400: The Creator Economy Is Rigged—Here’s How Influencers Can Take Back the Power

[00:00:00] Do you feel like you're doing everything right, but still not making enough money on LTK or Amazon or that no matter how much you try to keep up your rates, brands are refusing and influencer networks are telling you you can't charge that much. It's because the system is rigged against you. In this episode, we're gonna talk about it.

[00:00:18] We're gonna talk about what the big players are doing that's messing with your money. We're going to talk about why it feels like you're targeted 24 7 with ads to buy quick fixes that won't actually increase your bottom line, and how to reclaim your power and increase your income when the deck is stacked against you because you freaking can.

[00:00:38] Let's get into it.

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[00:00:57] So who are the big players that we're talking about and why are they messing with our money? So when I am talking about the big players, I am talking about things like Amazon, LTK, and influencer networks. So a lot of affiliate things that we're talking about, right? As well as. Brands.

[00:01:18] Now when it comes to income outside of that, like digital products or website ads, it's a little bit different. Digital products is something that you have a lot more control over. Website ads is. Tricky just because of the Google algorithm and SEO, right? And sometimes over there you've done everything right and it's still not working.

[00:01:43] Or maybe it was working really great and now it's not things that are outside of your control. Big players that we're talking about for affiliates and for brands also outside of your control. But it's really good for us to just chat about and know that, hey, you're not the only one dealing with these different things, right?

[00:02:01] So Amazon, you get into the Amazon influencer program, you're so excited. Hooray, I've made it. Let's go. Let's make this fricking money. And then you see that your commission rate is at most three to 4% and it feels so secretive and like. You have to be lucky in order to get to the next level because a commission rate of three to 4% is great if you're selling a huge bulk of things, but in order to do that is a crap ton of work, right?

[00:02:31] It's not impossible. You can still make a lot of money, but it is going to be a lot of work. What frustrates me about Amazon? Is that there's not a playbook. There's not a step-by-step. Okay? Once you do this, then we're going to increase your rate. And as somebody who is growing a business, that's really hard, that's really frustrating.

[00:02:52] You're spending your time and energy and just fingers crossed, hoping that you're one of the lucky ones to get into their good favor. You don't know if you need to hit a certain income goal. You're not sure if you need to hit a certain sales quota. You don't know what level you need to get to in order to get them to be like, oh yeah, we're going to recognize her hard work and pull her up to the next commission level.

[00:03:14] I am trying right now and I have talked to so many people. We do not know what the secret formula is. You can be sure that once I know, I will tell you guys, but after talking to so many people, and I am over here testing things like crazy this past month, trying to figure it out myself, and I cannot, and that is really, really hard and frustrating because I am seeing the success, right?

[00:03:38] We see these girls that are making a killing. You might be one of them, and if you are, I'm so freaking happy for you, but. And if you know the secret, somebody please shout it from the rooftops. The other thing too is that they've actually told some people inside of their programs, Hey, don't share this information with other people.

[00:03:56] So I. That is my only beef with Amazon. I mean, we're not talking about politics or anything else right now, but as far as when it comes to making an income from Amazon, that is my beef with them. Just give us a playbook, right? If we make more money, that means we're making you guys more money too. We're all incentivized here.

[00:04:15] Let us help you by helping us. Right. Okay. So it, it does feel like that's stacked against us, right? It is very hard. What about LTK? The thing with LTK, and here's the other thing is I'm never going to tell you guys these things unless I have tested it and tried it out. Myself or for some of my clients.

[00:04:36] Hopefully you guys know that by now. I am not gonna give you fluff. I'm not gonna give you just things that I have read from somewhere on the internet. Now, these are actual factual information that I have tested with myself or with my clients. LTK. I know for a fact that they do have their own algorithm.

[00:04:54] I know for a fact that they do have some of their favorites with this. It's very interesting because. I was helping a client try to get to the next level in LTK, so that way she could get into the brand deal section of LTK. Okay? So she had to get, um, a certain number of things done in order to hit that.

