Kylie Jenner has been dethroned as Instagram's highest earner
And you will never guess which famous face is now earning the most per Instagram post...
Social media has grown past the days of only being used for status updates, simple tweets, and random unfiltered picture posts.
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Now, any social platform can not only be used for advertisement and promotion of business, but it can be your business.
Some of the most successful, and richest, people in the world are influencers, YouTubers, TikTok stars, the list goes on.
Being a social media star is a legitimate career and it's clear to see why.
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While it still takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get to the top, once you're there, you can earn a lot of money by doing something as simple as posting on Instagram.
And while we all know about sponsored posts, ads, and people being paid to post, we could never have imagined how much these people actually charge for a post.
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We could try and guess, but luckily someone else has gone and figured it all out, compiled a list ranking everyone by "cost by post", and published it on the internet for all to see.
Hopper, a social media analytics company, decided to work out different celebrities and sports stars' Instagram earnings per sponsored posts. They were able to do this by compiling data through agency rate cards, internal data, and other public information.
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And so the Instagram Richlist was born.
Hopper releases this list annually and previously Kylie Jenner had topped the list twice, with 2020's highest-earning Insta-celeb being the one and only Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.
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This is the fifth year the list has been released and the number one spot was taken by someone quite unexpected.
With 308-million Instagram followers, football legend Cristiano Ronaldo can charge advertisers $1.6million (R22.4 million) per post if they want to use his platform.
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For that kind of money, those advertisers should receive a guaranteed 308-million new customers.
That means this company, Sixpad Homegym, probably paid that amount for this video:
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According to Hopper, this is not only the highest fee for the year 2021 but is also the highest fee any social media personality has had since the list began.
This year, 'The Rock' holds second place charging $80,000 (R1.1 million) less than Ronaldo.
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The top five includes Ariana Grande in third, Kylie Jenner in fourth, and Selena Gomez in fifth place.
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There is also a clear correlation between follower count and Instagram posting fee as these stars also have exceptionally high follower counts, with Ronaldo's 308-million giving him the highest of any account on the platform.
Other athletes on the Richlist include Ronaldo's greatest rival, Lionel Messi, at number seven (R16.3-million per post) and Brazilian soccer player Neymar at number 16.
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Clearly, these fees and followers just indicate the power of these celebs and sports star's brands.
If it's good enough for Ronaldo, it's good enough for us.
And if you think about it, in order to pay that fee, the company has to be pretty successful, right? Makes sense to us.
At this point, we're just wondering if it's too late to jump on the influencer bandwagon. A side hustle option maybe?
Main image courtesy of iStock