first college student athlete to monetize personal brand

I'm guessing attractive girl posting bikini photos.

It is good that athletes can do that now but I'm guessing less than 1% can make a significant earning with that.

With solid content it is rather easy to get 5k followers but to get past that is hard work and some luck too. To really make a living on this you need to have 100k+ followers and post content with advertisements daily.

A couple of basketball and football stars as well as some attractive girls and quirky personality types could make a living on this but most probably can't and would get 3k followers and make 30 bucks  a month.

A person be can get paid by brands to be an influencer. College athletes could be influencers on athletic wear and equipment. If they’re popular enough they could make money on non sport related products.

YouTube gaming star DanTDM or Dan Middleton, is one of the highest-paid social media influencers, bringing in around $16.5 million per year, according to Business Insider. He started his YouTube channel by focusing on daily Minecraft plays, but has since expanded to other games.

Or you can get paid by the post ... Selena Gomez has the honor of being the most-followed person on Instagram. She’s also one of the highest-paid social media influencers, taking home an estimated $550,000 per post.

@RJM posted:

A person be can get paid by brands to be an influencer. College athletes could be influencers on athletic wear and equipment. If they’re popular enough they could make money on non sport related products.

YouTube gaming star DanTDM or Dan Middleton, is one of the highest-paid social media influencers, bringing in around $16.5 million per year, according to Business Insider. He started his YouTube channel by focusing on daily Minecraft plays, but has since expanded to other games.

Or you can get paid by the post ... Selena Gomez has the honor of being the most-followed person on Instagram. She’s also one of the highest-paid social media influencers, taking home an estimated $550,000 per post.

That is right  but very few people make it anywhere near that. Older people tend to look down on influencers but to make a living on it is a ton of work plus there is a huge talent funnel with millions of kids wanting to become influencers and only a few hundred being stars and a few dozen being superstars just like in baseball.

The time were anyone could become a successful social media star is over in these days this is a highly competetive market often driven by big social media marketing agencies. The really successful ones are putting a ton of work in with cutting, filming and so on, the time when making some wobbly phone videos was enough are gone, that market is super professional now.

It is still possible to make it but people still underestimate how competetive it is and  how unlikely it is to make it to the top.

The talent funnel in that field isn't all that different from the talent funnel in pro sports.

Older generations (even millenials who are 30+ now) can't understand that but for today's 14 year olds those influencers are superstars. In our city there was an autograph hour by an influencer with a million followers and there was a 300 ft waiting line and screaming kids. Every kid wants to be a youtuber

I was reading through tons of video camera descriptions and reviews (tripods too) and one of the main categories referenced was using the cameras for vlogging and live streaming. Crazy that there are that many people out there creating content now

@Dominik85 posted:

That is right  but very few people make it anywhere near that. Older people tend to look down on influencers but to make a living on it is a ton of work plus there is a huge talent funnel with millions of kids wanting to become influencers and only a few hundred being stars and a few dozen being superstars just like in baseball.

The time were anyone could become a successful social media star is over in these days this is a highly competetive market often driven by big social media marketing agencies. The really successful ones are putting a ton of work in with cutting, filming and so on, the time when making some wobbly phone videos was enough are gone, that market is super professional now.

It is still possible to make it but people still underestimate how competetive it is and  how unlikely it is to make it to the top.

The talent funnel in that field isn't all that different from the talent funnel in pro sports.

Older generations (even millenials who are 30+ now) can't understand that but for today's 14 year olds those influencers are superstars. In our city there was an autograph hour by an influencer with a million followers and there was a 300 ft waiting line and screaming kids. Every kid wants to be a youtuber

The kid on the bench isn’t going to generate revenue. But a projected future star football or basketball player could make a decent income. Most college kids would be pleased generating a couple hundred in revenue per month.

Does anyone know who Leslie Jordan is? You can look him up on IG. Less than a year ago he had 4k followers, now 5.6M. He is a senior citizen!  He is cleaning up!

Sons friend from HS does hair and make up tutorials on IG. She makes a fortune pushing product. She is 34 has a home in FL and a home in NYC, and doubled her income this year due to COVID.

So it just isnt a pretty girl in a bathing suit getting attention.

Stephen Knez, is a college baseball YouTuber. JuCo player with 58K YouTube subscribers and 23K followers on Instagram. Great content, he is pretty good as well.

A good friend of our family and high school teammate of my daughter (Azzi Fudd) has 152k followers on Instagram because she was the Gatorade high school athlete of the year her sophomore year, one of the first two women to go to Steph Curry’s high school camp that he has (where she won the three point contest and played well in-game against the top high school players) and a two time gold medal winner. When she goes to UConn next year she will have an opportunity to monetize if she wants to because of her talent and grit (she’s coming back from a complete knee blowout at Team USA trials before her junior year).

In the past week I read an article in Business Insider about an attorney who was very successful investing his earnings. He started a blog. He eventually made so much money on social media he stopped practicing law. Investing is his passion.

This is very nascent for college athletes, but in time some will figure it out.  Think, high school star athlete works with Overtime, to create highlights. Overtime gets content and athlete gets to build following.  This is exactly the path Zion Williams followed.  From there athlete finds niche sponsors to pay top dollar to their followers.  Problem arises when rich alumni is willing to pay 💰 to potential top recruit to advertise to his other 10 rich alumni buddies that ‘follow’ said top recruit.

Hi! I’m Bull Winkle. I’d like to pay you $10,000 per tweet to be an influencer for my car dealership. And to be a good influencer you should probably have one of my loaded Escalades free of charge. Psst! You have to go to college where I did ... Wossamotta U.

The NCAA is going to be very busy.

Thus the sharp increase in marketing managers jobs. That major has been removed from the list of degrees I will not help pay for my kids.   

Rules to expect when passed: Athlete can't wear school gear/conference etc. when "influencing". Can't rep items that the school pays sponsorship for.

Baseball is pretty narrow in popularity. That said, I told my son to put on a red shirt and hat, carry his baseball glove and go to the car dealership and ask for the manager. Tell him you'll hang out in the lobby for the afternoon for $150 and play catch with little kids while salesman put the squeeze on their parents. Also told him to call up his old coaches in baseball orgs.  Tell them you'll help with tryouts for a couple hundred for a weekend. Chat with the parents. Say some baseball clichés "Hard work beats talent that doesn't work hard and stuff".

At least at son's school there is not much competition from the football team.

Trust the NCAA to add another department with 100+ employees to "help the student athlete". Maybe drop Shaq, The Rock, Sir Charles and Mary Lou Gymnast a couple hundred G's to film a compliance commercial.

@Go44dad posted:

Rules to expect when passed: Athlete can't wear school gear/conference etc. when "influencing". Can't rep items that the school pays sponsorship for.

RipkenFanSon wrote a novel and got it published a few weeks before he would start college. He made sure to meet with someone in AD/compliance , etc to see what he could and could not do. He couldn't indicate in book what school he attended, or that he was playing baseball for that team, etc. He couldn't peddle books at the field (nor could I).

But word would get around, and many classmates/teammates were curious about the book. Apparently the "interest" spread further. During one game at a rival school in his conference, a young woman with a screechy voice started yelling out son's name along,with the protagonist and other main character from the novel when he batted. Her seat was pretty close to home plate. The ump said nothing as the saga (one sided narrative) continued through the AB. It took a teammate's mom (grew up in Louisiana) with her southern drawl to walk over and tell her she wasn't acting "lady like" for it to stop. Son said he heard the loud voice, but couldn't make out what she was saying. I think he reached base, so he was able to focus.