When Carly Heitlinger arrived at Georgetown University in 2008, she needed a distraction to spice up her routine of classes, study sessions and exams.
She started blogging for creative release. “It was basically like online journaling back then,” says Heitlinger, whose first post was about Christmas, including the Kate Spade shoes she unwrapped and the decorations her mom placed around the house.
Heitlinger kept up with her fashion blog, The College Prepster, throughout college and while working in New York City after graduation, eventually opting to focus entirely on her blog. “I wasn’t happy with my job — and was making twice as much blogging as my salary,” Heitlinger says.
Today, Heitlinger makes a full-time living as a fashion blogger.
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At age 27, Heitlinger is part of a growing group of online content creators who work and earn money — sometimes lots of money — from their online output. “Years ago, it was not a full-time industry. Now it is,” says Darren Lachtman, co-founder and director of brand strategy at Niche, a platform that helps match social media stars with advertisers and marketers.
For those who dream of joining the ranks of the wildly popular, money-making social media elite, here’s what to know.
Overnight success isn’t guaranteed. Most internet superstars don’t sign six-figure contracts — or any contracts — on their first day out. Instead, they’ve logged hundreds of hours gaining followers and honing their craft.
“It took me years to get where I am, as far as building an audience and having them trust me and engage with me,” says Cody Johns, 27, who is best known for his popular short-form online videos.
Heitlinger recommends that aspiring internet stars spend three months or so just creating content, not even publicizing it, to develop their skills and find their voice. “Make sure it’s something you really want to do,” she says.
The work can be difficult. Sure, working as an online celebrity can include fawning fans, exciting travel and the latest fashions. But there is hard work, too.
Heitlinger references the less-than-glamorous parts of the job: managers, lawyers, talent agreements and networking. Behind the scenes of those thrilling-looking travel experiences, Heitlinger says, she spends hours primping and preparing, snapping photos, editing and posting them. She’s glued to her email — responding quickly to inquiries can be the key to earning a lucrative deal, she says — and rarely takes a social-media-free vacation.
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Brand yourself. You don’t need supermodel good looks or an over-the-top personality to succeed as an online content creator — although those don’t hurt — but you need to be able to successfully communicate your online brand. “You have to create a shtick for yourself and your content that works,” says Johns, who stars in videos with his wife Alexys.
The College Prepster’s Heitlinger highlights her girl-next-door looks, which she says works because followers can picture themselves wearing the clothes she models. “Look at yourself objectively because, at the end of the day, you’re going to be turning yourself into a character,” she says.
Find sponsors. Landing partnerships with companies, products and brands is how many online content creators earn an income. These deals can run the gamut, from sponsored posts to giveaways, trips and product reviews. A blogger may wear a sponsor’s clothes, film a video at one of their stores or tag them in a blog post.
“A few years ago, people were paying for a blog post, there would be a flat rate for the post (or a percentage of sales),” writes Rebecca Stice, who runs the personal style blog, A Clothes Horse, in an email. “But now people also want Instagram posts, tweets, Pins, even Snapchat videos. Recently someone requested to purchase an Instagram story from me and said I needed to do a screenshot of the views, which is something I haven’t even thought of or had to do before.”
The more followers a social media star has, the more they typically can negotiate from contracts with brands, writes Vanitha Swaminathan, Thomas Marshall Chair in Marketing at the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, in an email. “The largest stars on social media can earn more than $2.5 million in pretax earnings,” Swaminathan says.
[See: 10 Ways to Improve Your Finances with Social Media.]
Plan for the worst. Online platforms are especially susceptible to sudden transformations or closures. Just look at Vine, the tool for making short online videos, which parent company Twitter recently announced would be discontinued.
This unpredictability online makes it so important to engage and interact with followers on a variety of platforms, from Instagram and Snapchat to Twitter and Facebook, experts say.
“Don’t put all your career eggs in one technological basket,” says Kerric Harvey, associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University in the District of Columbia, “because someone else is holding that basket.”
Savvy online content creators should continue to build traditional career skills, such as writing and marketing, in case they find themselves returning to the traditional job market, Harvey says. “Always be thinking two or three steps ahead to your skill set,” she says. “Don’t just learn how to be effective in something that gives you [several] seconds of video or 140 characters of text.”
Think ahead. For those who can keep up with change and grow fruitful relationships with brands, working in social media could be a lucrative career track. But, like any job, it’s not without its downsides.
“I’ve actually been trying to tell people not to get into blogging as a job,” says A Clothes Horse’s Stice. “It actually robs you a lot of the joy and kills creativity, and why do our creative passions have to make money to be valid?”
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How to Make a Living as an Online Media Star originally appeared on usnews.com
