A New Middle Class of Content Creators Is Quietly Quitting the 9-to-5 (indiatimes.com) 105
"The rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels and Amazon storefronts has created a new kind of white-collar exit strategy," reports Bloomberg. Workers ditch office jobs not to become celebrities, necessarily, "but to piece together an income online through brand deals, affiliate links and highly personal videos documenting everyday life."
In many cases, the followers necessary to sustain a living are smaller (and more attainable) than people might assume. A small but loyal audience can now generate enough income to rival a midlevel salary. Welcome to the middle-class creator economy. Last year, 25-year-old Abi Platock balanced a corporate marketing job in New York while posting online in her spare time. She built her audience by posting one or two videos a day, offering career advice, beauty tips and daily vlogs. "I signed my first brand deal in the four-figure range, and for me that was just such a big eye-opening moment," Platock says of her partnership with deodorant brand Secret. She had 8,000 followers on TikTok at the time. "You can totally make it work without having hundreds of thousands of followers." Platock, who now has roughly 25,000 followers across platforms, has signed about $25,000 in brand deals so far this year and expects her annual creator income to reach around $50,000 by yearend.
Her experience reflects a broader shift in advertising. Brands are increasingly moving money toward so-called microinfluencers — smaller online personalities who have less than 100,000 followers. "They are hiring a bunch of microcreators at scale instead of hiring a handful of macrocreators for what could potentially be the same cost," says Ali Grant, co-chief executive officer of the Digital Department, a creator management company. And they perform where it matters most: engagement. An engagement rate of 3% is considered strong, and some microinfluencers exceed 10%, Grant says of the closely watched metric that tracks how often followers interact with content through likes, comments, shares and saves. Microinfluencers average a 3.2% engagement rate, almost triple the 1.1% rate for macroinfluencers (more than 1 million followers), according to growth marketing agency ATTN... A TikTok partnership with a creator who has around 50,000 followers can run a brand more than $3,500 for a single post, Grant says; with 10 times the followers, that fee might just triple, to around $10,000....
The influencer marketing economy ballooned to a projected $33 billion in 2025 up from $1.7 billion in 2015. The segment gained momentum after the COVID-19 pandemic, as dissatisfaction with traditional work pushed many to reconsider conventional career paths, says Brooke Duffy, a professor of communications at Cornell University. "They realized the trade-offs in terms of the investments of time, energy and human capital were not necessarily worth sacrificing so much of one's personal self for," she says. Success online can bring greater freedom — and even higher pay than many traditional office jobs, which have a median US salary of $69,000, according to Glassdoor. But the middle-class hustle still requires constant effort to maintain. The career has no promise of lifetime longevity. And unlike traditional workers, creators have no predictable paycheck or job protections, making career stability elusive. Roughly 57% of 3,000 surveyed full-time creators earn below a living wage from content creation, according to a report last year from Influencer Marketing Hub. Income from social media can fluctuate wildly from month to month, driven by shifts in algorithms, sponsorship cycles and platform trends.
"You could have a month where you make zero dollars, or you could have a month where you make $10,000," Platock says.
The article cites Gallup Poll data released last year that found employee engagement in the U.S. had fallen to its lowest level in a decade [with engagement defined as "the psychological attachment workers have to their work/team/employer]. "Among the hardest-hit groups were Generation Z and workers in finance and technology. Broader workplace challenges, including rapid organizational change, hybrid and remote work transitions, and rising employee expectations are considered drivers of the overall trend."
"For many workers, influencing can seem like a better deal; flexible schedules and independence wrapped in a veneer of creativity and fun. Almost 60% of Gen Zers say they'd become an influencer if given the opportunity, according to a 2023 survey from Morning Consult."
