It’s Harder To Be An Influencer Than You Think
I think we all have a picture in our minds of a social “influencer” as someone who spends all their time trying to look cool, shoots videos all day, and makes lots of money from product placement. We also read about influencers and think they’re making tons of money as millions of fans hang on their every word. While some of this is true, the fact of the matter is that it’s really difficult to become an influencer, especially one with a world-wide following with sustainable income generation. Nothing illustrates this better than The World’s Top 50 Influencers chart from Visual Capitalist.
As you check out the infographic below, be aware of just how few of the top 50 are not celebrities from sports, music, film, politics or television. By my count, it’s only 4! Music artists dominate this chart with over half the positions occupied by them.
Another thing is that, although TikTok gets all the ink these days when it comes to influencers, the fact of the matter is that Instagram is by far the largest influencer platform. Charli D’Amelio is the only TikTok influencer not a celeb on the list. YouTubers Germán Garmendia, Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, and Whindersson Nunes Batista are the other non-celebs that make the cut.
The average age of the top 50 influencers was just over 37, while Boomers had 3 on the list, Gen X had 10, and Gen Z had 4. By far, Millennials had the most on the list with 33.
Here’s the infographic:
As you can see, the top 10 influencers are:
| #1 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Sports | 517M | |
| #2 | Justin Bieber | Music | 455M | |
| #3 | Ariana Grande | Music | 429M | |
| #4 | Selena Gomez | Music | 425M | |
| #5 | Taylor Swift | Music | 361M | |
| #6 | Dwayne Johnson | Film & TV | 342M | |
| #7 | Katy Perry | Music | 338M | |
| #8 | Kylie Jenner | Other | 333M | |
| #9 | Rihanna | Music | 332M | |
| #10 | Kim Kardashian | Other | 319M |
It just goes to show that being an influencer is harder than it looks because there are so many celebs blocking the way. The worst part is, except for a few exceptions like Jenner and Kardashian, being an influencer is only a side job for them.
