EASY MONEY?

Free holidays, gifts galore, a gravy train of cash for next to no work — sure who wouldn’t want to be an online influencer these days? Turns out there’s a bit more to it than posting the odd vid or pretty pic... Here, top Irish social media insiders share the hidden toil and daily stresses that go on behind the scenes in the perfect-seeming life of an always-on content creator

Dev Skehan had a job in PR that many people would dream of. In fact, it was a job she’d dreamed of. “I did drama and art in college, then a certificate in digital marketing and, along with content creating, that’s how I got the job in PR,” says the Dublin-based 26-year-old.

“I was like, ‘This is it! This is what people dream of!’ It was an office job, a good salary and the possibility not only to grow in the business but to grow the business itself, and I loved it.”

But last year she walked away and, for the last eight months, has embraced life as a full-time content creator on social media. The side hustle, once a hobby of microblogging her daily life, has become the day job. “Leaving was the scariest thing I’ve ever done,” says Skehan emphatically. “But I knew I had to try. I had an amazing group of people around me saying, ‘You can do it,’ but even so, it still feels like jumping off a cliff blind.”

Skehan is one of an estimated 50 million global content creators who are working fulltime or part-time in an economy that is predicted to double over the next five years — to $489bn by 2027 from an already eye-watering $250bn today.

Unsurprisingly, desire to enter this lucrative market is strong. A few years ago, a Pure Telecom poll found that 28pc of Irish respondents would like their main source of income to come from influencing, while a more recent report in the States, by Morning Consult, revealed ‘influencer’ to be the job of choice for 57pc of Gen Zers (those who were born between 1997 and 2012).

Looking at Skehan’s Instagram and TikTok pages, where she has amassed a combined following of 87k, you can instantly see why the lifestyle might appeal. There she is smiling on the slopes on a promotional ski trip, plunging into the sea with pals on a dawn swim; there’s an abundance of mouthwatering food posts, dream holidays, exclusive invites to gigs and events. To paraphrase Meryl Streep’s iconic The Devil Wears Prada character, Miranda Priestly: who wouldn’t want this?

But the reality of the work that goes into those short, seemingly effortless-looking reels is something most people have no idea about. Take that ski trip. “I was chatting to people with normal nine-to-five office jobs who couldn’t believe I was working the whole way through the holiday,” laughs Skehan.

“Even the entire day travelling home was spent scheduling emails, scheduling calls, setting up meetings for the next week, editing, sorting through video footage to see what could be put up, what was useful, what would work with trends this week, and figuring out how to backtrack the time lost.”

Any paid partnership post will be eight or nine weeks in the making. “There are briefs, contracts, buy-outs and then the content has to fit the brief: is it fully scripted or is there leeway for improvisation?” she explains.

“Then that content has to go to the client and they could say, ‘We don’t like it — we want to reshoot,’ or, ‘We want the wording in the 28th second to be changed,’ and it all has to be done again, edited, approved... all while also sitting next to organic [non-sponsored] content, which still needs to be planned and created.”

She sighs and smiles. “There’s a massive amount of work behind the scenes and, like any job, even if you love it, it’s all work. At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as easy money.”

From the outside looking in on the industry, it’s the money that is endlessly fascinating. Recently, Co Offaly fashion influencer Lisa McGowan made headlines with the revelation that she’d been in a position to pay herself

€1.29m in pay and pension contributions in 2023. Ireland’s top YouTuber, gamer Seán William McLoughlin AKA Jacksepticeye, is reported to be worth some €28m.

However, the latest Linktree Creator Report makes for interesting reading, stating that just 2pc of creators globally made over $50k, and only 4pc made between $10k and $50k in the past 12 months. More than two-thirds made less than $500 in a year.

The fascination is fuelled by the fact that no one wants to talk about the money. “I know lots of content creators and nobody ever wants to say what they’re earning,” says Dr Irene McCormick. “I asked one Irish content creator recently and straight away she told me, ‘Oh, we don’t talk about money, but I’m at it five years and I’ll probably be able to buy a house next year.’ She was 21 and had about a million following her on TikTok.”

Dr McCormick is co-creator of Ireland’s first Bachelor of Arts course in Content Creation and Social Media, launching this September at South East Technological University (SETU) in Carlow. She previously ran summer courses for social media influencers and, while those in the business might be tight-lipped about income, it’s apparent that rates have soared. “What I noticed was the first year I did the summer school, I had a great suite of influencers who came, and I paid them €300 each to give a two-hour talk,” reveals Dr McCormick.