Her experience reflects a broader shift in advertising. Brands are increasingly moving money toward so-called microinfluencers — smaller online personalities who have less than 100,000 followers. "They are hiring a bunch of microcreators at scale instead of hiring a handful of macrocreators for what could potentially be the same cost," says Ali Grant, co-chief executive officer of the Digital Department, a creator management company. And they perform where it matters most: engagement. An engagement rate of 3% is considered strong, and some microinfluencers exceed 10%, Grant says of the closely watched metric that tracks how often followers interact with content through likes, comments, shares and saves. Microinfluencers average a 3.2% engagement rate, almost triple the 1.1% rate for macroinfluencers (more than 1 million followers), according to growth marketing agency ATTN... A TikTok partnership with a creator who has around 50,000 followers can run a brand more than $3,500 for a single post, Grant says; with 10 times the followers, that fee might just triple, to around $10,000....
The influencer marketing economy ballooned to a projected $33 billion in 2025 up from $1.7 billion in 2015. The segment gained momentum after the COVID-19 pandemic, as dissatisfaction with traditional work pushed many to reconsider conventional career paths, says Brooke Duffy, a professor of communications at Cornell University. "They realized the trade-offs in terms of the investments of time, energy and human capital were not necessarily worth sacrificing so much of one's personal self for," she says. Success online can bring greater freedom — and even higher pay than many traditional office jobs, which have a median US salary of $69,000, according to Glassdoor. But the middle-class hustle still requires constant effort to maintain. The career has no promise of lifetime longevity. And unlike traditional workers, creators have no predictable paycheck or job protections, making career stability elusive. Roughly 57% of 3,000 surveyed full-time creators earn below a living wage from content creation, according to a report last year from Influencer Marketing Hub. Income from social media can fluctuate wildly from month to month, driven by shifts in algorithms, sponsorship cycles and platform trends.
"You could have a month where you make zero dollars, or you could have a month where you make $10,000," Platock says.
The article cites Gallup Poll data released last year that found employee engagement in the U.S. had fallen to its lowest level in a decade [with engagement defined as "the psychological attachment workers have to their work/team/employer]. "Among the hardest-hit groups were Generation Z and workers in finance and technology. Broader workplace challenges, including rapid organizational change, hybrid and remote work transitions, and rising employee expectations are considered drivers of the overall trend."
"For many workers, influencing can seem like a better deal; flexible schedules and independence wrapped in a veneer of creativity and fun. Almost 60% of Gen Zers say they'd become an influencer if given the opportunity, according to a 2023 survey from Morning Consult."
wish I could have a job.... (Score:5, Insightful)
how many people are lining up in 30 years to watch a 55 year old "influencer" online?
still not sure how these people can do this all day and get paid - as I'm at work, so I've got no time to watch your influencer videos....
Re:wish I could have a job.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think for most of them its enough money to get by and pay the bills, very few of them make enough to get rich. It certainly beats being on the dole. Also a lot of youtubers these days are older people and it could be a top up to their pensions. Very few get rich.
It's also a high stress job (Score:3, Interesting)
On top of that you have a wide variety of trolls a
Basic mathematics (Score:3)
Firing 80% of the dead weight employees and still getting half of the revenues seems like a win to me if you are able to do basic mathematics.
Fun, let's do that.
20% employees, 50% revenue: win
0% employees, 0% revenue: absolute win, nothing wasted on dead weight at all!
You seem to be making the assumption that 100% of the revenue is spent on employees.
What I see is that each additional employee creates more revenue. Even at diminuishing returns, more is more.
And by making four fifths of the workforce redundant, investors are getting less return on investment.
But somehow you book that as a win.
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It certainly beats being on the dole.
At the very least, there's less paperwork and arbitrary rules.
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You do wonder what the young will do when they're even just a bit older, if all they can lay claim to is being "an influencer". The smart ones will re-invent themselves numerous times I guess. Right now, I'm told, the ideal influencer is a late 20s, early 30s good looking female. That's a pretty small demographic from which to choose, and of course you don't stay in that age range for long, even if you are good looking.