[00:05:17] So very different from Amazon. They gave her a playbook, right? Great. We love it. So hit all of those numbers. Hit all of their targets, hit all of their goals in order to get into seeing these magical brand deals. Woo-hoo. Turns out once she got in there, it was a lot of, here we'll give you this in exchange for you posting.

[00:05:39] There was no money involved and the dollar amounts we were seeing for any of those brand deals were extremely minimal and way, way, way below what even a newer creator should be accepting. It was not by industry standard at all. So what gives, what is the deal there? I don't really know, but I know that her spending her time working on other affiliate programs was more lucrative than spending time posting over and over again to LTK.

[00:06:10] Now if LTK is working for you, amazing, great, but I'm just saying for the amount in which she was posting, the return was not there compared to other platforms she worked with. The other one that I wanna talk about, influencer networks. Now I am talking about influencer networks, where they're the middleman between a brand and you.

[00:06:32] So they're facilitating the conversations, they're facilitating the brand deals, giving you the rate, and giving you the details for all the things that you have to complete in order to get paid. Right. Some of these are product and payment, some of them are payment only, some of them are product only, right?

[00:06:53] And so what is the deal there? Where I've gotten frustrated with this is when it comes to these. Rate calculators. Okay. A lot of the influencer rate calculators out there are created by these influencer networks. So when you think about it, if you're going to a rate calculator that is put out by an influencer network, they're going to make sure that the rate it spits out and tells you that you should be charging is lower than what you should be getting.

[00:07:29] Because they can't pay you that rate. And they are trying their best. They are more so on the side of the brand. And I really hope that back in the day when these ones got started, that they really had influencers at heart. But now they're definitely, it's, it's all about the money, right? And so if they can get the brand's budget and they take a large chunk of it, right, because they're.

[00:07:55] The mediator, they're the one facilitating everything, so they have to get paid. I understand that. But then they're divvying that amount up that they can give to influencers and they're splitting it up as many ways as possible. Right. They are taking that pie and they are cutting it into as many slices as possible to give the brand as much exposure as possible, which means that the budget that they have is going to be cut down so, so low.

[00:08:24] So I always say, you know, those influencer networks are great if you're just getting started. You want to get your feet wet and learn how one works. Maybe test it at one time, but know that those rate calculators put out there by these networks are going to tell you a much lower rate than what you have been charging or what you can charge.

[00:08:46] You can make so much more money than what they're saying. I am testing these calculators all the time, every single time I got to it. Nope. It's so much lower, and the reason I know it's lower is because we created a pricing guide based on actual factual information of me going around and talking to people that have been on this podcast, people that we have collaborated with other creatives and saying, Hey, what is your rate card?

[00:09:12] What are you actually getting paid from brands? What is. The amount that you're getting charged for a reel, what's the amount you're getting charged for stories only for TikTok, for an email, for a blog post, and we compiled all of that information into our pricing guide. We'll link that for you guys below if you don't have it yet.

[00:09:30] We did that because I was looking at these calculators. I mean like this just doesn't feel right. This feels so super low to me. It doesn't feel like it's accurate. I feel like influencers are getting paid more than this and should be getting paid more than this. And so it took that and I'm like, okay, you know what?

[00:09:48] Screw it. I'm gonna go and do the research myself and figure this out. When you look at the pricing guide that we have built, that is what I want you to go off of, and that is what I want you to hold onto, that this is my worth. And I can promise you that in 2026, brands are still paying those rates. To this day

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[00:11:37] So when it feels like things are being messed with and playing with your money and stealing your money and keeping it away from you, your intuition there is not far off. Okay? But we're gonna talk about how to reclaim your power and how to increase your income. Okay? But before I talk about that, I wanna talk about the other thing that feels like, not that it's targeted against you, because I think some of these have really good intentions, but as a whole.

[00:12:07] As a content creator myself, it's incredibly draining and I'm talking about the ads that I feel like I am targeted with 24 7 where somebody is pitching me hooks, somebody is pitching me something for editing, somebody is pitching me a solution that is going to solve a problem. And yeah, they're valid problems.

