The highest-paying influencer categories if you want to make money from brands - from sports to beauty and fashion
- The price an influencer can charge a brand for a piece of sponsored content is heavily dependent on the category they are in, according to a new report from the influencer-marketing firm Izea.
- Influencers who focus on sports, beauty, fashion, DIY, video games, and food tend to make more money for sponsored posts from brands, Izea found.
- Those who tend to post about music, family life, and technology earn the least.
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Athletes and sports influencers earn the most for sponsored content of any creator category on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, according to a new report from the influencer-marketing firm Izea.
In the report, Izea, which connects marketers and influencers, looked at the negotiated rates for sponsored social-media posts from 2014 to 2019 on its platform. Izea said its data spanned "tens of millions" of deals across "tens of thousands of influencers," from micro-influencers to celebrities.
Sports influencers, a category that includes professional athletes like LeBron James and YouTubers like Dude Perfect, charged an average of $3,109 for a sponsored post between 2014 and 2019. Influencers who created content about music, by contrast, earned an average of $339 per post during the same period.
In its study, Izea compared the average cost of a sponsored post for 15 content categories. The company did not control for the audience size of creators in a particular category, which meant that professional athletes bumped up sponsorship rates among sports influencers.
Influencers who focus on sports, beauty, fashion, DIY, video games, and food all charged more than $1,000, on average, for a post. Those who created content about music, family life, and technology tended to earn less, under $500 for a sponsored post, on average.
Here's the average cost for a sponsored post by influencer category (2014-2019), according to Izea:
- Sports: $3,109
- Beauty: $1,425
- Fashion: $1,393
- DIY: $1,220
- Video Games: $1,090
- Food: $1,007
- Lifestyle: $986
- Entertainment: $929
- Health: $819
- Business: $742
- Travel: $722
- General: $507
- Technology: $448
- Family: $382
- Music: $339
Often, influencers who find themselves in categories that typically earn less from sponsored posts find other revenue streams to focus on.
For instance, personal-finance YouTuber Andrei Jikh - who might be categorized as "business" by Izea's methodology - earned over $100,000 last year directly from YouTube ads that run alongside his business-oriented content. "Personal finance, financial minimalism, finance, credit cards, brokerages, etc., pay a lot more money than most other topics on YouTube," Jikh told Business Insider.
Family therapist and influencer Kati Morton decided to lean into Patreon as a way to get consistent income from her followers on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
And some TikTok creators who focus on dancing and music have built a steady revenue stream charging hundreds of dollars to integrate songs in their posts.
Here's the full chart from Izea:
For more on the business of influencers, check out these Business Insider Prime posts:
- The 17 hottest brands in influencer marketing that work with creators on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms: Business Insider is recognizing the leading brands in influencer marketing that have built lasting partnerships with creators across social media.
- 3 Pinterest influencers break down how much money they make for sponsored pins - and how that compares to Instagram: With a combined 15 million followers on Pinterest, these 3 influencers break down how they make money from the platform.
- How a pair of 30-year-old video producers turned TikTok from a side gig to their main job: 30-year-old Greg Auerbach and his childhood friend Nate Twer are building a business making funny videos on TikTok. The pair have 590,000 followers and nearly 14 million likes on the app.