So….. I did a thing back in March & I was on a Podcast talking about how I got started with my instagram & how I became an influencer. Such an honor to be on Conrad Weaver’s podcast! He is a film director & he has interviewed celebrities on his podcast so it was a big deal to be on his podcast!
I started my instagram in 2016 I just had overcome a miscarriage & I didn’t really know what my mind or body was going through at the time. We ended up getting pregnant 2 months later where I had HG where I was throwing up for 8 hours straight and it was hard to post and do DIY projects. Before I started my instagram account, we were always doing DIY projects in our 1970’s home and we were doing them all ourselves. I slowly started documenting our progress in each project we did. While I was pregnant I posted some when I was not throwing up but really showed people how you can buy home decor but it can be on a budget! We slowly in 6 years flipped our house by our own hands & made $125k+ on selling our first ever house! We were freaking proud we were able to do so many projects ourselves and I was able to show my followers how you can do DIY projects yourself! Here are some of the DIY projects we did!
Fast forward 9 months later after I had my son in December 2016, I had the worst postpartum depression & instagram was my outlet to talking to women all over the USA about home decor. 2017 I found out there is this community, this fabulous community where women are supporting women in the same niche. These comment groups and hashtags games I would join each week to show my creativity to the world. I became more of a styled influencer because lets face it, doing DIY projects every single week gets tiring and expensive. I would post as much as possible and I was determined to what this instagram thing was about. 2017 was my first ever collaboration & I had no idea what I was doing. It was my only collaboration in 2017 too because I was terrified what others thought of me doing this. I worked with a bottle & sippy cup company and I was just so dang excited they wanted to send me something for FREE!
In 2018 we built our forever home & we spent time living at Justin’s mom house so I was able to post some but only pictures of our house being built. Later that year, I landed what I thought was the biggest company I will ever work with & that was Boutique Rugs! To this day, they are still one of the companies I get to work with and forever grateful they trusted me by sending me a rug for my room! Here is a picture of my first ever home decor related collab! 2018 set the tone of where I am now & how far I have come and in 2019 I considered myself as a real influencer. I will go into details in a little bit what I actually do and what a influencer does!
My oh my! How my front room has changed so much just in 3 years!
2019 I really kicked it into high gear. I read so many blogs and listened to so many things about learning about working with companies and sending pitch emails. I started taking free classes to understand what an influencer does & how I could make money doing it! I knew we had a brand new house & I was really excited to see who I could work with & what types of spaces I could create! I really didn’t know who I would work with or what 2019 would have in store for me but I landed a DREAM partnership with Home Depot! Yes that is right, HOME DEPOT! I did a patio challenge with them and I knew once I landed this partnership, I could work with whoever I wanted to! My confidence went threw the roof & I was beyond tickled that I was getting to work with Home Depot! In 2019 I also landed my first paid partnership ($250) with Honey Baked ham & I was ecstatic! I worked with 50+ companies in 2019 and no one was going to stop me now, I knew what I was doing!
Home Depot Patio Challenge
2020 hit the ground running when I was asked to be in our local cities magazine & not to mention I landed on the front page of the magazine & the magazine was also named best cover of the year! I was flattered that someone would be interested in coming in my home & taking pictures of my work! It’s something I had dreamt about but never imagined it would be me. The magazine came out in the spring and I had a 10 page spread in the magazine! I was floored! Hands down biggest accomplishment in my influencer career! I still pinch myself that I was in a magazine much less on the front page cover! In 2020 I realized I could charge for my photos, time, stories, blog and that what I started to do in 2020. I also decided to make it official and I started my blog as well! I started saying no to companies because I am great at what I do & I value my time more than just getting free products. I got to work with 100’s of companies in 2020. I also went to a blogger conference online for the first time ever & I learned so much about blogging. 2020 really set the pace of how I want Farmhouse Love to look. I realized it wasn’t about always getting free products, its also about helping small business grow & we know more importantly now that businesses need help growing in the times we are in right now.
2021 I hit a creators block & honestly I was ready to throw in the towel because I wasn’t working with many companies, I was burned out how instagram is always changing everything. No one was seeing my post and its gets frustrating when you do all this work and you only get 100 likes. Then I told myself, take a few weeks and think about what you want the rest of the year to look like. So I did, I took a few weeks off & I told myself I didn’t come this far to give up now! I have now been working on branding my name, which I am excited to start selling merchandise! I have always wanted to do something like this but I didn’t really know what this would look like for me! I hope this collection will launch in the next few weeks & I can’t wait for yall to get your hands on my items!
