Am I still an influencer?

The question of the summer!

At almost every book event I’ve done this summer, someone has asked me if I still consider myself an influencer.

Sometimes, the question comes in the form of an apology, like I might be offended by it. I mostly understand this, given that my novel Such A Bad Influence highlights both the positive and more toxic sides of influencer culture. But sometimes it kind of makes me laugh, too. I imagine how absurd my disdain for the word would be, as if I haven’t just spent the last year promoting my debut novel as intensely as I could possibly stomach. I mean, I matched the book to my outfits. I linked it in every newsletter. I posted about it on Instagram in reels and stories and on TikTok, too. I said the word ‘pre-order’ so many times it started to lose its meaning. Sure, I’m still an influencer, I answer. I have an audience. I have influence. And I really, really want to use it to support and sustain my career. I mean, I guess you could call what I’m doing now marketing and publicity, instead. Personal branding. I don’t know. But this begs the question: What makes this current iteration of my career more worthy of those descriptors versus the other one?

Is being a full-time writer or author or editor or podcaster any other non-female-dominated professional title more noble than being an influencer? More respectable? More legitimate? I think most people would say no to this if asked point blank, but I believe the truer answer is something more complicated. If we’re all honest, there is a very real stereotype associated with influencing, one that conjures images of beautiful women posting an affiliate link from their workout class and making an instant, effortless four-figures. While this isn’t everything the job encompasses, it’s also true that that is part of an influencer’s job. For a lot of people, this is exactly how they make money. Lots of it. In my time as an influencer, I’ve never made that much from a single link, but I can imagine how easy it would be for some creators.

An example: The other day I posted one of my first affiliate links in a while on Instagram— a pair of Target pants that I have fallen in love with that are, miraculously, long enough for my 6-foot-tall self. Out of curiosity, I looked at the RewardStyle app (an app I used to check multiple times a day, obsessively) the day after I had posted it and I saw I had made $210 on that one link. To break it down further: With that one link, I had generated 345 items sold for Target, 68 of which were the $25 pants. The story slide had taken me less than a minute to post. So you can imagine what it would be like to do that 10 or 20 times a day, with more followers and/or with links that have much higher commission rates for that matter. The money adds up quickly. The money is, sometimes, just that easy.

My point is that the stereotype of people making more money than some people earn in a year simply from copy and pasting these links on their stories is true. It’s also true that this level of ease¹ is exactly what has made the influencer economy so accessible for women in all corners of the world. Thanks to this industry, it’s possible for women of all backgrounds and all professions to turn social media into a side hustle, or a full-time income, or the launching pad for something even bigger — a product line, a podcast, a book deal. This is a pretty incredible fact. Thanks to influencing, thousands of women now have businesses that they have built from the ground up. They’ve created entire communities that make other women feel seen and supported and less alone. This is something to celebrate. And it also begs the question: Is it really so bad if some of this is easier or more manageable than other professions, ones that are often inaccessible to so many women today, people who are paying off massive student loan debt, mothers who are weighing the magnificent cost of child care against getting a full-time job out of the house? Do women really need to prove how back-breaking and painful and “noble” their work is to make the world believe they deserve to be paid for it, or deserve to be rich from it?

Plus, if there are certain aspects of influencing that are easy, there are many other parts of the job that are not. The role involves planning, shooting, editing, writing, designing, strategizing, networking… on and on it goes. Then, of course, there is the emotional and mental gymnastics required to market yourself successfully while still remaining, impossibly, authentic at the same time. The trolls. The bullying. The constant accessibility. And on top of all of that, there is the notion that criticism shouldn’t touch you or hurt you, somehow, not if you’re making money that easily. Is it still easier than many other jobs? Of course. Can it even touch the difficulty of being a teacher or a doctor? No. Anyone who says otherwise is, frankly, out of their minds. But ultimately, is it the relative ease of the job that makes so many of us crinkle our nose at the term? Or is it something else, something more deeply tied to misogyny and a discomfort with women gaining money and power that goes as deep within our culture as anything else, a thing that none of us really want to admit?

