For the first time, a rate card laying out exactly how much some of the country’s top bloggers charge for mentions on their social media platforms has been published.
The Ministry of Talent document appears exclusively in the March issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
It details how bloggers are earning up to $850, plus GST of course, to post client mentions on their Instagram accounts.
Among those named is Antoinette Koulas, aka Sydney Fashion Blogger. She earns up to $5000 every time she updates her Instagram feed, pushing paid-for images out to her more than 500,000 followers.
“Clients say, ‘I’ll pay you to wear that dress, I’ll pay you to wear those shoes’, so, yeah, you know, they sponsor me. I hate to say it, but if you think of me like a big billboard, people are paying for that space,” she says.
In the week before this story went to press, Sydney Fashion Blogger mentioned 28 different brands in 23 Instagram posts.
“Seventy per cent of my posts are sponsored,” she told The Weekly. You do the maths.
As the pay packets of top fashion bloggers have started to hit the $150,000 a year mark, according to industry sources, the government has started to sit up and take notice, with both the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) suddenly taking a keen interest in the work these women do.
As Damien Woolnough, deputy editor of Elle Australia magazine says, “Some of these bloggers’ skirts may be transparent, but their business practices aren’t.”
