“What I appreciate about the Strategic Influencer is that the information is concise, clear, and easy to replicate, said Liberté, who is based in New York City.

Still, Duffy cautions aspiring influencers about thinking of affiliate marketing as a guaranteed money maker, especially as recession fears are causing consumers to curb spending.

Even if creators aren’t tied to brand deals, they’re “still dependent on the financial health of a particular section of the economy,” said Duffy. “No one knows what’s going to be the most successful.”Navigating the influencer opportunity gap

Though the creator economy is largely powered by trends from BIPOC creators, the industry is rigged against rewarding them. Even if successful, Moore’s students are still left to navigate a deliberate lack of pay transparency, platforms that suppress Black content creators for talking about their Blackness, and burnout.

“The promise is to democratize information, right? That’s very different from the economic reality,” said Duffy. “There is a need for responses like these to inequity, but there are also so many barriers. Who can afford to participate in educational programs? Who has the time and energy to keep up with the algorithms? Who is able to network?”

By the end of their first year as influencers, white content creators are twice as likely as Black ones to have landed their first paid partnership with a brand — “a delay that ultimately impedes their long term success,” according to a 2023 survey of 550 influencers from communications agency MSL.

That disparity sets up a large opportunity gap: 77% of Black influencers are considered micro-influencers with less than 100,000 followers and average annual pay of $27,000, according to another study from MSL, compared with 59% of white influencers.

In practice, this can look like some Black influencers going into debt to keep up while many white ones are gifted free goodies, or Black influencers getting paid less, even if their followers are more engaged.

“When I get a brand deal, brands want me to do everything under the sun for the bare minimum. And then I’ll see other white creators work with the same brand and it’s like they just have to stand there and try on a shirt,” said Liberté. “It’s a slap in the face.”

These problems don’t disappear when you hit the big time, either. Moore said a brand recently asked her to create 15 marketing deliverables — including social media posts, videos, and sitting on strategy calls — for just $2,700. By industry standards, that work could pay tens of thousands of dollars.

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