Influencer marketing is one of the best ways of making money online. How it works is that you advertise a product or service on your social media platform (usually Instagram), and you get paid by the advertiser.
I’m guessing you have probably seen popular Instagrammers posting selfies with products nobody care about. They are not doing that for fun! They’re getting paid good money for it.
Hugely successful influencers can even earn six figures for a SINGLE post! It’s crazy, I know. That said, only a handful are earning that much out of hundreds of millions of social media users.
Furthermore, it’s not easy to become a huge influencer on Instagram or other platforms if you’re not visually attractive. If you’re like me, then you probably stand no chance in becoming an influencer. Hope is not completely lost though. You can still come up with niche accounts (e.g. luxury cars) and hopefully some brands will advertise on your account.
If you have tons of followers already (above 100,000 or even a million), brands will probably approach you directly. This is based on the assumption that no followers were bought and your engagement rate is high. If you have much lesser followers, say 5,000, you probably have to find advertisers yourself. This is made possible via several influencer marketing platforms.
There are plenty of platforms out there but I’ve listed those that are pretty popular. Most of these platforms require a minimum of 5,000 or 6,000 followers.
1. FameBit
FameBit is an influencer marketing platform that works on the basis of direct communication. What this means is that you have to do your own bidding. You will be given access to their dashboard and you can see all of the available opportunities.
Each of the opportunity will state the platforms where you must promote the product, for e.g. YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Furthermore, each opportunity will also state how much they are willing to pay. For instance, some products can be as low as $100 to $250 while other bigger brands can pay from $2,500 to $5,000.
However, I don’t think this platform involves sponsored blog posts though.
One great thing about FameBit is that they also allow collaborations between influencers. You can collaborate with other influencers to do shout outs in your respective pages or to engage in something else.
2. IZEA
IZEA is a platform for both bloggers and social media influencers. If you’re a blogger, you should check out this platform. It also works on the basis of bids.
However, they won’t show all of the available opportunities for you. They will only show opportunities based on your category, your number of followers/website visits and possibly your location. There are lots of jobs in IZEA and in other platforms that are exclusive to US residents though. If you’re not from the US, there are still jobs available but it depends on your “reach” as well.
The negative part about IZEA is that you have limited bids. If you want more bids each month you have to pay for it.
3. Ifluenz
If I’m not mistaken, Ifluenz is specifically for Instagram mentions / shout outs. They have fixed rates based on the number of followers you have. Ifluenz also displays your engagement rate on your dashboard.
One of my Instagram accounts has about 11,000 followers and for that amount of followers they allow a maximum rate of $33. It goes up proportionally based on the number of followers you have. So far, I’ve not gotten any gig yet so I can’t say much about it. If you’re not getting direct offers from advertisers, you can try this platform. Having said that, the rates are pretty low as Ifluenz definitely takes a portion of the advertiser’s pay.
They accept niche accounts, so you don’t actually have to be a social media influencer yourself. You can have a luxury niche account and still join them. The minimum number of followers is 5,000 to be accepted to their network.
4. TapInfluence
TapInfluence is yet another influencer marketing platform that is pretty well-known. Like IZEA, you can’t see all of the opportunities that are available unless you’ve met the criteria of advertisers. It’s basically a waiting game like Ifluenz. You have to complete your profile properly and connect to all of your social media accounts.
You will see your total reach on their dashboard and the potential earnings or how much you should charge companies.
TapInfluence makes money by charging brands and agencies for access to the platform. Hence, you don’t have to pay anything to join.
5. Brandbacker
Brandbacker seems to be a platform that is mainly on beauty products, skincare and everything else along this line. It’s a great influencer marketing platform for the ladies. Personally, I don’t think niche sites on cars will work with Brandbacker.
If you run a lifestyle blog and popular social media accounts, this might be right for you.
One of Brandbacker’s features is that you can apply to join a “brand team”. This means that you can exclusively work with certain brands when they have new products.
Like other platforms, it’s crucial to complete your profile to land a job.
What’s your take on influencer marketing?
Personally, I’m not an influencer myself so platforms like these don’t really work for me. I’m in the process of building a few niche accounts on social media platforms so I’ll have to see if I can succeed on these platforms in the near future.
What about the rest of you? What are your experiences with influencer marketing platforms? Leave your comments below!
By the way, have you started a blog yet? You can make money blogging nowadays but it’s a long term effort. Furthermore, hosting is really cheap and it can start from $2.95 a month. Here’s a step-by-step guide to create a money-making blog.
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