influencer from the 1950’s
From Foundation Tanagra: Art, Mode Culture

A paragraph in my local newspaper introduced me to yet another occupation, along with water slide tester and professional bridesmaid (these are real jobs), of which, sadly, I’ve been clueless. The job is “influencer.” And this job pays much more than just about anything else I can imagine.

To be fair to myself and everyone else my age, “influencer marketing” only took off in 2018. Without teenage grandchildren it can take several years before I hear about anything that is “the latest” and by then it’s old.

Back to influencers.  Depending on their total number of followers they may be nano influencers, micro-influencers or power influencers. I couldn’t find the numbers for my category called “fun-size Liliputian microscopic” influencer.

What do the power influencers earn?  Kylie Jenner, allegedly the top paid Instagrammer with 147 million followers, averages $1.2 million per post. What can anyone write about for that kind of money? I regret I can’t make myself follow Kylie to find out.

One marketer says, “… for 100,000 followers, you can probably charge between $1,000 and $2,000 for an Instagram post.

To think that all my cat and flower pix have gone out for free. Just as well. For the few Instagram followers I have, I’d have to pay them to look twice.

If you happen to be curious about influencers in the lesser categories, check out this link from Huff Post with examples of four clothing influencers and the posts for which they were paid. You might be surprised at what a business will pay $1,000 for.

About the same time I learned about professional influencers, I learned about influencer fatigue. This happens when too many people are pushing the same brand and the influencer starts to question whether getting fewer and fewer likes from strangers is worth the effort. The one featured in the link above discovered she liked working in a real job where both emotional and monetary rewards were more satisfying than “likes.”

This leads me to the 2019 article that started my on-line journey. Quoting from Forbes.com: “Consumers, especially younger ones, are losing trust in paid influencers…”

Great.  I just learn about influencers and they’re on their way out. It seems that Gen Z and millennials want to get recommendations from their own “tribes,” which typically don’t include screen or music stars. Or they’re looking to follow peers who break the rules.  I’ll spare you the link to the next wave of influencers who post dopey-looking selfies to great fame and followership.

For those authorities on their way out, I just learned of another influencer that will always be operating, whether in style or not. A Los Angeles Times commentary by David Lazarus names an individual who, after buying a tool on Amazon, received what appeared to be an Amazon $20 gift card. To use the gift card, the buyer had to write “a positive 5 STARS review.”

Lazarus says that “as of Feb. 3, more than 300 ratings for the tool were five-star reviews.  Maybe that reflects an overall high level of customer satisfaction. Or maybe it represents a whole bunch of $20 payoffs.”

The good thing about missing out on a trend is that these days the trend can be gone before you ever knew it existed. You’ve saved yourself time that you might have spent learning about the trend or following the trendsetters and saved money you could have spent purchasing whatever they were touting.