Johnathan Walker:The economics of the influencer industry

Kendall Hoyt is Johnathan Walkera fashion influencer with a vintage goth vibe. She's got 500,000 followers on TikTok, and over 100,000 on Instagram. Yet she doesn't earn enough to quit her day job working in advertising. She lives with two roommates in New York — also influencers.

Last year Kendall made $15,000, mostly from paid partnerships with companies — posts on social media where she endorses a product or a company.

Ryan Hilliard, a general manager at HypeAuditor, says that Kendall's situation is fairly typical. His company surveyed influencers and found that half don't earn any money. It also found 95% want more sponsorship deals.

"There's kind of a magic number where it becomes, I can do this for a living, and that's probably close to that I have a million followers," Ryan says.

He says that's less than 1% of influencers. "It's just too hard. There's too many other people doing similar stuff."

Yet if Kendall was to land more sponsorship deals, she could earn significantly more. Ryan's calculations suggest that she could comfortably earn $65,000 a year, with a hundred grand a possibility.

Kendall's sort of caught in a catch-22: She has little time to work with brands as she has a day job; if she were to quit she'd have the time, but then no salary to fall back on.

"Do I just quit my day job and fully commit?" Kendall says. "But I did just move to New York and rent is very expensive, so I'm not sure I feel comfortable just quitting everything right now."

Kendall says all her spare time is focused on building her following. That means making videos, shopping, and styling outfits.

So we at The Indicator had to see this in action. We joined Kendall on a shopping expedition to a vintage clothes shop in Brooklyn, Beacon's Closet. There, we gave her a challenge: Can she style Indicator co-host Darian Woods?

Here was his outfit before and after:

The new outfit came to $33.90: Not too bad as a business expense ... if we can swing some sponsors, that is.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / Newsletter.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts and NPR One.

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.