The first step to becoming an influencer is posting consistently on apps like Instagram and TikTok.
Creators also say media kits, membership groups, and talent managers have helped grow their brands.
Social media has created many new ways to make money, and over the past few years, it has led millions of people around the world to become influencers.
Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat have opened up doors for individuals who want to switch careers, become full-time creators, or supplement the income from their 9-to-5 jobs.
The most important step to getting started as an influencer is to pick a platform or two and begin posting consistently. While some creators eventually land on a specific content niche, such as fitness, beauty, fashion, or education, others post about many topics.
Creator Ayomi Samaraweera gained hundreds of followers a few weeks after uploading her first TikTok when one of her videos about resigning and applying for new jobs went viral.
“It was a lot of trial and error in the beginning,” Samaraweera previously told Business Insider. “I wasn’t really thinking about a niche or how my content could be unique. I just posted what I felt like at the moment.”
A steady posting cadence has even helped some creators successfully launch companies, like Nadya Okamoto, who founded the period-care brand August in 2021. She first grew her TikTok following rapidly by posting 100 times a day about menstrual hygiene and her experience in reproductive healthcare.
“To me, the TikTok algorithm is like a lottery,” she previously told BI. “The more lottery tickets you put in, the more chances you have of winning or, in this case, going viral.”
Here’s exactly how to become an influencer and start making money:
How many followers you need to be an influencer
Most brands take an influencer’s audience size into account when considering them for a paid collaboration. As a result, influencers are categorized based on their follower count.
Nano influencers have only a few thousand followers, under 10,000, but can still partner with many different brands. California-based creator Stacy Kim had only around 4,200 followers on Instagram but landed more than 40 paid partnerships in over a year and a half with companies like Samsung and Clinique.
“My engagement on posts is really high, and I heard that most brands care more about that than the number of followers you have,” she previously told BI.
The next category, micro influencers, are classified as social-media users with between 10,000 to 100,000 followers. For many brands, this is the preferred tier of creators to work with because they have a highly engaged audience but charge a lot less than celebrities or very well-known social-media personalities.
Maesha Shonar, a micro influencer with 24,000 followers on Instagram, previously told BI she had such a highly engaged audience. To stand out to brands, she created a pitch proposal, which outlined two sponsorship options the brand could choose from — each with specific timelines, deliverables, and rates — and case studies of her recent collaborations.
Influencers who have more than 100,000 followers are the next tier, followed by mega-influencers who have multiple millions.
Fashion influencer Nate White has 1.8 million followers on TikTok and earned six figures in 2022 by collaborating with companies like Verizon and Amazon Prime.