“The next year, they all had agents and it was a totally different ball game. One of them said to me, ‘We’d usually charge €6,000 for this,’ and I had to say, ‘Well, that’s half my entire budget so no, I don’t think I could do that’.”

News of the degree course was met with no small amount of public derision, but Dr McCormick is unfazed. “It’s always been the case where people see something that the newer generation is doing and have a negative gut reaction.

“But I think wanting to be an influencer is a well-rounded career aspiration, and it’s very hard labour that people make look easy. I know one influencer who left her sister’s

I asked one Irish content creator, who said, ‘Oh, we don’t talk about money, but I’m at it five years and I’ll probably be able to buy a house next year.’ She was 21

wedding to go to the bathroom during the meal to post. You have to have a phenomenal work ethic,” Dr McCormick adds.

“People think, ‘Ah sure, he just posts videos and that’s him living his best life,’” laughs travel and lifestyle content creator Kevin Penrose, @wildirishwanderer. “But there’s so much more that goes into it.” The 29-year-old from Co Tyrone has more than 300k followers across TikTok and Instagram, and some 8.5 million likes on TikTok, but it’s not the numbers that guarantee commercial success.

He explains, “I don’t think followers is a massive factor at all. Brands now want to see your insights and engagement rates, who is interacting with your posts, who has sent it to friends and who has saved it because, from a business point of view, they’re hoping that engagement will cross over into sales. If I have a really poor engagement rate, then I can’t back up or justify my rates.”

For a corporate client, he would potentially charge between £1,000 and £1,500 for a single video, but pricing will vary depending on the content required and whether it’s a small or large business asking.

Pricing yourself is the biggest challenge. You don’t want to scare anyone away or put people off, because the one thing I’ve learned is there’s always someone else who will do it either cheaper or free

“Pricing yourself is the biggest challenge,” he admits. “You don’t want to scare anyone away or put people off, because the one thing I’ve learned is there’s always going to be someone else who will do it either cheaper or free.”

It might sound like a nice problem to have, but the freebies handed out to influencers can be a poisoned chalice too. “I can’t pay my bills with free clothes. And, with the new rules around advertising, I think creators might stop accepting so much unless they’re going to be paid for posting a story, because we’ll still get taxed on that gifted product at the end of the year,” he says of the guidelines around the clear labelling of ads on social media, devised by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) and Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI), which came into effect last year.

Back when he started posting his stunning reels of dawn hikes, Penrose was one of the first to use drone footage, but today what helps him stand out in Instagram’s highly saturated marketplace is his personality.

He’s willing to share of himself and bring audiences on a journey with him — whether that’s documenting his experience as a young Gaelic player living in rural Ireland coming out as gay, or just going for a walk and a pint. He’s adept at creating an intimate bond with his audience. “A lot of people ask, ‘Why can’t I grow on Instagram?’ and if I look at their profile, a lot of the time it’s because there’s no real personality to it; they’re not speaking to camera.

“Anyone can take a video of a sunrise hike, but the thing I’ve found that connects with my audience is how I’m feeling in that moment. So I show the whole experience — the struggle of getting up at 5am, the hike and the reaction on my face — because it’s all about that human connection.”

And yet he’s also cautious of sharing too much. At Electric Picnic last summer, he was stunned by crowds following Irish TikTok stars around. “There were these 20- and 21-year-olds with followings of half a million online, and young people were following them around like they were celebrities, like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, screaming and wanting photographs. It was the first time I’d really thought, ‘Oh my God, this is crazy’. Social media has got bigger and bigger, and it’s actually scary because I don’t know where it’s going to go.”

The commodification of personality is complex. In the ‘attention economy’, an influencer’s most valued trait is their authenticity. It’s this that audiences invest in, and — once a loyal and engaged following has been established — it’s what brands get interested in.

But if an influencer posts too much in the way of paid-for content, their authenticity can be perceived as compromised. “A lot of people see an influencer or content creator do an ad and then they lose trust in them because they think, ‘Oh, they’ve just been paid to say this’,” says Skehan.

“But any good influencer or content creator will only accept an ad for a product or service they already like.”

