Food Influencer

Startup Costs: Under $2,000
Part Time: Can be operated part-time.
Franchises Available? No
Online Operation? No

THE BRIEF: 

Love food, but don't want to run a business preparing and serving it to customers? Share your experiences instead. It takes a lot of time and dedication to turn blogging, vlogging on YouTube and/or posting on Instagram into a paying career, but in what other job can you travel the world to eat food and get paid for it? 

ASK THE PROS:

How much money can you make? 

"Sometimes, in one day on Instagram, I earn the same amount as I make as a university professor in two months. But Instagram is not stable. In general, it’s very variable. You could make a lot of money in one Instagram campaign, but you don’t know -- one day, you could wake up and Instagram isn’t here anymore. I get loads of campaign requests, and I turn down so many -- either because I don’t like them or they don’t align with what I do. Two weeks ago, I got a request for something I would never do: 25,000 pounds for two posts to advertise for electronic cigarettes. And I don’t even drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t support smoking and that’s not something I agree with."—Samira Kazan

What kind of experience do you need to have?

"I had always been weirdly the person of my friends who took pictures of their food and was obsessed with where they were going [to eat] next, and no one really related to me. So when I saw that there was this whole world who did the same thing, I was like, wow, I need to be a part of this. I remember the first year was pretty slow, and then once I hit 10,000 followers, it shot up to 100,000 within a few months. I was just showcasing who I was, and I found that people really related to it."—Jessica Hirsch

What’s the most important thing to know about this business?

"People think I don't have a real job or that I just have fun and eat all day long. I'm fully grateful for what I'm able to do, and I am having fun for sure. I post two videos per week, so that means two days of filming per week, but then the other four days of the week I'm probably sitting at my computer for 14 hours either editing or marketing or researching. That's the part that is not publicized. You're always thinking about it. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort, but it is possible [to make it on YouTube]. Every person has a unique personality and unique ideas, so if you are someone with an idea and you want to make videos, the number-one thing to do is to just do it. A lot of people might make excuses about making videos, or publish one video and see that it doesn't do anything and then give up on it. But I'd encourage you to, if you believe in it, just go for it and keep doing it."—Mark Wiens

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