There are multiple ways of making money off of Instagram. One of those ways is to become an influencer and strike deals with brands that will pay you money for sponsoring their products. Indeed, the word influencer has become a synonym for perks, money, and fame. But, here’s what many of the people surfing the internet don’t realise.
Lots of influencers have to put a lot of work into producing content for their audience. At least, when they are just getting started. Evidently, the goal is to create engagement in their social media channels. So, those who manage to succeed at that, are the ones who get to live lives where fame, money, and perks such as travelling the world for free are everyday things.
Unfortunately, when an influencer doesn’t succeed in creating engagement, things turn a little different. For instance, some time ago, a big Instagram influencer (2m+) became trending on the internet for not being able to sell 36 T-shirts.
The Instagram Influencer And The T-shirts Situation
So, here’s what happened. About a month or so ago an Instagram influencer (arii) with 2.6m followers was featured in news sites from pretty much all over the world. The young star was working with a brand that had asked her to sell 36 T-shirts to her followers.
The influencer was trying to start her own brand and of course, sell her products. But, to do so, she was going to need help. And the brand she was working with had promised her exactly that. Unfortunately, this brand required that she would sell 36 T-shirts to her followers so that they could help her.
Evidently, an influencer with almost 3 million followers would not even have to worry about such a thing. As a matter of fact, she could have sold way more than that in less than a day. But, in the case of Arii, this didn’t happen.
Apparently, not a single one of her followers bought a T-shirt from her. Consequently, the brand decided to stop working with her and the whole thing went public.
Criticism And Arii’s Statement
Now, when the news became public, many people started to look at Arii’s Instagram profile to make fun of her situation. In fact, users harassed her to a point in which she had to disable comments on her account to stop the bullying.
Moreover, some users claimed half of her followers are actually bots. And to be fair, if you check her list of followers, there are indeed accounts that are bots disguised as “real” people. But, then again, every big account has bots whether they pay for them or not. It’s just how Instagram works.
Finally, the influencer posted a message on her Instagram trying to explain what had actually happened. On it, she detailed that the brand required her to sell 36 of their products so that they could help her launch her own brand.
She admitted to knowing that she had become irrelevant on the platform. And still decided to give it a try. The message was deleted within a few hours and that was the end of it. Currently, Arii’s Instagram account remains at 2.6 million followers and there are more posts being added every now and then.
Wrapping Up
There is no easy way to grow on Instagram. Or on any other social media platform for that matter. You need to put in a lot of work to start gaining your first followers. But, the most important thing of all is to create engagement.
In this particular case, the Instagram user we talked about failed to do that. And thus, she didn’t get the results the brand she was working with expected. Don’t wait for something like that to happen to you – read our article on how to improve your Instagram engagement. To do so, just click here.
