Social Media Influencers Monetise Through Multiple Income Streams

Commercial collaborations, that is, influencer marketing, is the most typical if not the most important income source for social media content creators in Finland, based on the research interviews that I conducted in connection with my doctoral research during 2022-2023 with influencer agency executives as well as influencers themselves in Finland.

Influencer marketing (IM) is therefore listed on top of the many revenue streams a SMI might consider, in the second column of the graph above. The figure depicts various other monetisation options SMIs may tap into from platform-originated (such as YouTube’s) advertising revenues to direct fan income either enabled by a third party service such as Patreon or various forms of fan funding via platforms (such as paid channel memberships, subscriptions, or other payments).

By combining several income sources a social media content creator may be able to make a living as self-employed SMI, or as an entrepreneur. If willing to grow his or her media business, the creator-entrepreneur could then employ others. An other avenue for owning equity might be becoming a company shareholder, by accepting shares instead of cash remuneration for influencer services.

In the hybrid media environment, where ideas are amplified flowing between traditional media logics, social media logics, and, indeed, influencer logics, an important consideration is TV visibility. I have written about shared visibility practices, or SVP, in another post.

I’ve monitored the influencer industry and creator industry developments for more than a decade as part of my various roles within the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle.

Of course, Finland's influencer industry is modest on the scale of English-speaking markets.

Still, it is interesting to consider a recent case study provided by Linus Media Group (see video on the Linus Tech Tips (LTT) channel). Here, we see an ~100-million-dollar-sized media company, “far beyond the “solo creator + AdSense” model”, as summarized by Ian Shepherd for Forbes: Linus has built an independent media company with owned intellectual property (IP), a direct-to-consumer merch line (Creator Warehouse / LTTStore.com), a proprietary subscription platform (Floatplane) and multi-channel ad revenue, enabled by a highly engaged audience community.

In Finland, one social media video entertainment production company to watch would be Roni Bäck’s Back Media Oy.