When I think about the space and I think about, "Let's again, look at someone with 100,000 followers." I think a lot of the industry sees someone with 100,000 followers and says, "That's an influencer." I think that's where a lot of the problems in understanding the space and being effective in the space come from.

That having 100,000 followers does not mean you are an influencer, it means you have 100,000 followers. The way we think about it is an influencer is somebody who has influence over people. It's somebody that their audience listens to them in some way. Generally, the way we think about it is that there are some expert on a certain-- There's some topic expert, beauty, fashion, travel, cars, gaming, whatever it might be, or it can be lifestyle. They just have a certain lifestyle that they have been able to craft that's really appealing.

Influencers to us, are people that are talking about brands a lot. They are influencing people's decision making. They are, "I'm following you because I trust your opinion on something and I want to see what you're talking about." Or it can be a lifestyle thing of like, "You have great taste in restaurants and you go out a lot, so I want to follow you because I want to see where you're eating," or, "You always go on amazing vacations and I want to see where you're traveling."

In our mind, that is an influencer. Then we have people who have an audience and that is just, you have an audience, you have people that are following you. Maybe you're genetically gifted and you're incredibly good-looking. Like it or not, sometimes it's just nice to see really good-looking people pop into your feet every once in a while.

You have a following but in our mind, you don't have as much of an ability to influence that following because the thing they are interested in is not your point of view in the world, not the restaurants you're going to or the brands that you're going that you work with or the new Beauty hack you came up with or what foundation you're using. They're interested in looking at you, or just in you specifically and not so much in the way you see the world.

Content creator sits out on the side. It's different than having an audience because it's not a 'you focused feed'. Most content creators are very much behind the lens or they're artists or whatever it might be. The feed is not focused on them necessarily or at all, but rather in the way they see or interpret the world and that is interesting.

I think that content creators certainly can be influencers. We had Joe Greer speak at our conference. He is a photographer and artist and a content creator. He's not an influencer in my mind but I bought my camera because of him. I bought my film, Leica, from following his account. He, for me, is very influential when he's talking about cameras. He influences the way I shoot, he influences maybe the places I want to go to shoot. I would not call him an influencer.

To answer the question, I think there is a huge difference between having an audience, being an influencer and being a content creator. I do not think brands generally see the difference but the brands that are good at this and are getting more strategic, are understanding, "When do I need to use a content creator who can create beautiful things for me? When do I need to use an influencer who can tell a really compelling brand story for me? Or, "When do I need to use someone for audience and just get my name in front of people and get a bunch of scale?"

Again, the lines can blur. There are big celebrities who have a huge influence. Look at the Kardashians. We wouldn't call them influencers, but obviously they're incredibly influential. There are content creators that are influencers. There are influencers who create beautiful content like [unintelligible 00:18:05]. The lines do blur but we definitely see there being lines. I think it's important to understand where you stand because I think it is not currently affecting the price of what you pay for a post that much, I think in the future it will.

In our opinion, somebody who has an audience versus someone who has influence, you should pay a lot more for the person who has influence over the person who has an audience. That's not the case yet in the industry, we are pushing to make it so. I think that's definitely something that is going to happen, is we're going to start to delineate those two things and say, "Wait, hold on. Just because you have 150,000 followers doesn't mean they give a shit about what your skin care routine is. Why would I pay you the same as a beauty skincare influencer who they're 150,000 followers absolutely care about their skin care routine? They care passionately about that influencer skin care routine."

That doesn't make sense. I think that will start to change. On the content creator side, I think it's an interesting, what do I want to say? On the content creator side, it blurs two models. If you have 10,000 followers, well, let's look at my friend Aaron. He's only got 2,000 followers. He's a great photographer, he makes his career as a filmmaker and a photographer. He's obviously not being paid for his posts the. He only has 2,000 followers. He's charging day rates. The brand's like when he posts and if had 50,000 followers, he definitely wouldn't be paid again. He wouldn't be paid off of those followers. He's getting paid a day rate. I think most content creators until you get a huge following, it makes a lot more sense to be charging for a day rate and having your following be a kicker. Probably until you get over 300,000 followers, it's when I could start to see the posts on your feed starting to compete with your day rate as far as the amount of money you can make.

This is predicated on you actually having some talent I might say. A normal up and coming photographer in fashion I think you're looking at 750 to 1500 for day rate. It's pretty fair I think. That's not for editorial. Editorial is $0. There's no money in editorial obviously. As you get better day rates get to $2, or $3 or $5000 a day. Again, it would get hard to make that much money off your Instagram account.

I think for content creators probably still makes sense to focus on making your money in the more traditional way with day rate, but thinking about your following as a marketing funnel for bringing in new clients. I definitely would post your clients even if they're not paying for it. It's going to make them super happy and it's definitely going to bring in new business and treat that Instagram as your marketing funnel.