As for making money, there's money from Youtube and the like - but that's just pocket cha
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Right now, I'm told, the ideal influencer is a late 20s, early 30s good looking female. That's a pretty small demographic from which to choose, and of course you don't stay in that age range for long, even if you are good looking.
And that's increasingly easy to duplicate with AI, which will be hard to compete with especially as people are apparently easily fooled and/or don't care.
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Who knows? If you're 60 you probably don't watch 15 year old influencers but rather 55 year old influencers.
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And then there are always good-looking hosts in their early 20s reading scripts written by people in their 40s and 50s and filmed by people whose age just doesn't matter. Sometimes the 40s and 50s continue to host as well, if they're still good-looking enough (like SciShow).
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Didn't Netflix recently create a "Stranger Things like" series for their aging audience? Not that the "kids" in the last three stranger things seasons were kids anymore either ...
lol ads (Score:1)
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For all the moaning about ads, why do people watch influencers? Do they LIKE ads? Baffles me.
Because insanity and hypocrisy are extremely popular right now...
Selling picks and shovels (Score:2)
The real money seems to be in selling crap to people who are trying to get into the influencing gig. I just saw those dumb Meta glasses prominently placed right in the middle of the walkway the last time I was at the local Target. Now it makes sense.
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Re:Selling picks and shovels (Score:5, Funny)
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In the old days submarines had scribes to send messages back and forth, and that's where the terminology came from. In the modern era of course, scribes are automated (not a human), and messages from a computer are sent by raven [wikipedia.org].
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The real money seems to be in selling crap to people who are trying to get into the influencing gig. I just saw those dumb Meta glasses prominently placed right in the middle of the walkway the last time I was at the local Target. Now it makes sense.
Be sure to like, follow and subscribe!
I have never understood the allure of being an 'influencer'. Especially, if you're going to be doing videos of your life that is just made-up nonsense, because you're not working a real job. I guess that's the point, but holy cow, I would think watching it would become mind-numbing very quickly.
Oh, I know why I don't care about influencers...it's because I have a life of my own outside of a monitor screen.
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The real money seems to be in selling crap to people who are trying to get into the influencing gig. I just saw those dumb Meta glasses prominently placed right in the middle of the walkway the last time I was at the local Target. Now it makes sense.
Be sure to like, follow and subscribe!
History repeats itself. Who really got rich during the gold rush? The stores selling to the miners did well, but the folks selling to the stores got crazy rich.
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Parasocial Cyberpunk Relationships ... (Score:2)
... on the rise. Who would've thunk?
It works! (Score:4, Insightful)
She had 8,000 followers on TikTok at the time.
We can thus estimate that this life strategy will work for 0.0125% of people. What a massive trend!
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Thank you, just wanted to check same thing. Even Gini coefficient is insufficient to show how lopsided distribution is on those "content creator" platforms.
Re:It works! (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you get to that estimation? Population divided by 8,000 fails short as you can follow more than one "influencer" and creators themselves can follow others. So the maximum for followed people in a userbase of x would be x-1, if everyone followed everyone else.
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8k followers isn't even that much. My shitty YouTube channel where I walk around places has over 1,500.
It's more to do with the type of content and how monetizable it is. It sounds like she has brands paying her for some coverage.
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..Quietly Quitting the 9-to-5 ... Let me guess. (Score:4, Funny)
It's Dolly Parton and Liliy Tomlin and they're tying up Dabney Coleman in protest. I've already seen this one.
Re: ..Quietly Quitting the 9-to-5 ... Let me guess (Score:1)
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And do not forget Jane Fonda. That look of hers when she sees Dolly and then looks down at her own is priceless. Small are actually cuter.
Won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't all get rich by cutting each other's hair.
Only very few.
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At least we now realize how important the job of telephone sanitizer can be.
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At least we now realize how important the job of telephone sanitizer can be.
