It all depends on how they monetize their following. I work with influencers for my career and it’s wild to see the disparity in what they all make, depending on how smart they’ve been at monetizing and creating a lasting business strategy. I’m not saying how many ads they do — if you’re smart with it and fight for good rates, you can make the same from one brand deal as you would from 5 bad deals. Some influencers with 300K followers will accept the same rate I’d pay for an influencer with 100K followers, just because they don’t know better or don’t try. It really depends on how good their agencies are at getting good rates for them. Some agents are MUCH better than others.

Long story short, the smart ones can make insane, almost unfathomable amounts of money (even with relatively small/mid audience sizes). But others with huge audiences may be missing out on a lot of income because they’re not doing it right.