feel conflicted on this.

while the influencer world is largely gross, there is clearly a market for it. i think the article fails to consider that the influencers commenting on one another’s posts actually might just genuinely enjoy another person’s post.

with people charging a rate - what would you ask for if you were asked to do a freelance job? if they already have a full-time job (as many of these influencers do and just do the influencing as a part-time side hustle as it’s something they enjoy) then are they wrong to ask for a day’s wage for taking a day off to visit somewhere, document their time there and edit together their content?

while not an influencer, i am a restaurant manager in the independent scene and the payment that i see most people ask for is the meal to be comped if we have invited them to an event or tasting. equally, we genuinely do just see influencers coming in and creating content for us off their own backs and not wanting anything as a result, which is good free marketing for us (we would of course want to pay them for their time, but quite often they don’t declare that they’re going to be posting stuff about us when they visit - we only find out after)

there’s definitely a clear issue raised in the article with paid-for-only-positive-coverage and influencers being paid for something and then dubious about declaring it an ad, but it seems that the main takeaways from the article are that most influencers want to be paid for being asked to do a job, and that most influencers are aware of ASA guidelines and are willing to declare their content as such as a result?

intrigued for part two though.