Heading into 2025, the influencer industry has now been around for a while. There a best practices and solid foundations of how to monetise fame and influence. However, there is still a sense of a time limit on many platforms and incomes, with the latest one lurching around the corner.
Subscriptions
Five or ten years ago, everything was geared towards maximum traffic. Unique website views, AdSense, likes… Today, it’s all about platform-specific monetisation subscriptions. Instagram Subscriptions and YouTube Memberships are becoming key tools for consistent income. On YouTube, creators can offer tiered memberships, ranging drastically in price and offering perks like custom badges and early access to content. Essentially, behind-the-scenes material has become huge for content creators, who now make more from their small loyal section of fans than they do from the mass audience.
People want realism and parasocial relationships, meaning exclusive live streams and Q&As are hugely lucrative and important to a small section of fans.
Mastering the Art of Brand Collaborations
Brand collaborations will continue to thrive through performance-based payment models, even if the aesthetic and platforms evolve. Marketing departments will always want measurable outcomes, and so sales, leads or engagement will continue to be monetisable.
This is pushing influencers further towards tracking their own metrics, as it’s core to their value. This means that innovative ways of tracking their influence and numbers, even beyond the core offerings of major social media platforms, are more important than ever before. This is their entire leverage during negotiations, and when used in conjunction with the subscription trend above, it’s bringing greater power to micro-influencers.
Adult Content
Tempted.com is bringing in many content creators to a more adult-focused and unique income stream. It provides tools like subscription models and pay-per-view content, with a lot of focus on live streaming.
But, it has innovative services like the recent standout success of Naked News, a news show that is hosted naked. Creators can set custom subscription prices, sell premium content, and host live shows in order to build and monetise their following.
Live Shopping
Live shopping is making a big impact on influencer marketing, bringing in new opportunities for sales. Some brands have seen conversion rates as high as 40% during live shopping events, and it’s currently huge in China. This is a little bit like the old fashioned telesales, but with scope for innovation. For
To make live shopping campaigns more effective, influencers can focus on creating fun content, like apartment tours and makeup tutorials. They are more engaging than their traditional counterpart, particularly because of their personality and relationships with their followers.
Final Word
It’s clear that building a strong brand is important to stand out in today’s crowded space. Having core values and a unique identity, just like any other brand, goes a long way. However, once a following emerges, it’s clear that the current meta is to tap into the dedicated, loyal section of that following. As per Pareto’s principle, 80% of your income comes from 20% of your audience.
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