Unlike elsewhere, though, Irish content creators are reliant on ads for income. Skehan explains: “In Ireland, creators only make money from an ad [on TikTok], whereas in England, the US and Europe, there’s a thing called the Creator Fund, so they actually get cents per views and so can make money simply from views. In Ireland, there’s no Creator Fund so that’s why other creators elsewhere can maybe be

a bit more themselves and skyrocket to this ‘viral personality fame’ quicker, because they don’t have to censor themselves.

“Here, you have to kind of hone it in — you still have to be brand friendly because it’s the only way you can make money from it.”

Skehan reckons her income is “about the same” as when she worked in the office nine-to-five, but without the reliability of a predictable monthly pay cheque. “One month, I might make €5,000 but then go three months without a single payment, so I have to budget.”

There’s also the sad reality that turning your personality into a bankable brand can leave you vulnerable online. “I get subjected to daily comments on my appearance, on my lifestyle choices, everything from my body to my hair to my nose — daily messages,” says Skehan, sighing.

“People say, ‘Oh, you’re putting yourself on the internet, you should expect it,’ but no one should be subjected to hate for being who they are in an industry.

“There have been a couple of times where I’ve thought, ‘That’s it, I’m done, I can’t handle this constant judgment’,” she adds. “But the positives outweigh the negatives, like when I get messages from people telling me that they’ve felt less alone because of some simple, under-one-minute video I put on the internet — those messages are like food to my soul.”

Lynn Hunter is the founder of The Collaborations Agency, with 120 content creators on her books. As well as linking talent with brands, negotiating contracts, and co-ordinating schedules and deadlines, she’s passionate about supporting her content creators in what can be a challenging industry.

“We’d always put someone’s mental health, and how they’re feeling, first and foremost, over campaigns — that’s something we have in place to assist people,” she explains.

One of the things she loves about the industry is that there are no barriers — age or otherwise — to who can become a creator. “It’s for everyone and that’s what makes it interesting. If people are buying into what you’re doing and what you’re about, they will come to you.”

And there’s a lot of money to be made after the agency’s cut? “I never really like talking about money,” replies Hunter. “It could be a regular salary for somebody so anything from €20,000 all the way up to over €100,000. It depends.”

But the cash is unlikely to roll in straight away. “Anyone deciding to make the leap into full-time content creation should have six months’ worth of savings first,” advises Nicola Lavin, co-creator of the travel blog @all_about_rosalilla, voted one of the top 10 travel influencers in Ireland. “Yes, there is a lot of money to be made out there, but you will need to have things already set up to make you stand out among your competitors.”

Recently, Lavin released How to Get Paid to Travel, an e-book of advice for influencers, and she pulls no punches about the work required to achieve such a desirable goal. “It requires an immense amount of dedication, focus and self-discipline. You have to constantly push yourself beyond your comfort zone and learn new skills that are totally foreign to you.

“It isn’t just about taking a pretty picture to post on Instagram. It’s about learning to become proficient in SEO [search engine optimisation], videography and video editing, Word Press, marketing, writing, analytics, networking, design, photography and photo editing, time management, creativity and so much more. And on top of that, you have to learn invoicing and become your own accountant.”

Lavin, from Co Galway, knows there’s substantial money to be made. “One of my closest friends made €53,000 last month on Instagram,” she confides, but personally she has no desire to swap out the day job for the side hustle. Having been out of employment for periods of time due to illness earlier in her career, she’s happy to continue her day job as a medical scientist alongside running the travel blog.

“I like the security of my full-time job,” she explains. “I love what I do and, after going through years of anxiety without having a regular pay cheque, chasing invoices as a full-time content creator would just be too stressful for me. The rug can be pulled from underneath you at any time, so I really do think it’s important to have multiple income streams available to you.”

Penrose is already looking beyond his own personal content creation into how he can use his skills to consult with brands and manage social media for other businesses.

Skehan recently expanded into launching her own content creation and coaching business, Shur Look Digital, and running retreats. She’s not sure what’s next on the career plan.

“But I love that I don’t know,” she says, grinning. “I would love to see the community I’ve built so far expand. I’d love to have more retreats and group trips abroad. But I’ll always create — no matter where I go, I’ll want to take videos. That’s not going anywhere.”

And if it doesn’t work out? “I said it the second I left my job: ‘If this all goes on its head, I’m happy to go back to an office job’,” Skehan says philosophically.

“At least I’ll have tried.” ⬤

It requires an immense amount of dedication, focus and self-discipline. You have to constantly push yourself beyond your comfort zone and learn new skills that are totally foreign to you