“The interviews you did with these viral personalities would get millions or tens of millions of views,” said Earnest Pettie, who leads YouTube’s trends and insights team. “It would be as visible as the original material itself. For many people, the interviews were their first exposure to viral personalities. But people who were already exposed to it could go further than they could in a viral video. “
You could make money, even if you weren’t at the level of an influencer now. In 2009, when David DeVore posted a video of his 7-year-old son, who is also named David, coming home dazed after a visit to the dentist, the video quickly gained millions of views and became an early hit on YouTube. By 2010, DeVore estimated that the family had received $ 150,000 from the entire exhibition, including T-shirt sales. And they haven’t finished milking him either. Earlier this month, DeVore auctioned “David After Dentist” as an NFT, or non-fungible token, a digital collectible, BuzzFeed reported. It sold for $ 13,000.
UTA’s Mr. Kessler estimated that the great digital personalities of the early 2010s could earn around six figures.
An influencer can now make millions, and in a handful of cases, tens of millions. And as YouTube and TikTok helped the influencer industry take flight, Ms. DeGeneres’s role as creator of digital kings began to wane.
“Compared to now, people’s viral moments are shorter,” Weber said. “In the time it takes for a producer to call and say, ‘Come on Ellen!’ there’s a new viral moment elsewhere. It will be out of fashion. “
