An Instagram star with 2M followers couldn't sell 36 T-shirts
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
I follow people that post e.g. cat pictures, but I wouldn't buy their merch. I don't even know who these people are, really; their posts are a commodity to me. They're "oh, more cat pictures", not "a new post from [X]!" I found them through the app's recommendations, hit follow, and then never looked into them further. Why would I want to buy anything from them?
The edges connecting vertices on social networks have weights, despite the social networks themselves not modelling this. Some people, despite being very "connected" in theory, have a very low aggregate weight of connection; all their connections are barely there.
It's like having a million acquaintances and no friends.
(And, of course, some percentage of the vertices you're connected to might be deactivated/purchased/bots/etc. But even when that's not true, you still won't make sales on your "personal brand" to mere acquaintances.)
Although, I do agree, cute pictures are easy to produce.
The reason she couldn't sell T-Shirts is because she didn't build a real audience around her. She likely used bots to boost her followers and raise the status of her profile without actually building engagement.
People who have built real audiences around themselves using social media are superstars. Casey Neistat and MKBHD can sell tens of thousands of T-Shirts if they wanted to.
The only point this makes is that Social Media is a tool. It can be used well or it can be used poorly.
Let me reiterate: there are people with a million social-media subscribers of "real audience", who still could not sell a single T-shirt. https://chubbycattumbling.tumblr.com/ and whatever the equivalents of such blogs are on Instagram likely have a million+ subscribers—real people—but also have built no "personal brand", and therefore would generate no interest in products marketed under said personal brand.
Casey Neistat and MKBHD aren't superstars because they have millions of followers. They're superstars because they've been marketing their personal brands from the beginning, and so every (real) follower they've gained is also a fan. But this does not apply in every situation.
(It especially doesn't apply to corporate social-media outreach, something of interest to the HN crowd: just posting cool stuff your startup made might attract a "real audience" of people who want that stuff... but unless you're branding that stuff as yours when you do that, you won't be able to later convert that audience at all. That should be obvious to someone who's job is "social-media brand manager"—but it's not obvious to someone who wants to get rich selling merch to Insta followers.)
This is missing the point entirely. Comments on the OP notice that she had good engagement in her posts and good evidence that the followers were real.
The bet seems to be that the product planning and marketing were real weak.
The T-Shirts are created on demand. The stock is virtual, and effectively endless, with the selection as expansive as the digital designs uploaded. However, the posts are even more of a commodity. All media is becoming an ephemeral commodity. This can even extends to apps and games. Given the recent history of media, it seems inevitable.
I know people who have thousands of subscribers and can't sell $1000 of stuff and then there are people with 1000 subscribers that can sell $50k worth with a single email.
It all comes down to the relationship with your list (I guess in this case your followers). If your list trusts you and trust is easy to gain by giving a lot of value + authority, they will buy from you. Think if your best friend tell you to get "X" and he is an expert too then chances are you will try "X" even if doesn't make sense at the moment. On the other hand if a random stranger tells you to do it, you will need a lot of convincing and still you'll be looking for ulterior motives before making that purchase.
Sure some artists would advertise swag they were selling on Tumblr from time to time but they make awesome art why shouldnt they be allowed to sell swag? Artists got to eat too.
But selling can also be giving your list what they signed up for at a price that they will not get anywhere else. Which is also very important to keep niches and not to try and sell dog training videos to a person who signed up for piano lessons (yes poeple can do that)
Looking at her account, I don't get why she'd have so many followers. She isn't good looking, not interesting, her videography and photography is very average.
Her engagement metrics for the number of followers she has are not up to par. It suggests that she didn't build a real audience and took the route of boosting her profile with shallow tactics.
Real people with real audiences (think MKBHD, Casey Neistat, etc) are superstars and have real influence.
What kind of engagement metrics are you seeing that are drastically different between them?
I'm surprised she sold as many as she did.
Twitch streamers sell merch to a much smaller audience, and probably to the same group of audience who is also subscribed at $5/month. The audience is already invested and want to support the content; do Instagram followers feel like they're supporting the content in the same way? Is a follower count even a good metric to judge audience captivation?
Maybe this is a wake up call to marketing agencies that influencers aren't nearly as captive as their follower count suggests.
All of these are relative; plus, there are other reasons to follow an account.
0.00138% conversion rate.
Not because I think this is healthy, but because I think people will complain loudly and campaign to have them boycotted for demanding proof of their “influencer” status resulting in money spend.
I think such a thing would shred the influencer concept to bits, and so all the other influencers would react out of fear for losing access to the “exposure economy” they leveraged their status to create.
My guess is that not enough build-up, or buzz was created, and the initial attempt to sell was forced and random. It's an old tactic you see various startups doing: creating a countdown landing page where the 'mystery' of the product gets people talking.
math checks out