Influencers worldwide have latched on to a new way to help them reap the benefits of being popular: by putting up paywalls across their digital platforms.
Marketeers have been relying on social media influencers for years. They want to ride on the back of top bloggers followings: especially when those people reach thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
Why? Because paying one influencer to promote a brand on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat is cheaper than paying big money media platforms.
New York-based agency, Social Publi, recently published a report last year which found that 93% of marketers use influencer marketing, and 84% believe that it is effective.
Meanwhile Rebecca McGrath, a Research Analyst at Mintel, found that 70% of people who bought a product/service in response to an influencer post in the last six months had clicked on a link on a post to go to another website or app.
Charging for content
Over the last few years, influencers like Caroline Calloway and Gabi Abrão, have decided to charge their own fans by putting up a barrier to their content: the all-important paywall. It limits content and reward followers who pay a certain fee to access it.
Caroline Calloway, 28, has more than 716,000 Instagram followers and went viral late last year when her ghost-writer, Natalie Beach, shared the previously unknown details of their working and personal relationship.
Calloway charges $2 a month for her followers to see her Instagram stories and $100 for access to her personal content and a 25-minute FaceTime chat.
Gabi Abrão, 24, is better known as @sighswoon on Instagram, has around 94,400 followers. 400 of them are ‘close friends’ paying $3.33 each a month via Patreon, to access exclusive photos, details about her relationship, other personal updates and life hacks.
Abrão also offers more exclusive services for those followers who want to have a close relationship with her. For $9 a month, her followers can view her weekly vlog, and for $222 a month, they can have a direct line to the influencer and send and receive personal emails from her.
According to research by Katie Chitrakorn, the Retail and Market Editor of Vogue Business, it’s mid-level influencers, as opposed to the most famous one, who are using paywalls.
The mid-level influencers are often freelancers like Aliza Kelly, an astrologer, who is trying to monetise her work without the need to rely on big brand sponsorship.
All her followers see regular updates, their images and stories. Those who pay a fee have access to an exclusive content.
Lydia Epangue is one of seven recommended Birmingham fashion blogger by Brumbloggers and nominated for ‘Birmingham Blogger of the Year’ at the Brum Awards 2019. She blogs as Art Becomes You.
She is not in favor with the new trend, despite being receptive to subscriptions on streaming platforms such as Netflix or Spotify.
“What I do is to inspire more people not to be compensated for something that is not a service” says Lydia.
“I can’t compare the service we pay for Netflix or Apple music with my personal blog or Instagram posts because influencers who work with different advertising companies are already paid for it”
Borja Izquierdo, Biddable Marketing Executive in MVF, one of the UK’s fastest growing tech companies, and influencer expert said “If this trend is successful, influencers will no longer need brands to monetize their content”
“However, as an expert I know that the amount of money that advertising companies pay the famous influencers for an advertising campaign will never match with the amount of money that an influencer with 30,000 followers can earn using the strategy of paywalls.”
“The paywalls as strategy only works with companies which offer a concrete service, such as fitness influencers who have created their own protein shakes brand or online fitness classes company.”
The influencers’ paywalls are still in the testing phase and is not as common as in other professional fields such as journalism.
Research by the Reuters Institute of Journalism revealed that two-thirds of leading newspapers (69%) across the EU and US are currently charging readers to access online content. However, at the same time, it shows that the number of people willing to pay for news is slowly growing.
It looks like paywall strategies will remain as source of income for influencers and new freelancers, but who knows if it could ever replace the lure of being aligned to the ‘right’ brand.