Came here to make a Ark-B joke; yours is more elegant than mine probably would have been. :-)
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Weird World (Score:2)
That anyone can make the money being made from "influencing" is quite surprising. And certain individuals, with high follower counts, are making an astonishing amount of money doing it.
The story doesn't say, but I'm wondering about the brand deals. Do these influences find and convince the brands to sign? Or do big brands like Secret Deodorant seek out and approach Tik Tokers with only 8k followers? Seems unlikely.
I wonder how long it will take until we see the American/European version of influencer factor [reddit.com]
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Or do big brands like Secret Deodorant seek out and approach Tik Tokers with only 8k followers?
Yes, they do. Corporate marketing offices have departments (or people, if they are smaller) who do outreach to bloggers, podcasters, streamers. There are conventions where the marketers can meet the "talent." In my experience the talent will shill for anything without shame.
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There are hundreds of thousands of people selling their services to connect content creators to sponsors. Not to mention content creator coaches and all kinds of other nonsense businesses selling the products needed to game your way into income through content creation. The economy is pretty complex and volatile. It's also rife with scams, MLM schemes etc. Everyone wants to sell anyone with a phone camera the secret to riches.
Those influencer factories are already here. The OnlyFans factories are here too.
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The story doesn't say, but I'm wondering about the brand deals. Do these influences find and convince the brands to sign? Or do big brands like Secret Deodorant seek out and approach Tik Tokers with only 8k followers? Seems unlikely.
I have a friend in the UK who streams games full time. He just reaches out on social media to companies and that usually works. He's not a huge streamer but makes a decent living at it.
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How many followers does he have that he can be not huge and make a decent living?
And what is he streaming? Just his game play or does he put on some sort of show(big tits) to attract eyeballs?
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Most jobs are just useless money creation (Score:2, Interesting)
We can eith
Re: Most jobs are just useless money creation (Score:1)
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That would fix nothing. The Fascist state you would require to implement that would have people at each other's throats very shortly.
How old is the author ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The writer of the article says " unlike traditional workers, creators have no predictable paycheck or job protections, making career stability elusive."
Is this being written in the 1960s ? Traditional jobs have had no predictability, protections pay rises or promotions since the early seventies. Career stability went away about the same time as the Apollo programme.
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The writer of the article says " unlike traditional workers, creators have no predictable paycheck or job protections, making career stability elusive."
Is this being written in the 1960s ? Traditional jobs have had no predictability, protections pay rises or promotions since the early seventies. Career stability went away about the same time as the Apollo programme.
Yep, the old social contract of your employer taking care of you in exchange for years of continued service was broken before I was even born. They created a world of fear where mercenary attitudes rule and are now surprised that people are acting like mercenaries. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Your employer will not hesitate to throw you under the bus for a minor bump on the quarterly P&L sheet... You owe them nothing and realistically, if you get a chance to get ahead at their expense you've got
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Welcome to a world where the only one who will look out for you is you. Altruism is well and truly dead.
The sad thing is how many people seem to really believe that. In my actual life, I witness altruism and people helping each other out every single day. There's a lot more to "the world" than corporate executives and private equity investors.
Abuse of the masses by the rich and powerful isn't new. Read up about sweatshops in the 1800s. Or the life of a typical peasant in France in the 1700s. That revolution happened for a reason.
The solution is not to sell your soul by shilling for any company that will
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Re:How old is the author ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, sure. The days of staying with a company for your whole career and moving up from a job in the mail room to the executive level... that's been over for a long time. Companies won't invest in workers by investing in training. We're a small family-run business that prides itself on sticking with employees for the long term and we hired a new engineering grad a few years ago, paid for her to take a multi-month training course to get her certified, spent lots of time mentoring her, and a few months after that she gleefully announced she was leaving the company for a better opportunity out in the oil industry. She was surprised that we were anything but happy about it. She literally had no clue how much we'd already invested in her, and that hiring her hadn't come close to being a net gain yet. It goes both ways. Companies feel screwed over and aren't going to offer those perks anymore.