When someone asks me if I still consider myself an influencer, that whisper of discomfort in their voice, I want to explain all of this sometimes. I want to admit that I sometimes suspect this type of sexism in myself, that I’ve internalized it, and that honestly, yes, there was some part of me that absolutely believed no one would take me seriously as an author if I was also a capital-I-Influencer. But this also isn’t why I gradually pulled back from the daily links or the weekly brand partnerships over the past year and a half, either. The simplest way to explain that choice, maybe, is that though I don’t think the current version of my career makes me better or more noble than the capital-I-Influencer version of myself or anyone else, but I am also happy I stepped back.

At first, my conscious choice to shift my career away from Influencing felt like a practical one, the only way to make space for this newsletter, or writing books. I realized that the more influencing had started to become part of my career, the more I felt attached to it — obsessed with boosting it even further. Every new platform equaled more followers which equaled more partnerships which equaled more money. And though I was aware of the way people wrinkled their noses at the job title, at how even I did sometimes, at how I had started to dread the work, I felt validated and pushed forward by the paychecks. I wouldn’t have realized or admitted this at the time, but I see now that it was true. In the ocean of successful influencers, what I was earning from partnerships and links was, comparatively, pennies. And yet I felt beholden to it, anyway. It was too easy, too present. The perfect thing to distract me from doing work that opened myself up to judgment that actually meant something to me.

For years, I hesitated to monetize my weekly essays via Substack because I was scared to charge people. Not because it would inconvenience them or seem greedy, but because it would require owning that I believed my work warranted payment. It made me say out loud that I wanted to be a writer, an author. It opened me up to a whole world of failure and, unlike influencing, it was something I knew I really, really didn’t want to fail at. The truth is that if all the brand partnerships and affiliate links were magically taken away overnight, I think part of me would have been relieved. It would have forced me to pivot. But the concept of trying to make creative writing my career and failing at that was terrifying, a true indictment on a thing that felt inherent to who I was. It was also, I had calculated, much more likely. And then, I started to hit a wall.

I started to accept that I simply could not balance all the things I was doing. I don’t mean this in a, “I was working non-stop, totally burnt out,” kind of way, though I was overdoing it, I think. I mean that I knew very clearly the type of work I wanted to be doing, and instead of prioritizing that, I had built my career to rest upon the more lucrative option, which (surprise!) was doing brand partnerships and posting links. I would sign contracts, buzzing from the anticipation of the paycheck, and then dread the work itself, the photos, the posting, even if it was a brand I loved. I shot a campaign for a favorite clothing brand who eventually made me reshoot every piece of content because what I had turned in wasn’t “aspirational” enough. All I could think afterward is whether this meant I wasn’t cool enough or I wasn’t thin enough, or both. But, of course, I had no choice. I made myself focus on the paycheck, instead.

And listen, I’m under no illusions that work is supposed to be easy or fun or deeply fulfilling or meaningful or even satisfying. It’s work. We do things we don’t want to do. We get frustrated. We all have bills to pay. This is life. However, as time went on, I began to think about how exactly I had found myself in this position, making half my income as an influencer. One partnership became two, one link became hundreds. Something that was meant to be an occasional side hustle, if anything, became a bonafide part of my career. I generally consider myself a pretty intentional person, but if I’m honest, becoming an influencer was maybe the least intentional thing I ever did. Still, I’m proud of the work I did then and the way I operated. I thought carefully about who I partnered with, when I said no (though, if I’m really being honest, probably not often enough). I could have had much fewer boundaries and gone much further down the influencer rabbit hole. I still believe there are many ways to be an influencer, and the people I support now are creative, thoughtful, and hard-working, all qualities that are reflected in their content and platforms. I admire and am inspired by them and what they create constantly. But at a certain point, as influencer work started to be what I prioritized more and more, I had to be honest about the state of my career, and what I actually wanted for it. Did I want to build some sort of an influencing empire? Was my goal to make six figures from ads? To have a million followers? Could I still use it all to support my writing career? Was I really doing that at all? Could I balance both?

Eventually, I started to think about the beginning of my time online, how most of my very slow and steady growth on Instagram had come from things I had written. I began to suspect that maybe I had gotten it backwards, over time. Somewhere along the way, I had started to create things because I had followers instead of having followers because of what I created. At least, that’s how it felt to me. If I had the massive privilege of a platform, I thought, then why not use it to promote and support the work I really wanted to be doing, even if it was less lucrative? Even if it terrified me. Why not give myself the option to put all my energy into that instead of into all the other stuff? Why not at least try?

