Paydays in excess of $50,000 per-post are on offer to some of Australia’s most popular athletes if they can harness their social media followings correctly.
There is genuine money to be made beyond the already gaudy salaries, prizemoney and partner sponsorships athletes have traditionally cashed in on – and Instagram is the platform of choice.
That’s the word from social media and influencer guru Danielle Lewis, who says athletes can charge one-off fees “2-4 times” the standard market rate due to what she labels the “celebrity tax”.
Lewis is the co-founder and CEO of Scrunch, an industry leader in marketing and influencer growth.
She says a lifestyle influencer with more than one million followers can expect to charge in the ballpark of $10,000 for a single Instagram post, but athletes have the means to blow that number out of the water.
“When you’re talking about an athlete or celebrity, they bring a level of credibility that is over and above … because when they speak about something within their industry, they’re bringing years of understanding to that product, so it carries a lot more weight,” Lewis explains.
“An athlete can usually get 2-4x the (standard) rates as a bit of a baseline and sometimes even more depending on what somebody is actually asking them to do.”
Take six-time Fittest Woman on Earth, Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr, as an example.
The Queenslander boasts a staggering 1.9 million Instagram followers and a total social media reach of roughly 2.6 million.
With her Instagram reach alone – taking into account her status as the most popular CrossFit athlete in the world – Lewis says Toomey-Orr “could be getting anywhere from $25-50k per post”.
“The important thing about this is it’s not set in stone. These rates are from us performing an analysis benchmark of what influencers charge, but they can charge anything they like,” Lewis says.
“It can come down to a number of factors including a brand’s budget, an athlete’s desire to work with a particular brand, and then what they’re actually being asked to do – does (the brand want) video, multiple posts, do they want licensing on the posts et cetera.
“So it can be a bit of, ‘How long is a piece of string?’ but for someone like (Toomey-Orr), there would be no reason why $20k and above per post wouldn’t be her starting point.”
Instagram is the most bankable platform as it is the most targeted by brands in Australia, according to Lewis.
But having a reach across multiple platforms can help secure larger
“The more channels you have an athlete or influencer post on, the more they will get paid for that,” she explains.
“If you ask an athlete to post one piece of content across all of their channels, you will be expected to pay more because you are reaching more people and from a brand point of view, the purpose of using an athlete is to reach a particular audience.”
SOCIAL MEDIA MONEY SPINNERS
Originally published as Social media posts pay up to $50k each for Australian Athletes: Who tops the rich list?