How much do Aussie Instagram beauty influencers really make?

Many people would say it’s not even a “real job” but this booming industry is creating Aussie millionaires – and most of them are women.

As the CEO of a beauty company that works with hundreds of different influencers each year, people are always desperately curious to know two things: Does using influencers actually work? (Yes, it absolutely does – or else I wouldn’t keep doing it!) And just how much cash do they really earn?

The answer always shocks people, because it’s a lot. The most successful Australian influencers take home bigger pay cheques than our prime minister, top doctors and lawyers and even some of our most successful and richest CEOs.

Influencer marketing is a thriving industry and the most successful players wield such huge economic power – they can sell out a product in minutes and shift hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock – that they rightly command huge fees from brands for the influence they have over their audiences.

How much do Instagram beauty influencers make?

How much are influencers paid?

An influencer’s fee for a single Instagram post or TikTok video can be anything from $100 to $30,000 – or upwards of $1 million for major international celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton or Zendaya.

The top Aussie influencers – think your ex-reality TV stars, actors and WAGs – are earning millions each year (between $1 and $5 million) in brand endorsement deals and sponsored posts. And this is before you account for any separate fees they might earn from media commitments like a radio or TV shows or a podcast deal, plus appearance and hosting fees, or simply behind-the-scenes consulting work.

These ladies – and yes, I’m mostly talking about women here – pocket bigger salaries than most men in high-flying corporate jobs. They even earn more each year than our PM. For context, Scott Morrison’s annual salary is $549,250, the equivalent of $1505 a day.

I know some influencers who won’t even switch their selfie light on for less than $10k a post.

How much do influencers earn each year?

This all depends on how much sponsored content each influencer weaves into their everyday “organic” content. Some might only do the occasional sponsored post once a month, while others are incorporating sponsored content into their Instagram or TikTok posts every single day.

The biggest influencers in Australia operate on a “retainer” basis with their most-loved brands, so instead of being paid “per post”, they are paid a set monthly fee in exchange for an agreed number of posts.

Each brand would pay these top influencers a monthly retainer upwards of $10k a month. So if you have ten brands signed on for $10k monthly retainers, that’s a whopping $100k a month, resulting in an annual salary of $1.2 million.

This is before you add in the fees for ad hoc, one-off brand details, other media deals and commitments, plus speaking and appearance fees.

How many followers do you need to make this kind of cash?

OK, so here’s where it gets interesting. The theory of “more followers, more money” is absolutely not true. It’s all about your “engagement rate”, which is an indication of how engaged an influencer’s followers are.

I know one major Aussie influencer with 1.2 million followers who drives zero sales for brands and has the worst engagement, but another with only 50,000, super loyal and invested followers who treat her word as gospel. This influencer regularly sells out whatever product she is promoting, because she is a respected authority in the beauty space and her followers really trust her opinion when it comes to beauty product recommendations.

This is why this influencer can charge more than some people with way more followers than her – because of her engagement rate. And yes, we have software that tells us if an influencer has bought their followers and they’re all fake bots – so don’t even try doing that.

Aussie influencers Lola Thompson, Gabrielle Epstein and Amelia Marnia at Coachella music festival. Picture: Instagram.

It’s all about building an authentic audience of followers that actually like you, trust you, believe you and are ultimately invested in your life and what you have to say.

OK, but does influencer marketing actually work?

100% it works. Some of the biggest influencer brands in the world – think Kim Kardashian’s shapewear label SKIMs, vitamins brand JSHealth and fast fashion brands like Pretty Little Thing and White Fox – spend millions of dollars a year on their influencer marketing strategies. These brands have annual revenue figures in the hundreds of millions of dollars (SKIMS is valued at US $3.2 billion) and rely mostly on social media marketing to drive sales.

And to the sceptics who argue influencer marketing involves simply duping customers into buying products that don’t deliver? These brands haven’t got to where they are today with people buying just once. They hook people in, then their customers become loyal brand disciples making lucrative repeat purchases, over and over again.

So if you’re still in the camp who don’t take influencers seriously, I’m here to tell you they really don’t care what you think of them … because they’re too busy laughing all the way to the bank!

Shelley Sullivan is the founder and CEO of Australian beauty brands ModelCo and MCoBeauty.

Originally published as How much do Aussie Instagram beauty influencers really make?