for fulfilment, fame and fortune in doing what you love through developing your “personal brand”.
This is a particularly problematic illusion for young women, Duffy writes in her 2017 book (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love.
The tales of achievement, she says, should not obscure the reality. Rather than a satisfying career, what most have is an “unpaid internship”.
Dr Natalya Saldanha, Academic, RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
A lot of fulltime youtubers have been saying its not the career it once was. Apparently it used to be normalish hours getting paid to do something fun, but since the algorithm began to reward frequent uploading its more like a 60hr week with less pay than you could get doing that in other industries, and no holidays.
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The QMS Go Large “Be memorable” digital adverts on either side of this article are literally horrendous.
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Which experience would you like your kids to undertake though – working at Maccas or building viable skills for future careers?
Full disclosure, I was a checkout operator at Coles all through high school.
But imagine if I’d been able to make that money in something more tied to my future career as a content specialist?
Fame and fortune? Unlikely.
“Influence”? Probably not.
But there is real skill development available by doing. Something which can help score that ‘ordinary’ job, down the road.
For sure, but I see also as the maturation of the market, and as we are more and saturated with influencers and the like, each person gets a smaller share of the same pie.
It used to be an easier market to tap into for aspiring influencers and the like, but the giants are still the giants and there’s only so much attention the consumer is willing to give.
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These unpaid interns are at the mercy of a capricious gatekeeper with its “algorithms” and constantly changing terms of service. So it is like doing unpaid internship for a “job” that keeps changing with no warning. There have also been heaps of videos about youtube burnout as this “doing what you love job” expects the “intern” to provide their own production team. It is humanly impossible for one person to do everything to satisfy these inscrutable “algorithms” now. Great job, great future! As this article mentions, the situation with heaps of wannabes and only a handful of stars has always been the way of things. This always seems to happen to every media channel where the cost of cut-through skyrockets as more players enter and it becomes saturated.
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