One of the often talked about aspects of Hive is of course, how much is earned - normally framed as "how little I earn" or "how much they earn". But regardless, Often, people seem to have an expectation that the earnings should be comparable to centralized social media sites, where there are so many people earnings millions upon millions, as if that is the norm.
What is the norm for a social media influencer?
Glad you asked!
Supposedly, only about half of social media influencers earned anything at all, but that is still a pool of about 100M earners, so that is not too bad. But, how much did they earn? Well, almost 75% earned less than $500 in a year.
Here are the numbers:
Now, before you say "500 isn't too bad in a year" (you are right, it isn't), that is less than $500 dollars in a year. Which means that some percentage of them earned under 100 dollars, and some under 10 dollars in a year.
However, 17% made a respectable 500-5000 in a year too, but whether that is good or bad is going to depend on where that person lives. Linktree, the group who compiled the list, put a "living wage" (in the US) at above $50,000 in a year, which only 2% of the influencers managed. And, the average annual salary in the US is currently just under $60,000 a year. So at the bottom of the two percenters, they might be better off financially just getting an average job.
There is a nice, albeit a bit unwieldy, graphic on the site that shows some numbers around an "internet minute" and just what an influencer is competing with. It looks like this:
Almost half a million dollars spent on Amazon every minute. 65,000 images put on Instagram, and 2.4M Snapchats. How many can actually compete and make it their fulltime job and then, how many of them are able to turn it into something lucrative enough that it will be sustainable?
“Getting likes is more fun when you can turn them into cold hard cash”
Linktree
Sure, but one has to understand where that money is coming from, right? For most of the influencers, it is through affiliate links that drive sales of random products. However, is this sustainable? What I mean is, how long can a particular influencer hold enough influence to drive popular products before they are no longer the type of person who can do so? Let's face it, the vast majority of these people are not famous for their skills on a football pitch, or in a sextape, so how are they going to get and hold attention? How many fitness influencers can there be, how many photographers, or TikTokers?
How many people can be maintained by offering nothing but content, most of which is going to be almost identical content to what a million other people at least are creating? The logistics just doesn't work.
But, that doesn't stop the influencer business, because the real business isn't at the surface layer, it is at the platform layer where all of the data is collected, collated and used for targeting to sell goods and services. Out of all that traffic herded and influenced to buy, how much of the money earned trickles back into the pockets of the influencers?
Not much.
How much is Facebook's ad revenue?
In 2022, Facebook generated nearly 114 billion U.S. dollars in advertising revenue. This figure is expected to further grow to exceed 127 billion U.S. dollars by 2027. The social platform is responsible for roughly 19 percent of the global ad revenue.
For reference, that amount of ad revenue distributed across those 100M influencers who earned something, would equate to $1,140 each. And that is just the earnings from Facebook ad revenue. But of course, that is not how business works.
How does Meta pay content creators?
As explained by Meta: “Last year, we began testing Ads on Facebook Reels as a way for creators to earn money for creating and sharing engaging public reels. We're now testing a new payout model that pays creators based on the performance of their public reels, not the earnings of ads on their reels.
Who do you think dictates the performance?
How much does TikTok pay influencers?
According to reports from top influencers, TikTok pays around $0.02 and $0.04 for every 1,000 views. These are reports based on payments received through the TikTok Creator Fund. This is a program that TikTok introduced in 2021 in a bid to compensate content creators for creating content on the platform.
TikTok shares the ad revenue 50/50 with creators.
If the creator has over 100K followers.
It would be interesting to see the total amounts of how much these millions of influencers spend trying to be influencers, including all the products they buy through their own links in a "get high off your own supply" scenario. I suspect that for the majority of the influencers, they aren't going to come close to breaking even with their earnings. With a couple hundred million people trying to be influencers, and only about 10% of them earning over 500 dollars a year, the rest are just a mass of consumers, right?
What a scam.
But it is easy work to be an influencer, just not very well paid work. Granted, for most of these people it is probably more likely than being an astronaut...
How much do astronauts get paid in space?
The salaries of Nasa Astronauts in the US range from $24,079 to $640,817 , with a median salary of $116,165 . The middle 57% of Nasa Astronauts makes between $116,169 and $291,008, with the top 86% making $640,817.
Neither being an influencer or an astronaut isn't exactly all it is cracked up to be financially, but the bar for one of those is very low, meaning that anyone can try their hand. And probably, giving it a go is more fun than doing a boring average job that will earn more than 98% of influencers.
Now, just to finish off. I wonder how many people on Hive earn more than $500 a year for their activity here? Whoever does is earning more than 72% of social media influencers and none of it is coming through ad revenue. That is pretty incredible, isn't it? Also, out of all the people who do earn on Hive, do they think they need to put in less or more effort to earn the same on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or TikTok?
And the other thing is, after all these influencers have been earning "so much" what have the got to show for it when it ends? What do they own? Even if earning well, if they haven't invested well, they will still have nothing.
An affiliate: Attached and reliant on the outcomes of the host. Powerless.
Something to think about, perhaps.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
