Over the past few months, my colleague Whitney and I surveyed 499 influencer marketers worldwide about their salaries, working hours, job satisfaction, and day-to-day responsibilities. (Some of you took the survey!)

We wanted to know: how much are influencer marketers making? And does it match the work they're doing?

Spoiler: it doesn't.

Today I'm sharing 5 key findings. But you can download the full report here.

But first, the big question.

How much do influencer marketers make?

Of our nearly 400 in-house and 100 freelance respondents, the global averages are:

By region, in-house salaries range from $86,947 in North America to $17,786 in South America, with Europe at $44,711. (The full report has every region, plus breakdowns by experience, niche, and gender.)

Six in 10 influencer marketers told us their salaries don't accurately reflect their roles and tasks. Seven in 10 said the industry as a whole is failing to pay marketers for the value they provide.

When we dug into the numbers, influencer marketers only start to feel fairly compensated at around $62,895. Remember, the global average is $49,981. That's a $13K gap between what people earn and what they consider fair.

And the marketers who said both their personal salary AND the industry's salaries were fair? They earned over $20K more than those who answered no to both.

We asked influencer marketers how many hours they were contracted to work, and then how many they actually worked.

Globally, the average is 2.9 hours of unpaid overtime per week. Some regions are much worse. The Middle East & Africa clocks 7.2 extra unpaid hours, while North and South America each clock 4.6. On average, that's roughly $1,257 in lost wages per year. For North American marketers, it's over $10,000.

Of course, we also found that unpaid overtime is related to job satisfaction.

The most dissatisfied marketers in our survey worked 7.4 hours of unpaid overtime per week. The most satisfied? Just 1.5.

Only 4 in 10 influencer marketers said leadership and the rest of the team truly understood their role and the value they provide.

Marketers whose teams understand their role report higher job satisfaction. Those without that understanding see "neutral" and "somewhat dissatisfied" shoot up.

It makes sense. If few people understand that you're managing the entire influencer lifecycle end-to-end, and our data shows that the vast majority of you are doing everything from discovery to outreach to contracts to content approval to reporting, it's easy for leadership to underestimate what fair compensation looks like. You end up fighting for budget, pushing back against unrealistic KPIs, and explaining (again) why you can't just make your brand go viral.

After everything — the underpayment, the unpaid overtime, the task overload, the teams that don't get it — 6 in 10 influencer marketers said they were satisfied with their jobs. Over half would recommend it as a career. And 57% feel optimistic about their earning potential.

This is fascinating to me. There's a thing in research called social desirability bias: people tend to report feeling more positive than they actually are, even in anonymous surveys. Maybe there’s some of that here. Or maybe influencer marketers really do love what they do and will put up with just about anything to keep doing it.

But passion has an expiration date. The majority of influencer marketers, even those with 10+ years of experience, have been with their current company for less than 3 years. People are sticking with their careers, not their employers.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts about what we found. Reply to this email anytime. I love hearing from you!

Download the full 39-page report for everything I couldn't fit: salary by niche, by years of experience, the gender pay gap, the freelance vs. in-house deep dive, and a lot more.

Enara Roy from Oddball (formerly at Sweet Loren’s) is joining our lineup on March 25, 2026, for a special edition of Modash Live! She’ll share how unexpected creator partnerships can expand your reach. I don’t know about you, but I learn so much and am so inspired by seeing how other people do influencer marketing.

Check out the full lineup and save your seat here.

Renata on our team sent us @abbyhappel, and I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m definitely looking at buildings differently.

Who she is: Abby Happel, a junior architect in Chicago with 183K followers on Instagram and 92K on TikTok who makes architecture content that's so fun to watch.

Why she's worth a follow: Her series "Corner Talk" is genius. She walks around and describes the corners of buildings. She'll name elements using proper architectural terms and explain exactly why it’s good or bad. You go in thinking "it's just a corner" and come out 60 seconds later feeling personally victimized by a facade.

Dream collab: She’s been sponsored by Adobe, Asus, and MainGear (I checked her profile in Modash to find her brand collabs), but I’d really like to see a home brand partner with her. I want to see Abby do Corner Talk, but for couches. Walking around a showroom, telling you why that armrest has a mid-century modern profile and how she rates it. Let’s call it Couch Corner Talk.

If you’ve discovered a creator that you love and have a dream collab in mind, shoot me an email so I can share it with the group.

Until next time, remember: you deserve to be paid more!
Eleni Zoe xx
Brand @ Modash. Say hi on LinkedIn

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