Monetizing the Insta-Agency
Social media has changed the game for how to get famous today. As long as you have the common traits; beauty, humor, and charisma, you can promote yourself enough to gain an audience.
Users of Instagram have made the social site meant for photos and videos, a business platform. There are many pages of women on the site known as “Instagram” models. Before Instagram, to be considered a model people needed a studio, professional photographer, and wardrobe. In the social media era, modeling can be as simple as having an iPhone and a cute background. The models posts are simple, but they use it as a way of marketing their business.
Anyone can be an Instagram model. However, to actually make a living off of modeling through social media, the models usually tend to use trendy clothing, post provocative photos, and obtain sponsorships. . Even if Instagram users don’t consider themselves models or Instagram models, they will usually come across them in their explore page. The explore page is a generated page that is flooded with photos and videos of things “you may like” or things you already have searched for. The explore page is where these models want to land on. It is a way to boost their following and likes on a particular photo. Even though it is not easy to get there, it’s not impossible either.
One of the steps to becoming “Instagram Famous” is by scheduling your posts. These users plan out what time they will post everyday. There are apps that they use to detect when the most users are on the site. The apps even post for you manually just in case you forget.
For instance, there is a woman named Tammy Hembrow. She is a blonde woman from Australia, who arose to fame by posting herself modeling on Instagram. She was pregnant with her first child when she started to gain an audience. Tammy would post her belly in cute outfits and show off her very fit body. When she had her baby, she posted a photo of herself 9-days postpartum looking like if she hasn’t had a baby at all. It went viral and she gained millions of followers. Today, she has a reliable following of 8.1 million followers. Her comments are flooded with praise upon her beauty, body, and fashion. Because of her following, she created a lavish lifestyle for herself all from her social media photos. Her exact income is unknown, but looking at her ocean-front home in Australia and G-Wagon Mercedes Benz, people can assume she is living on a fairly high income.
Although, some may think these Instagram models have "perfect" lives as a lot of the comments say, not all rise to fame because of their trendy lifestyle or well taken photos. One man came to fame after his mugshot went viral. People didn't even know what crime he committed, but were so mesmerized by his big bright green eyes. Jeremy Meeks, 34, from Stockton, California was a convicted felon with relations to gang related crimes. He is now known as "Prison Bae" after his mugshot sparked lots of peoples attention on the internet. Jeremy's humble attitude towards his rise to fame has made him not only appealing to the eye, but seen as a sweet guy, according to fans. Although he does post lots of photos for the social media site, he is slowly making his way to professional modeling with fashion companies. Meeks has said he is glad he got "caught up with the law" because his life wouldn't be where it is today. The model went from almost spending his entire life in prison to enjoying lavish things, traveling the world, and even being a guest star on popular TV shows.
Many of these models, men and women of all ages, learned how to target an audience. They study what people want to see and post what they think will draw more people in. Posting photos of their "casual" day does not bring in a paycheck. What does bring in money is posting a photo tagging the tea they are drinking or the shirt they are wearing. By doing this, it creates an image that is obtainable to the followers. Most advertisement comes from word of mouth. When a model has many followers who take a liking to their clothes or body, it is easy for the model to advertise what they use so that their followers can get the same thing. Not only does this benefit companies, but it benefits the model with an income. It is reported that each posting can range anywhere from $1,000-$5,000 depending on how many followers you have.
Today, there are 800 million active users on Instagram. It is accessible to people from all over the world, but it is programmed to also fit your explore page to your likings. Companies have taken full advantage of that information. It’s completely free for anyone to promote something on there own personal page. For companies, these pages are used as a cheaper advertising tool. If you have a reliable following, companies will contact you to advertise products.