Instagram and TikTok gear up creator subscriptions as influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth up to $15 billion this year.
The power of influencers has surged over the last few years and now two of their major platforms are considering creator subscriptions.
TikTok, the video-focused social networking service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is testing the idea of allowing its creators to charge subscriptions for their content, the Information reported.
A Predictable Income
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meta Platform’s (FB) – Get Meta Platforms Inc. Class A Report Instagram’s began testing subscriptions this week, with the company’s head Adam Mosseri stating in a video posted on Twitter that subscriptions are “one of the best ways” for influencers and creators to have a predictable income.
Ten creators are part of the early test, including basketball player Sedona Prince, Olympian Jordan Chiles, and astrologer Aliza Kelly.
Creators can set their own subscription rates from 99 cents per month to $99.99 per month.
Last year, Twitter introduced Super Follows, which it described “as a new way for people to earn monthly revenue by sharing subscriber-only content with their followers on Twitter.”
In November, the platform also introduced Twitter Blue for a monthly fee of $2.99 in the U.S.
It will give users the option to undo tweets, read some news articles ad free, more easily access long and convoluted Twitter threads and let users manage saved content using a folder system.
Influencers Paid More Than CEOs
In terms of popularity, TikTok topped Apptopia’s list of top-ten most-downloaded apps in the United States in 2021 with 94 million downloads, 30 million more than Instagram which came in second with 64 million downloads.
The influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth up to $15 billion this year, up from as much as $8 billion in 2019, according to Business Insider.
A survey last year by Inmar Intelligence found that 84% of respondents made a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendation.
In addition, 67% of consumers spent over $151 based on influencer recommendations with 10 percent saying they have spent over $1000
Some of the top Instagram stars of 2021 include soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, who reportedly earns up $1.6 million per sponsored post and Wayne “The Rock” Johnson who reportedly charges $1.5 million per post.
TikTok influencers like Charli D’Amelio are earning upwards of $17.5 million annually, which is more than the median pay for execs at S&P 500 companies, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The power of influencers has become a job that some young people have been able to successfully parlay into millions of dollars.
