Here’s How Much I Make From 1.9 Million Followers on Instagram

6 min readDec 3, 2020

You’ve probably heard about the crazy rates celebrities are charging on Instagram. According to analytics platform Hopper HQ, the top earner is currently Kylie Jenner, who makes an estimated $1.2 million per sponsored post. She’s followed by Ariana Grande and Cristiano Ronaldo, clocking in at just under $1 million per post each.

But there’s an equally intriguing niche on Instagram that rarely gets any attention: curation accounts, or profiles built on featuring other creators’ work. Examples include:

@pinlord, a hub for enamel pin enthusiasts.
@beautifuldestinations, a travel photography page.
@houseofhighlights, a sports highlights curator.

They’re interesting for two reasons. First, anyone can build a curation account to millions of followers — no celebrity appeal required. Second, as far as monetization goes, they’re the Wild West of social media. There are no standards for how much these accounts make their money.

I run one such account at @goldenretrievers. At 1.9 million followers, it posts nothing but — you guessed it — Golden Retrievers. I currently don’t have a dog, so I use it to highlight other creators’ content. In exchange, they get thousands of new followers every time they’re featured.

I started the account in late 2016 (you can read the full story), and at one point, I was using it to make what I’d consider “decent” money. But last year, I made a conscious decision to stop all monetization.

Why? A couple of reasons, the most important of which was to sacrifice short term gains for long term potential. Don’t worry — I won’t leave you hanging on the specifics. But to better frame the context, let me first provide a breakdown of how I’ve monetized it so far.

How Much I’ve Made

@goldenretrievers has had three income streams: sponsorships, e-commerce projects, and a #1 best-selling iMessage sticker pack.

First, sponsorships. I’ve made a total of $25,000 in this category, and all of the sponsorships have come through three different influencer agencies over the course of two years. If that seems low for an account with more than a million followers, here’s the truth: most companies aren’t quite convinced about the value of curation accounts.

Influencer marketing relies heavily on human faces to sell products, and curation accounts lack that element. That means that unless you’re a celebrity, don’t expect brands to flood your DMs with collaboration requests. And when you do get proposals, expect them to be for modest amounts.

The most lucrative sponsorship I’ve had was in the low five figures, thanks to an agency connection. In light of Instagram’s declining organic reach and ever-dwindling engagement, those numbers may no longer be possible for curation accounts in 2020.

Next, I’ve made roughly $10,000 through e-commerce. This includes sales from an apparel line I tried to start called This Golden Life, as well as apparel I’ve sold for my art project Sunny the Golden (more on that later).

Selling your own products is by far the most promising route for monetization because it allows you to control how you make money rather than putting yourself at the mercy of a brand. Two great examples of this are @beautifuldestinations (built a seven-figure marketing agency through their account) and @dogsofinstagram (leveraged their audience to launch Lucy & Co., a successful dog apparel line).

Finally, I’ve also used @goldenretrievers to market a Sunny the Golden iMessage sticker pack. Lifetime earnings total $1,000. On the day it launched, it rocketed to number #1 on the paid charts, beating out industry giant Pusheen — a feat I’m proud of, even though it was short-lived (Pusheen, if you’re reading this, I’m in awe of your brand).

The sticker pack is no longer available because I changed Sunny the Golden’s art style, but if you’re curious, search “Sunny the Golden” in the sticker store and you’ll find two other sticker packs I’ve created since then.

Add that all up and I’ve made about $36,000 in just under four years of running @goldenretrievers — a far cry from the rates celebrity accounts command.

#1 on the charts!

What I Could Be Making

By now you’ve probably realized that I’ve been conservative with monetization. I’ll talk more in-depth about why in the next section.

Before we get there, I thought it’d also be interesting to examine how much money I could make if I monetized aggressively. To me, “aggressive monetization” means taking advantage of four income streams: shout-outs, paid features, e-commerce, and sponsorships.

Shout-outs are paid advertisements — usually for a low-quality dropshipping store run by someone sourcing products from Alibaba. At 1.9 million followers, I could charge anywhere between $200–$500 for a 24-hour post.

Paid features are posts made for other creators’ accounts. Normally, I choose what gets posted on the @goldenretrievers feed. But I also get daily DMs from other accounts asking if they can pay for me to post their dog. I’ve never answered one of these requests so I’m not sure how much I could charge, but my gut instinct says $200 per post is realistic. For reference, @pinlord was charging $20 for a feature at 100,000 followers in 2018.

And of course, I could be doing more with an original e-commerce brand or partnering with more agencies to maximize sponsorship income. I think I could reliably bank $200 in profit a day if I opened an online store with the right product/market fit (ie. apparel, dog toys or pet supplies), as well as make around $5,000 every other month in sponsorships.

Assuming I sell either a shout-out or paid feature every day and land a sponsorship every other month, that comes out to $8,500 per month, or $102,000 a year. Sound amazing? Truth is, it’s not quite that easy…

Why I’m Heading in a Different Direction

https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/new/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/top/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/hot/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/rising/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/gilded/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/wiki/index/

Last year, I decided to stop all forms of monetization. The reason was simple: I felt it was hurting the @goldenretrievers brand. Yes, in theory, I could be making a cool $200 a day, but the reality is you can only sell so many shout-outs and paid features before your audience categorizes your account as spam.

As for sponsored posts, the harsh reality is that the market for curation accounts is quickly drying up. Companies have realized they get the best bang for their buck by working with human influencers (and to be honest, they’re right).

See, it turns out curation accounts are fool’s gold: easy to build but worth very little — unless you use them to launch something 100% unique. When I realized this, I decided to pivot my focus. Instead of selling advertisements, I now use @goldenretrievers to drive followers to my art project, Sunny the Golden.

Eventually, I’ll sell Sunny apparel, books, and other art-related goods. And if it ever gets to a point where it starts to grow on its own, who knows, maybe I’ll sell the @goldenretrievers account.

Until then, here’s my advice for everyone thinking about starting a curation account: launch something truly original instead. Featuring other creators sounds like an easy job, but the easier the work, the lesser the reward. Invest in your own creativity and you’ll be a lot happier with your finances down the road.

Here’s How Much I Make From 1.9 Million Followers on Instagram

How Much I’ve Made

What I Could Be Making

Why I’m Heading in a Different Direction

Written by Maradonamaragese