So, I made gradual changes. At the start of 2023, I offered a paid subscription on Substack for the first time. I committed to saying no to collaborations more often. I stopped strategizing what to link and when and shopping all the fucking time, calculating commission rates as I did. And, transparently: I took a very, very large pay cut. To put things in perspective, I currently earn roughly as much in one year on Substack as I did on two of my highest-paying Instagram partnerships combined. Maybe those partnerships were five or six hours of work total. Substack, on average, takes that much of my time per week. I mean, we can all do the math. I’m not outlining all of this to get some giant pat on the back or for someone to say how brave I am (blegh). First of all, I tapered off of partnerships slowly and carefully, saving money as I went. Second of all (and maybe most importantly), I have the immense privilege of a partner who has a more stable career, one that meant I had a safety net when I changed things up. And finally, guess what also happened when I stopped Influencing? I spent way, way, way less money.

Even after a successful debut novel, I still make significantly less money now than I did a few years ago. But I make enough. And though it scares me to verbalize that I don’t want to go back to the type of influencing I was doing before, to the constant strategized links and brand partnerships, it’s the truth. I don’t know what the future holds, or if I’ll be able to be one of the few people who make a full-time living from writing. I don’t know if I’ll never do another brand partnership. I don’t know. But I do know that changing how I approach influencing has changed my life for the better. I spend less time on my phone. I don’t manage my mood with analytics, watching it rise and fall in sync with story views. I don’t spend 30 minutes before every dinner making my husband photograph my outfit, then hating the photos, then feeling bad all through dinner, ultimately posting the one I hate the least and then feeling a bit less bad as I watch the likes and comments roll in. I feel more creative than I have in years, unafraid of posting something I know will bomb. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words that I’m confident I wouldn’t have otherwise. I’ve published a book and written another one. I’ve built this newsletter into something I’m incredibly proud of. I am finally, sort of, getting used to calling myself a writer. An author. If I’m not going to stand up straight and own it, who else is?

And yet, I’m still an influencer too, aren’t I? I still want to leverage my audience to help me make money — to lead to a bigger book deal, or a larger advance. I want them to buy my book, subscribe to this Substack, listen to my podcast. I want to tell them about the show I loved, or the pants I can’t stop wearing, or the things that make me light up with joy and laughter. I have always loved that, and I still do. These days, I don’t mind at all if someone refers to me as an influencer. But I, too, used to avoid the word. I’m a content creator, I would say, always noting the freelance writer part first, even if that was taking up less and less of my time. I used to think that my squeamishness around the word was only based in this stigma that surrounded it. Now, I think maybe part of it was something else. It was a career I had stumbled into, one that allowed me to be comfortable instead of facing failure at something I really cared about. I think I always sort of knew that I was using it as a way to delay chasing other dreams, ones that scared me more. To stay just busy enough to never push myself, or be able to call myself a real writer.

I’m sure someone better or more disciplined than I am could have done all of this without giving up a single brand partnership or posted link, but for me, it was impossible. I couldn’t balance it all and maybe I just didn’t want to anymore, either. And who knows? It’s possible that one day my career as an influencer will evolve again, but as of now, I am happy. I am glad I gave myself the chance to do something different, and I am thankful for the readers and followers and kindred spirits and friends and community that supported me then and now and in between. I’m not offended if you call me an influencer. I’m flattered if I inspired you to buy a product I loved, thrilled if you loved it, too. I still (maybe, always) will share what I love online. In a way, I feel more able to do that than I have in a long time. I feel clear-eyed and focused, my goals terrifying but concrete. If nothing else, I know I will not look back and wish I had done something differently. Sometimes, that has to be enough.

PS: One last thing before I go… you can order my first novel NOW! I appreciate your consideration, time, and support immensely.

A portion of July’s subscriber proceeds will go toward the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is currently working to build, enforce, protect and defend legal protections for reproductive rights around the world (including in Florida, where I grew up, and there is currently a 6-week abortion ban).

1. I should mention that though the logistical aspects of influencing, on a basic level, are relatively “easy” with a low barrier to entry (anyone can make a profile, start posting, start posting links, etc.), it is of course not an easy thing to build a truly engaged audience, which is another important aspect to influencer “success” and one that often takes years of (largely unpaid) work to create.