[00:12:28] And they're valid things. That's like, okay, yeah, I wanna increase my views, I wanna increase my following. I wanna increase my income. And there are these quick fixes though. They're these like 27, 37, even $7. I sound like mono friends now. And the problem with a quick fix is it's not targeted and customized to you and it's not necessarily going to be a solution to what's actually going on. So I just wanna throw that out there because I think with so much going on in this industry, there's so many different things that feel like.

[00:13:06] It's really freaking hard to grow. It just feels sometimes like I'm, I'm tired. Why? Why am I stuck in these different areas? Right? You need to be doing really well in one area and stuck in another, or you're just like, I don't even know how to get started. I don't know how to scale to scale. Okay, so let's talk about that.

[00:13:28] Before we do, and I know this came off me just talking about, oh, Brie, I'm getting targeted with ads. I'm gonna tell you about bold fluence because similar to the pricing guide like I was talking about, this is one offer. That we have gone all in on to make sure that we're giving you every resource you need to make more money.

[00:13:49] We have really scaled back in what we're offering this year over here at Thrive. We're no longer offering shift. And if you're really sad about that, and that was something you were working towards, I understand and I'm so sorry I'm nev not saying it's gone forever, but for right now we're really focusing and going all in on bold fluence.

[00:14:07] So if shift sounded exciting to you, you wanna jump in on bold flus because you need a plan that works for exactly where you're at and what you wanna focus on. So what we do is we walk you through it step by step, and give you the exact blueprint to grow. I'm a self-made girlie who pieced. Everything together, information through YouTube, Google Free webinars, until I had enough money coming in to invest in coaching.

[00:14:33] And that took me so long to do, and I don't want you to waste years like I did. So I created bolt fluence with a low barrier to entry cost of just $49 a month, and it gives you everything you need, the strategy to grow on your favorite platform, how to make money on it, coaches to answer your questions, and community to hold you accountable.

[00:14:55] This is your ticket to success this year. I want you to go get your money. I am so fired up about this. I want you guys to make so much freaking money this year. Thrive Together blog slash bold fluence, or click the link in the description below. Now let's talk about how are we going to reclaim our power and increase our income when it feels like it is an uphill battle.

[00:15:16] First of all, you have to own who you are. I don't know if you've been paying attention enough at all or if it has come across enough lately, but I am stepping out of the shell. Um, my daughter is almost three years old, which is absolutely. Bizarre, but any mamas out there, you've and friends of mamas have heard maybe this saying of like, get your pink back, and it talks about flamingos and how they go through this transition and they get their pink back in their feathers.

[00:15:51] That is what I feel like, and I don't even feel like I am like getting back to where I was before pregnancy. I feel like it has unleashed something in me where I'm like. Wanting to be unfiltered and wanting to just be authentically who I am, and I'm saying all of that and sharing a little bit of my personal story because I want you to find what that thing is where, where you can relate to that for yourself.

[00:16:23] Because in this world of social media and the online space, if you don't stand out. I'm not saying you have to go and invent yourself and reinvent this personality and come across as something that you're not. I'm saying if you fully lean into who you are, your quirks, your voice, your opinions, that is going to help you.

[00:16:50] Have growth and have success in this industry. And if you don't, you're going to blend in. You're going to feel stifled, your creativity, it's going to 100% stifle your creativity as well. You have to stand out so you don't blend in with the rest. When you stand out and you. Own your voice. You own who exactly you are.

[00:17:13] You stop trying to copy what other people are doing. That is an issue that we can get into if we rely too much on these hooks and these different quick fixes is we're going and we're doing the same thing as everybody else. When at the end of the day, if you just owned who you are authentically and show that with the world, that is what is going to help you grow and be successful.

[00:17:39] That requires courage, right? Like that requires vulnerability and those are not two things that come very easily. There's a lot of self-doubt. There's a lot of second guessing and overthinking that we are doing all the time.

[00:17:57] But if there is a goal that you truly want to hit with your whole, whole chest, full chest, then you're going to push yourself beyond what is comfortable and you're going to do the things that feel so true to who you are.