Now for all the burning questions I get all the time….
What is an influencer? What do you actually do? Do you get all your products for free? How do you get paid? Have you ever turned down products? Aren’t your going to need a bigger house for all that stuff you get? Do you contact companies or do they contact you? But don’t you just post pretty pictures & thats it?
What is an influencer? I like to call myself a marketing agent in some sense. Companies will come to me or I will go to them & I will ask for a product or maybe they are doing a campaign and they need more exposure for the launch. We come to an agreement on the items, products etc and then I promote the product for them. I will never share something I don’t love or think my followers would not love. I promote the products on my instagram and facebook page in hopes for sales for the company. I have roughly around 55,000 followers together on instagram and facebook and with my following, it allows me to expose the product to a larger crowd that the company might not ever get seen by.
What do you actually do? I promote products to my followers hoping they will love the products as much as I do and will buy the products from the company. I will only promote products that I love!
Do you get your products for free? Absolutely yes! 100% yes! They do not let me “borrow” the products, I don’t have to send the products back. I don’t buy anything. Products are sent to me for free in exchange for posting on social media!
How do you get paid? This is the number one burning question I get all the time. How much can influencers charge? etc. When I promote a product 50% of the time I can make commission off that product. I can make anywhere from 1%-20% depending on the company I work with. Also I get paid from affiliate links which means if I do a swipe up on my instagram story and you buy that product that I have linked from Walmart, target, Sams, I can make a very small commission from it. Also I charge for post, stories & blog post now! Influencers can charge $100 per 10,000 followers we have! So I can easily charge $400 just to do one post on instagram(I have 42,000 followers on instagram). That is not including stories, facebook post & a blog! So yes, we can make great money working from home!
Have you turned down products? Yes! I turned down companies all the time. I either have no interest in promoting the products or they will not pay my rate that I ask for. I have a social media kit price sheet & if we can not come to an agreement with pay, I do not work with them. Also, I have had products sent to me that were wrong & most of the companies are so great to either send me another product or send me the piece its missing!
Aren’t you going to need a bigger house for all that stuff? I hear this ALL the time. And no, we wont need a bigger house because when I receive a new product, I either sell the old item or give it away. I do have a home decor section in my basement that I do swap out things and I will keep my old items but if its like a light and I replaced the old one, I will sell the old one & put up the new one. I gift a lot of these items to family & friends after I promote them as well!
Do you get contact by companies or do they contact you? Both! If a company wants to work with me, I will get an email from them. If I want something from a company I will send them a pitch email with my social media kit. It’s like apply for a job, most companies are not going to come to you and ask if you want to work for them. You have to go to them. Its the same for me!
But don’t you just post pretty pictures? Of course! But my squares on instagram are like resume. Companies want to see the products in a nice kept house and super nice editing and pictures so they can use that picture on their feed. I highly doubt if you put 4 places you got fired from on your resume that they would hire you! Same thing with my feed, its my resume and I like to keep it pretty! But behind that picture is a lot of work! I usually have to move or clean up an area to shoot the photo. I have to make sure the lighting is good. After I take anywhere from 10-100 pictures I have to go and edit the pictures. Also if I have signed a contract with the company I have to make sure I have enough pictures they requested. Sometime I have to get the content approved before I post it. If they tell me its not good, I have to redo the whole photoshoot again. Also in the contract if its a bigger ticket item or they are paying me, I might have to post 2-4 times in a 8 week period. Also I have to make sure everything is linked properly in my instagram stories so my followers can swipe up to buy the product. So those “pretty pictures” take more than just “take the picture & post”, trust me!
When I started all of my instagram stuff 6 years ago I honestly didn’t know where it was going to go. 3 years ago I told myself I can do this & stop carrying so much what people thought! Yes i’m a hot mess when I get on stories sometimes. Im not going to wear makeup sometimes and i’m going to share personal stuff but thats who I am. I never thought in a million years I would call myself an influencer & working with 100’s of companies and get paid for doing it but here I am doing it! I have wanted to give up 100 times but I haven’t! I have learned if you don’t take the chance, you will never know! So I took the chance, 200+ companies in, 1000’s of dollars i’ve made, front page of a magazine and here I am ! Living my dream & getting to share it with everyone! If you get the chance, start the business, if you get the chance to be on TV, do it! Life is about taking chances, not sitting back and wishing for it! Take the chance because 6 years from now, you are going to wish you had!
As always thank you for being here! It means the world to me!
xoxo,
JeriKay