But there are still many, many, many more protections for employees than there are for influencers and gig workers. It's not even close. And I've done a bit of YouTube publishing just out of interest sake. It's a LOT of work and you're mostly just working for YouTube. And your viewers end up being super-demanding. They expect constant posting. And you live and die at the whim of YouTube, who can cut your revenue suddenly just by tweaking their algorithm. It's a brutal industry with long hours, lots of stress, and no security.
Re: How old is the author ? (Score:3)
Why would you pay to certify or take classes without stipulating that the cost would have to be repaid if their employment terminates before some fixed amount of time such that you aren't underwater with such things? That's pretty standard for any subsidized learning in the companies me or my wife have ever worked at. Pay for yourself or be on the hook if the company pays.
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...a few months after that she gleefully announced she was leaving the company for a better opportunity out in the oil industry. She was surprised that we were anything but happy about it...
that's a really tough one. There's a pithy phrase which I like:
What if we train them and they leave? What if we don't and they stay?
but as always other people have life events, relationships, ambitions, etc etc which mean you don't get the quid pro quo. Particularly hard for small-medium businesses.
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I don't think there was ever 'mutual trust'. In the 50s/60s it was just the done thing to stay in one place and work your way up. If you put the internet in front of any of those guys and they discovered you could get more money for the same work in Alabama, or be a digital nomad in Bali, I'm certain they would have done so. The 'mutual trust' in your mind that has been broken smells more like "I'm sad because we invested in staff and they decided they don't want to work for our company for the rest of thei
Re: How old is the author ? (Score:1)
Not in many European nations.
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Thanks Bloomberg. (Score:2)
Were they just hard up for anecdotes or is some sort of expectation management in effect?
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Yeah, came to say something like this. This is offensive at best. 50k is poors money in NY or CA or frankly any of the developed parts of literally any other state.
Microinfluencers are insurance (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't follow any influencer !!! (Score:2)
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I currently follow one somewhat casually. No products pushed, no marketing, rarely a sponsored stream and only ones where the topic actually fits with the rest of the content. Does not make them rich, but is a far better deal for the content creator because their audience will not evaporate from one moment to the next, because they will be there because of the person and the content created. Also makes for a far better long-term perspective. I think, for example, quite a few female "T&A streamers", will
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I think a lot of people are consuming "influencer" content without even realizing it. Suppose you are thinking of going on vacation so you search for [location] on Youtube. You find a video talking about the hotels and attractions of the region. That travel vlog you found is influencer content.
Ditto for any hobby or interest you can think of. The interest in the hobby of the influencer is probably genuine, but they are often paid to shill for some product or another.
Wonder how many influencers will be bots... (Score:2, Insightful)
Posting AC because of unpopular sentiments.
This makes me wonder how long until the actual flesh and blood influencers are muscled out of the way for AI bots. VTubers are especially vulnerable to this because their avatar can easily be changed out for an AI driving it instead of them at a camera.
In other industries, especially art, I see people moving to AI for everything. Not just for cheapness, but it is easier to deal with a command line prompt than to deal with many artists. On the side, I'm doing stu
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This makes me wonder how long until the actual flesh and blood influencers are muscled out of the way for AI bots.
You don't have to wonder. Plenty already are AI generated personas. This so-called "middle class influencer" thing is born dead.
Very few of these are in America (Score:4, Interesting)
With the American healthcare system being what it is it's very hard to work for yourself. You need to make a tremendous amount of money to afford access to healthcare. It's a drain on everybody that we don't really notice because we've been living with it for so long. Like if somebody put a 50 lb ball and chain on your legs when you were born and everybody had that same ball and chain at a certain point you wouldn't question it
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If you pay attention you're going to notice most of these aren't American.
Abi Platock is in NYC. Your point about healthcare coverage makes logical sense, but I'm not sure it holds, statistically. Some of it may be that most influencers are very young, and you can stay on your parents' insurance until you're 26 (Platock is 25... so check to see if she's still doing this next year, and the year after).
