Being an influencer sounds great, but is it really that glamorous?
From being your own boss to doing work you actually like, the perks of influencer life have drawn in plenty of creators to an industry valued at $250 billion.
Take Sid Raskind, whose goofy lifehacks have earned him millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram. Still, Yanely Espinal, host of the podcast “Financially Inclined,” told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that younger would-be creators should understand what it takes to make it. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Yanely Espinal: If [younger people are] going to pursue it, if they’re interested in it, they should be as informed as possible. We should simply be exposing them to this as a possible career path and explaining to them what are the advantages of this type of work, what are the disadvantages? What are some of the successful parts of this and the exciting parts? And what are some of the challenges and the drawbacks? And then letting them make the most informed choice that they can about whether this is something that they would like to do or not.
Lily Jamali: And you had a chance to speak with content creator Sid Raskind. How does being a content creator look like for him?
Espinal: Well, he actually talks about using so many of the skills that he’s been developing for many years. And he kind of calls it like a day-to-day grind; that’s kind of what he mentioned when we spoke.
Sid Raskind: My day-to-day is basically answering emails, recording videos, delivering assets. I go live once a week, I have a podcast, I’m working on another project. And I have a web series that I have to go and produce for that.
Espinal: And he feels a lot of pressure to have as many opportunities to monetize as possible.
Jamali: Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work. How important is it to diversify, like Raskind has done?
Espinal: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s going to be really, really important, because at the end of the day the majority of the money that you can make as a social media influencer actually comes from sponsorships and partnerships, and affiliate marketing and those types of things, which are extra on top of what the platforms are offering. And so that’s the part where the multiple income streams comes in. It’s so key because you cannot just rely on money from TikTok or YouTube because it’s just not enough. So you have to constantly be reaching a broad audience so that you can get the different types of sponsorships that are looking to reach people through different ads, through different brand deals, through different sponsored collaborative posts, and things like that.
Jamali: Talk about the kind of content he creates.
Espinal: So I’ll say Sid is very lucky because he started creating some content just for fun, like as a joke, he was starting to say silly things like, “I didn’t know this until I was 30.”
Jamali: (laughs) Like that’s so old.
Espinal: Yeah, as if it was like so old. But I think that on TikTok, it is considered to be old (laughs).
Jamali: Aye, easy (laughs).
Espinal: So it’s funny, because now I’m in my 30s and I see that, like a lot of the younger TikTokkers will be like, “oh, you know, the older generation on TikTok, the one born in the 90s?” And I’m like, what? If you’re born in the 90s, you’re old on TikTok? And you know, it’s funny, because I think that that’s the thing, it’s like, being in your 30s, a lot of younger students and teenagers and kids, they have this idea in their head, this vision of being in my 30s, I am going to be so successful, I’m going to be married, I’m gonna have a house. I mean, a lot of us, we have these ideas of our future lives. And for Sid, it was very much like, ‘Hey, let me show you how that might not be true. Because I didn’t know this. I didn’t know that, I’m in my 30s. I didn’t know this.’ And I think that was the piece of his content that was so relatable for so many people. And also a lot of younger people are curious, like, hey, what don’t you know, in your 30s? Maybe I don’t already know it, or maybe I should get to know that. So I think he got very lucky in his content. Not only is it funny and entertaining, but it’s very relatable for so many people that feel like, hey, there’s things out there that I was never taught.
Jamali: This work has a lot of expenses that people might not think about. So walk us through some of those.
Espinal: Yes, so one of the funniest ones that came up when I spoke to Sid was taxes. He was like, I just didn’t realize that they’re gonna come for a huge chunk of the money that you make in taxes, and they don’t take it when you’re paid the money, they charge you the taxes later. So as a creator, and a lot of times for other gig economy workers or freelancers, this is the same thing where you are paid and it’s on you, it is your responsibility to calculate and estimate how much you’re going to be charged in taxes, because this income is coming to you untaxed. And it’s your job to set aside that money and have it when it’s time to pay the taxes that you owe in the future. And so if you go ahead and spend all of your income when the tax bill comes later, and you’re thinking, oh, man, I don’t even know where that money went, what, how am I going to pay this bill. So you have to really pay attention to the taxes and plan ahead for that. And then of course, things that will make you feel secure and safe at home, right your health insurance and savings accounts that will allow you to take care of yourself in an emergency, you know if something comes up and hey, you have to pause your work for a week or month to take care of an emergency with family. You got to be able to have something set aside in your savings. You can’t just expect that like the one he’s just always going to keep on coming in. And so he talked a lot about how he saves for his future goals. And specifically thinking about retirement investing so that he doesn’t have to keep on working when he’s in his 70s and 80s and he can just enjoy the fruits of his labor.
Jamali: Maybe the influencer economy will be long gone by then, who knows? That’s what’s so fun about this conversation that you had, Yanely, that you don’t really think of a social media influencer thinking about his retirement savings. Just feels very incongruent, somehow.
Espinal: That’s right. But I gotta tell you Sid, he was such an interesting one to speak to, an interesting creator, because he started doing this when he was a teenager, and he’s now in his 30s. So most people, they would have quit if they didn’t make it on TikTok, or YouTube or Instagram. But he just was so passionate about this, he loves doing this, like he really loves making these videos, and connecting with people and just having fun doing this as a job that he kept at it. I mean, his perseverance is top notch. And for me, that was one of the pieces that I got from him was like, Wow, you’re really devoted to this. So he’s doing the work, he’s going to make sure that he can succeed at this for as long as possible, because he loves that he has that passion for what he does.
Jamali: Yeah, you asked him for some tips for people who do want to do this work. What did he have to say?
Espinal: So the first one was just keep posting. And then the second piece was, he said, don’t be afraid to juggle a few things. Maybe you have a part time job or a full time job, and then you come home and also do social media on top of that. And then the third thing that he said was that you got to be realistic, you know, failure is gonna come.
Raskind: That consistency of failure leads to two more people seeing it. And if two more people see it, then two more people see it, and two more people see it. And that is where the real audience growth comes from. It’s okay if you’re not an overnight success.
Espinal: But I think a lot of Sid’s skills that he wasn’t giving himself a lot of credit for was the soft skills that he has. And those are really the things that help you stand out.
The Census Bureau keeps a list of the 22,607 industries in the U.S. It includes some pretty niche entries, including pickled onion manufacturing and canoe repair.
Last month, The Washington Post pointed out that the list does not include social media, despite the 50 million people that Goldman Sachs estimates work in the creator economy.
Writers Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz call the omission “an oversight that misses one of the most monumental changes to have swept the U.S. labor force in years.”
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