Influencers are saying Coronavirus is hurting their business.
Millions of people are currently unemployed because of the coronavirus pandemic, including influencers. According to TMZ, social media influencers are now feeling economic damages due to coronavirus lockdown.
Abigail Ratchford, who has 9 million Instagram followers, told TMZ that her Instagram sales are slowing down due to the outbreak, which is scary, since she makes $500,000 a year from sponsored posts, endorsing products, and merchandise.
Ratchford says she still has monthly deals, which require her to post and will allow her to continue making money, but she has to get creative and produce content because of California’s “Safer at Home” order.
Other influencers affected by the Coronavirus include Travel influencers. According to reports, travel influencers, people who post photos from exotic places and are often compensated for traveling to those locations, are getting hit by the Coronavirus. “[Coronavirus is] impacting my income massively,” Callum Snape, a Vancouver-based travel photographer with 819,000 followers on Instagram, told Buzzfeed. “I haven’t seen any new inquiries in the past six weeks since the outbreak became more widespread.”
Selena Taylor of @FindUsLost, an NYC travel influencer with 177,000 followers, says she’s “definitely noticed a dip in people booking hotels and Airbnbs.”
Melissa Hie, of @GirlEatsWorld, tells Buzzfeed, “[Things have] changed in that I am not traveling at all at the moment and not actively planning unnecessary trips until the virus situation looks better.”
One Instagrammer is Lauren Bullen, who is embracing social distancing and who has over 2.1 million followers @Gypsea_Lust.
“We are also having to think about not traveling too much at the moment because it could be seen negatively to be promoting travel at a time like this,” she writes.
That said, influencers are profiting from the epidemic. According to Business Insiders, wellness influencers are telling followers to buy toxic doses of vitamins to protect them from the Coronavirus. Naturopathic practitioners have taken to YouTube to promote alternative medical treatments to the virus. Some of the advice they are giving are recommending herbs and extracts instead of hand-washing.
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