I mean that kind of proves my point (Score:2)
It's possible being in New York if she's making enough money that she might be able to afford Obamacare but the Republicans have pretty well sabotaged it so it's very expensive. It's still a lot cheaper than most of the options if you're self-em
Strong Kent Brockman vibes (Score:2)
A new middle class. Right, middle between what exactly?
Kent Brockman: "I for one welcome our new insect overlords and like to remind them, that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
That strategy is very risky (Score:2)
If you mostly depend on essentially doing marketing, your revenue can dry up completely at the first hint of anything. Does not even have to be anything you said or did.
Re: That strategy is very risky (Score:2)
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Yes. Doing that type of "content creation" is not a good deal IMO and probably pretty soul-destroying for anybody with an open mind on top of that.
They're called shills (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it's marketing speak, but "influcencer" is just another name for shill. These people are trying to get you to buy something.
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A lot of the times, yes. But that's not exactly accurate. There are plenty of non-bought or crowd-funded influencers out there. You could also refer to them as "creators."
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You could also refer to them as "creators."
You could, but why would you lie to yourself like that?
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How is that a lie? They are, in fact, creating content. Not enjoying said content doesn't make it not-content.
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There are plenty of non-bought or crowd-funded influencers out there
That's what they'd like you to think, it's part of their pitch. The reality is, influencers most often don't disclose who is paying their bills. In other words, they're lying to you.
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Do have stats to support this statement? Almost everyone I follow, on Youtube at least (I don't really consume much other media outside that platform), discloses that day's/week's/month's sponsor(s). You're implying almost everyone also has these "shadow" sponsors on top of it, which is a bold claim considering it directly breaks Youtube ToS and would have huge implications if true. Hopefully we're not just tinfoil-hatting here for the sake of it.
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One study found that at least 95% of sponsored influencer posts did not disclose the sponsorship.
https://www.informs.org/News-R... [informs.org]
There are many other such studies, with similar results.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/p... [medpagetoday.com]
Another study found that 25% of influencers are specifically asked not to disclose that their posts are paid. (Others are already motivated not to disclose.)
https://www.marketingdive.com/... [marketingdive.com]
Buskers (Score:2)
This is equivalent to quitting your job and making money performing on the street. Maybe you can join a group of buskers and start a circus act. Hardly a new idea, but at least you can do it from the comfort of your own apartment. Seems like a tough life, though.
$24/ hour (Score:2)
BTW, my 26 year old son makes $90K per year working for a city parks department. No college, full city paid benefits and a p
Reset, please. (Score:2)
you don't know what middle class means (Score:2)
Hint: it's not a dollar amount
Advertiser collapse (Score:2)
At some point, any given channel will go from "trusted recommendations" to "they're shilling for a company". And once you lose that authenticity, you're just another commercial in a long lifespan of commercial advertising everywhere.
Bullshit Jobs morph into Bullshit businesses (Score:2)
This development shows how utterly earning a living as been messed up in the past 30 years.
It used to be that someone of average intelligence, some dexterity, and a good work ethic could land a job which pays enough to cover the basic necessities.
This was back when businesses did most things in house and were highly vertically integrated.
Business now have several stages of outsourcers between their "raw material" input and their final product output. How can that really be as efficient as it is advertised
Chasing the wrong market (Score:2)
horrible scrolly business - soap version (Score:2)
Advertisers are starting to ape the human generated content style in .. actual ads. I was watching the WNBA all-stars game and one of the ads that kept playing was a string of influencer-like videos of people washing their normal-ass 30-something problem-skin faces with Dove soap or something, espousing the results in influencer-like "unscripted content" ways. As the kids say now, that's fucking cringe. Whatever happened to amazing looking models caressing their exquisite, wet bodies, lather running down th
Good looking women can get views online (Score:2)
News at 11â¦