Social media has created a lot of changes as far as the world we live in is concerned. Many of these changes are actually quite drastic if you think about it. After all, people who haven’t even managed to become legal adults yet are able to amass enormous followings, and they can earn money from these followings as well.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it
is important to note that while these kids are certainly able to earn some
money, the fact of the matter is that for the most part the people that hire
them for something or the other have a tendency to try their best to take
advantage of them.
This is because of the fact that these young influencers don’t
really know how much they are truly worth, and as a result of the fact that
this is the case they tend to accept payments that are far lower than what they
actually deserve thereby allowing brands and companies to get some really
amazing marketing without having to pay for the privilege.
Because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that
could potentially end up compromising the careers that these young influencers
might eventually end up having if they are given the chance to thrive and grow,
tech writer Taylor Lorenz decided to take this issue up in an extensive Twitter
thread. In the series of tweets, Lorenz bemoaned the lack of transparency that can be
seen when it comes to ad rates. According to Lorenz, due to the reason that people
don’t talk about how much they usually earn from ads and the like, this has led
to young influencers not really knowing how much they should ideally charge for
this sort of thing.
A notable example of this kind of phenomenon according to Lorenz
could be seen back in 2017 during the heyday of Instagram memes and their
profitability. During this period in time, teenagers who were running drop
shipping stores would pay very low amounts often between $4 to $6 for meme
pages to feature ads for their stores, and amount that is far too low
considering that these meme often had thousands upon thousands of followers.
This trend has continued into the present day, with a lot of
companies trying to take advantage of the fact that these young content
creators and influencers don’t know much about the kinds of rates they should
ideally end up charging at any given point in time. It has become common
business practice for startups to send lots of emails to a bunch of creators
and make it seem like they are getting huge brand deals when in reality they
are getting a paltry sum in spite of the fact that their worth is so much
higher than the money that they might currently be getting offered.
Young creators also want to be able to get the same brand
deals as their idols, and while the stars that they idolize tend to get the big
bucks by getting sponsorships from these brands, said brands take advantage of
this kind of mindset among younger creators by offering them less money so that
they would get brand deals that they find to be desirable even though the money
they are getting does not make this collaboration truly worth it.
The rise of TikTok has led to a new phenomenon. The people
that use this new social media platform are really young, which means that the
influencers that are rising on this platform are young as well. More
information needs to become publicly available about ad rates and the like so
that new influencers can have a better idea of how much they should be charging
brands that want to work with them.
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