The magic Instagram number you need to quit your day job

FANCY a job that means all you do is post photos on social media? This is how many followers do you need to do just that.

Rebecca Gawthorne from Nourish Naturally makes $60K from Instagram annually.

IF YOU can build your Instagram followers to 60,000, you’re in with a chance of quitting your day job to post pics of your passions for a living.

That’s what’s happened to Sonali Ghosh, AKA @sugaretal, who has left her banking career behind after using blogging and Instagram to build a food styling and photography business.

Thanks to sponsored posts to her 60k+ followers, plus styling and photography opportunities that have resulted from her mouth watering baked good images, Ms Ghosh says she doesn’t need a day job.

“I’m able to match my salary I used to get from banking,” she told news.com.au.

Sonila Ghosh makes a solid income from her sponsored posts, like this one from Nutella.

Ms Ghosh uses the Tribe app, which connects brands with influencers. If you have 20-100k followers you can expect $300 to $600 per sponsored post, 200-550k followers will get you $800 to $1200 per post and for more than 500k followers you’ll be looking at $1200 plus.

“We’ve paid out over $1 million to everyday Aussies,” Tribe founder Jules Lund told news.com.au.

“We’re giving content creators another stream of revenue that is just monetising what they already do and love.”

Rebecca Gawthorne, AKA @nourish_naturally, is another Tribe user, making $60,000 from sponsored posts on Instagram to supplement her income from her dietetic clients.

“A lot of my clients were asking what I eat and for recipes and examples of products — I started Instagramming as a way to get info out to my clients without having to individually email them information,” she says.

But as her Instagram became more time-consuming, she says she needed to find a way to fund the time she couldn’t spend with paying clients.

“It took too much time from a business perspective — I had to start charging [brands for recommendations],” she says.

Mangoes and a puppy. A sponsored post from Rebecca Gawthorne.

“There is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes on. It’s more than taking a pretty picture — I have to do research and set up the photo, which sometimes takes a long time because I am not a professional photographer.”

Ms Gawthorne only recommends products that she has genuinely tried and liked and says her followers are just as responsive to a sponsored post as a non-sponsored one.

“You have to love what you are doing and you have to be authentic — you can’t post just for the money,” she says.

“[If I wasn’t authentic] I would lose followers and wouldn’t have the same engagement. I don’t think brands would want to work with me.”

Rebecca Gawthorne mixes up her sponsored posts with ones like this.

Ms Ghosh agrees that authenticity is key when it comes to sponsored posts.

“If I am promoting pesto, I would not just put it on toast — I want to do something that will make my audience think, ‘Oh, I have pesto in my fridge — why didn’t I think of doing that?’” she says.

“[My Instagram] is all about food — you won’t find me holding a shampoo bottle — and I never promote something I don’t believe in.”

What Sonali Ghosh did with her pesto.

The Ministry of Talent represent social media influencers and founder Roxy Jacenko says they have seen talent receive six figures for campaigns.

“The scope of what influencers can charge depends enormously on the requirements of the job — not just the number of followers,” she says.

Ms Jacenko says that influencers need to operate a professional business if they want to reap financial rewards.

“It’s important as talent to recognise that this is their business — behave accordingly and always remain professional, just like you would in any other job,” she says.

Roxy Jacenko is the master of Instagram.

Mr Lund is adamant that you can’t start out with a goal to become an influencer — rather you need to post about your passions and organically build a following. And if you’re lucky, brands will want to be part of your story.

“Your followers don’t necessarily want it to be your fulltime job,” Mr Lund points out.

“It should always be complementary to your lifestyle and I think taking it too seriously may just leave you in danger of getting that balance of content versus commerce out of whack.”

If you become nothing but an advertising platform, you’ll find your influencer days are numbered.

“The perfect moderation is the unfollow button,” Mr Lund says.

“Earning money should only ever be seen as a reward, not the actual motivation for building an audience.”

Originally published as The magic Instagram number you need to quit your day job