Tiffany Wang curates a minimalist aesthetic. Her Instagram feed is homogenous and intentional. Wang’s wardrobe is filled with neutral colors — her camel coat matches the color of her picture-perfect cappuccino — and the shots of her living room show spotless white furniture, with the only pops of color coming from the house plants.
From her feed, life may look easy, breezy. As an Instagram influencer with 69,300 followers, she’s paid to make it look that way.
Her day job may not be as glamorous; Wang, 32, works at her family’s insurance brokerage business in the Sunset. But her side hustle posting pictures of herself and her travels on social media makes her just as much money as her 9 to 5.
When Wang graduated from college in 2009, she was having trouble finding work in the Great Recession. She moved to Beijing assuming she could find a gig as an English teacher, but ended up landing an internship at a magazine geared toward ex-pats. That turned into a full-time job as a fashion and lifestyle editor.
“It was really fun. I always wanted to write and get into journalism,” she said. “But my parents were really pressuring me to move home and help with the family business.
“I moved home and gave up all that and I felt a really strong loss of identity and creatively stifled.”
She turned to Instagram as her creative outlet, sharing pictures of her outfits. Her following grew slowly — earning the first 1,000 followers is the hardest, she said, but it’s much easier after you cross the 10,000 threshold.
“I feel really strongly the internet rewards vanity, so the more photos you share of yourself the faster you grow.”
But is sharing photos of yourself online actually… work?
“Absolutely,” Wang replied. She says her day usually starts around 6 a.m., when she wakes up to plan content, post pictures, and fire off emails for a few hours before heading to her insurance job. After work, she often attends events to network or shoot content.
“Even when I’m hanging out with friends, it’s always in the back of my head. Even if I’m getting wine with girlfriends I might do a quick Instagram story,” she said. “When you start to realize you can make money off of it, that’s when things change.”
Instagramming for income isn’t just about getting the right shot — though that can take 30 minutes to an hour in and of itself — but it’s a good amount of planning and even more emailing. These days, pretty much all of her paid posts have to be approved by PR and legal teams.
“It takes hours of work and often weeks to get approval. It’s extremely time consuming.”
Wang described her work as a one-woman magazine ad: “You have to conceptualize the creative direction yourself, you have to be the photographer, you have to be the model, you have to be the editor and you have to be the publisher. And you generate your own following. It is definitely work.
“I’m not complaining because I feel very privileged to be able to do this work, get paid for it, and get a lot of free perks. But it is very stressful to have a 24/7 job that you can’t turn off. Your success is very dependent on the public’s approval of you and everyone can track that approval alongside you.”
That part — the public approval aspect — can get into Wang’s head at times.
“It’s a lot more personal when it’s featuring you. If you worked really hard and you think you looked really good and (the photo) tanked …. You can be very dramatic and be like, ‘Everybody hates me and I’m hideous.’ It’s an emotional roller coaster.
“It can be very mentally draining and anxiety inducing.”
At this stage, with nearly 70,000 followers, Wang is often approached by PR reps who want to work with her on a specific campaign. They’ll write up a proposal, which can be very specific, down to whether or not you can smile in the photo.
The pay varies, from $700 per post on the low end, to around $2,500 on the high end. Brands that are more challenging to sell, like cleaning products, will pay influencers more for their work. “It brands” may get people to partner with them for free, just because the influencer wants to be aligned with the company.
Wang said she’s promoted small, local companies for free before, but she joked, “If it’s a corporation, I’m like, ‘You have money, you can pay me.’”
She gets paid per post, regardless of the number of likes or comments she may get, or any resulting sales of the product. She says her income is about 50/50, coming equally from her day job and her influencer work.
“It is nice to get free things to supplement my life because (San Francisco) is truly one of the most expensive cities.
“When I started my blog, it was never my intention to make money from it. I wanted to be creative and I missed sharing my fashion perspective. The money ended up being a nice perk and it gave it more credibility in the eyes of my immigrant parents. They didn’t understand what I was doing until they saw the checks or started getting free things from me. Now they’re really pumped.”
Wang added that many influencers with as many followers as she has will sign with a management company, which handles making deals and negotiating fees — in exchange for a 15% to 25% cut. She said for now, she’d rather do that work herself and pocket the money.
When it comes to travel, things work along the same lines.
“Fifty percent of my travel this year has been sponsored, either with an airline or a brand.”
Airlines will pay for flights, hotels will let you stay for free, or sometimes companies will sponsor your entire trip, with a whole host of predetermined activities and meals — all in exchange for a pre-determined number of Instagram posts.
From the looks of it, Wang has been to New York, Paris, Mexico, and Marfa, Texas in just the past nine months.
“Even when it’s a personal trip, I feel like it’s a waste if you don’t make it somewhat of a work trip. You have an opportunity to gather new followers in a new places,” said Wang. “If I don’t shoot content while I’m traveling, I feel guilty.
“Vacations used to be something relaxing where you could turn off and focus on unwinding, but now travel is the best time to get content. I feel like I barely sleep when I travel because I’m always researching places to go. Especially if it’s sponsored travel, then it’s especially stressful.”
Adding to the stress? Not always having a photographer.
“Honestly a lot of times it’s me and a tripod. My sisters are great. (When they help), I usually set up the photo’s composition and the framing. … On the weekend it’s easy to hang out with other influencers and you shoot photos for one another. If I’m hanging out with a friend that’s not an influencer, I feel bad making them shoot me for 30 minutes because they’re not getting anything out of it.”
And while she started posting pictures as a creative outlet, she ironically feels the pressure of the public eye to be creatively stifling at times.
“I built this persona as a minimalist fashion and interiors person. Now If I ever try and venture outside of it, maybe I feel like wearing a ripped t-shirt with leather pants and a fur coat, it completely flops because my followers are used to seeing me in a certain context.
“I’ve built a box and now I have to stay within the lines I’ve drawn for myself.”
Wang also thinks it’s harder to grow a following in San Francisco, which is relatively small compared to Los Angeles and New York. When she travels to those cities and posts geo-tagged photos there, Wang says she sees her following grow instantly.
“I feel like we all end up shooting at the same places (in San Francisco), like the same restaurants and cafes. The Golden Gate Bridge, Bernal Heights Park, Alamo Square is always a hit. People love those little ‘Full House’ houses.
“The basic shot you’ve seen a million times in Alamo Square will do better than something else.”
Alix Martichoux is a digital editor at SFGATE. Email: alix.martichoux@sfgate.com
