The data is showing that large influencers are making less money...

Larger influencers are making less money than they have in recent years. And if you look closely, the signs are everywhere.

The rise of UGC creators is one of the clearest indicators. Brands today are focusing aggressively on obtaining paid usage from nano-influencers, and It is visible in every industry report.

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, nano-influencers accounted for 75.9% of Instagram’s influencer base in 2024

We are in the middle of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the period that historically unleashes floods of influencer promotions. Yet this year, the feed has been unusually quiet. Far fewer big creators are posting paid holiday promos, even though this used to be their most lucrative season.

This makes sense. A UGC creator does not need a following. They do not need a brand. They just need to produce a video that works well as a paid ad.

A brand can take that UGC asset, run it on Meta or TikTok, and scale it *endlessly*. Meanwhile a traditional influencer post relies on organic reach, and we all know that the algorithm doesn't reward paid promos.

Brand budgets have tilted entirely toward UGC production and static ads. And some UGC creators are making a ton of money from this. To be more specific, a strong UGC creator can earn a base monthly retainer plus a percentage of the revenue their videos generate as Meta ads.

For example, the founder of Comfrt publicly stated that one of his UGC creators has earned over $100,000/month from revenue share alone.

This new model is strictly about performance. It has nothing to do with the creator having a following. It's about the creators understanding of how to make an ad that drives purchases.

If growing large no longer guarantees income, and if the algorithm suppresses promotional content due to low watch time, then gaining more followers becomes a liability instead of an asset.

So what does this mean for creators? Should they stop trying to grow and just give up?

The short answer is no. But this brings me to why I am so bullish on Flawlesss.

Flawlesss was built for this exact shift. In a world where creators are no longer rewarded for audience size, Flawlesss restores value to the data that creators generate.

Flawlesss lets creators rent their audience data directly to brands. Brands then use that data to target their ads with precision.

Your followers, your viewers, the people who watch your content, the niches you speak to. All of that data is incredibly valuable to brands who rely on Meta ads. Especially as targeting on Meta becomes more and more tricky.

The strategy is about "who is watching my video" instead of "how many people are watching my video."

Valuable data > large following

Those who adopt this early will win, those who ignore it will find themselves squeezed out by UGC creators, AI generated ads, and performance models that do not value organic reach the way they once did.