[00:18:17] That it is going to feel so good. It's going to allow your creativity to thrive instead of feeling stifled and trying to put yourself into a certain type of box. I'm trying to like think through and like. Eloquently describe things that I have felt over the years and the second guessing that I've gone through and just stopping myself and I, oh my gosh, I've talked about this before, but the amount of videos that I have recorded on my phone because I was fired up and excited to talk about something, and that I never share it because as soon as I stopped recording, or maybe when I was in the middle of editing, I second guessed myself.

[00:18:57] I just know I would've been so much further along than I am now. If I would've just. Stopped thinking about it too much, stopped overthinking and just shared the thing. So what if a real doesn't do well? So what if a piece of content doesn't do well? So what if you're like, oh my God, I'm so excited about this.

[00:19:15] And then it's like crickets, because the repetition is going to build that muscle. It's going to build your stamina. It is going to build your strength and it is going to build your creativity. And the more that you put your voice out there, and the more that you put that amazing content out there, the more people are going to see it, and the more it is going to grow and the more confidence and courage you're going to have.

[00:19:41] Those are the things that are so important to grow and to build those muscles in order to be a successful content creator.

[00:19:52] So owning who you are. Then the other things that you need to do to reclaim your power and increase your income is you need to pick one platform to focus your energy on and grow. Unless you have more time in your week than I do. It is way too hard to grow more than one platform at a time. I have tried it and failed and I have to reign in my.

[00:20:19] Entrepreneurial spirit that wants to go and do all of the things. Unfortunately, I have friends in my corner that love me and cheer me on, but also hold me accountable to focus on one thing at a time So if you've been feeling spread thin as far as multiple platforms, I want you to take this as your permission slip to focus on one platform right now and do really, really good at it.

[00:20:46] And with that, I want you to pick one monetization stream that will work really well on that platform. And here is the thing. It might not be the monetization stream that is the most popular. But that doesn't matter because I want you to make money. I want you to make a lot of money, and so we have to be smart.

[00:21:08] I have created a content creator blueprint just for this. It's a free opt-in. You can click the link in the description. It's going to walk you through the platforms and which monetization streams will help you make the most money the fastest. That's what I went through and analyze.

[00:21:25] Based on past clients, I've worked with, current clients, I'm working with myself, friends, things that we've tried. I have been doing this for well over, hmm. Multiple, multiple years. We're not gonna do that to myself. Y'all. I'm gonna be 37 this year, my Lord. Um, apparently when I talk about age, I get a country accent.

[00:21:47] I've been doing this for a while. Okay? And so I've analyzed things and I know now. Which ones and why they're gonna perform the best on certain platforms. So I don't want to use second guessing or even like just throwing caution to the wind or just guessing, like, okay, I think this one is going to be the fastest way to make money on Instagram or on my blog or on my email list, whatever it is.

[00:22:11] No, I have actual facts and data that is going to back it up and help you understand which one you should choose and also why. So make sure you go and download that and start there. Here's the thing, friends with all of this. And why I'm sharing, you know, about the big players and why I'm sharing about those things that are draining us and those quick fix solutions that are often frustrating and more exhausting than helpful is because I want you to make so much money.

[00:22:40] I want you to make so much money and I know that you can make so much money this year. We need you to. The world is crazy. The world is bananas. I want you to have stability. I want every single person that comes across this platform. I don't, I even not even coming across the platform. I want every content creator out there that wants to do this full time and wants to make a solid income from this to do that, and not just a solid income, A lot of money.

[00:23:09] There's so much money in this industry. The content creator economy is massive and it is still still growing. Okay? There's projections suggesting it could reach nearly 500 billion to over a trillion potentially by 2027. As soon as that, okay, it's not slowing down no matter what you think, no matter what, who's saying what out there, no matter what AI is trying to do, the content creator economy is not slowing down.

[00:23:41] It is continuing to grow. So I want you to go and get your money. Okay? jump into bold fluence with us. Get the support, get the coaching, get on the right track so that way you're not wasting time and you're spending your energy wisely and go download that opt-in so you can start to figure that out, which platforms you need to be on.

[00:24:05] Okay? You've got this. I'm so excited for you guys this year. I'll talk to you soon.

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