Only 4.3% of creators make over $100K per year, survey reveals

The good news: Quitting your day job to become an influencer as a get-rich-quick scheme might be overrated. According to a survey of more than 1,700 creators from influencer marketing platform Aspire, only 4.3% of creators earn six figures or more a year.

The bad news: That could potentially be at least 13 million creators, as there are now about 303 million creators in nine major markets globally, per Adobe. 😳

And that wasn’t all the company’s survey found.

• 55.2% of those polled said they increased their rates over the past six months (don’t make us say we told you so).
• And 64% said they’ve turned down campaigns over the past year “due to a misalignment between the brand’s values and their own.”

The number one thing creators want from brands…Is more creative freedom, according to the survey. 🎨 “This isn’t a game of control, as much as I think that makes brands uncomfortable,” Anand Kishore, Aspire’s founder and CEO, told Marketing Brew.

He added that, although guidelines are of course necessary, trying to steer a creator’s output somewhat “defeats part of the purpose” of working with creators for authentic content.

+1: Though 74% of respondents said they’re “very willing” to partner with companies that are “committed to sustainability,” only ~15% who do sustainability-related work said they would charge a lower rate for it.—PB