People Are Shocked by Study's Claim of 12 Million Full-Time Influencers in U.S.

Close your eyes and imagine 12 million people. Now imagine all 12 million of them are in the business of influencing.

Plenty of people have been having a not-easy time wrapping their heads around this figure, which stems from a study released just under a year ago by the Keller Advisory Group, following its citing in a recent Wall Street Journal piece by Katherine Hamilton. The piece, titled “Who Gets the TikTok in the Divorce? The Messy Fight Over Valuable Social Media Accounts,” notes that Keller’s findings claimed there are 27 million paid content creators in the U.S. alone. Of those, according to the study, 44 percent (i.e. 11.9 million, so effectively 12 million people) are said to be working as paid creators in a full-time capacity.

A post shared to the platform formerly known as Twitter highlighted this number, resulting in many who questioned the veracity of the stat and the manner of data collection as part of a larger conversation about both the influencer economy and today's media landscape. As since pointed out, this isn’t the first time the Keller study has been cited.

For the purposes of the study, “creators” are defined as those who “consider themselves to be a creator or influencer.” Furthermore, as detailed in the full document here, such creators must have been paid for their work over the past year.

The 58-page study also provides alleged insight into the average income of people in this line of work, at least as of November 2023, resulting in some noteworthy disparateness across presumed notoriety levels for creators. The average creator, the study says, was making an estimated $93,000 per year in 2023; on the other end of the spectrum, roughly half of creators were said to be bringing in less than $10,000 annually.

As for the methodology behind the study, here’s how Keller puts it: Just under 6,000 Americans between the ages of 16 and 54 were screened for creators, at which point an online survey took place. The results of this survey were weighted for population, followed by a survey pulling from a 1,045-person sampling of creators.

Zooming out a bit, and study debate aside, perhaps what digs into us all the most when we hear about millions of people all more or less doing the same thing is that it drives home an identical point in our own lives. You’re the only you, that’s true enough, and I’m the only me. But on a planet of eight billion people, complete with eight billion dreams and wishes and visions and potential genius of their own, what does that really mean?

The answer can vary, but whenever doubt starts to creep in, there's a mantra that comes highly recommended: “I’m putting this dress on, these rings, and I’m going crazy.”

All that to say, some tweets have been embedded below.