Influencers log out—when the likes don’t pay for the rent

Suri is not alone. As India’s 8-million-strong creator economy gets overcrowded and unpredictable, many influencers, especially those with smaller followings, are quietly walking away from the spotlight. Shrinking advertisement revenue, inconsistent brand deals, and rising financial strain are driving creators back to the stability of traditional employment.

Influencers, those who have built a dedicated following on digital platforms, are known to quit their regular jobs and pursue full-time content creation. But lately, this trend is reversing.

With the millions of content creators competing for your attention and brand deals, the earnings are dwindling, and survival is becoming difficult by the day, especially for those with smaller followings or limited network to pull in regular brand work. The middle rung of influencers is the worst hit.

Advertisement revenue on popular platforms like YouTube is often meagre, which influencers say ranges from $0.4 to $3 per thousand views. This financial crunch is making many creators abandon their influencer careers to return to traditional jobs.

According to Suri, YouTube’s financial sustainability is a challenge for many creators. “To make a living, you have to post consistently and get regular brand deals,” he says. “Due to overcrowding, this has become a rat race, where all of us are competing for the same brand deals. However, brands only pick the top creators with the most followers.”

Suri also highlights the issues with brand collaborations. “Many brands that pay well also require the promotion of risky things such as betting or trading, which I personally rejected as a creator,” he says. “Besides, larger creators are sought after, while smaller creators are mostly offered barter collaborations on Instagram, where you’re only given products to promote for free; you don’t earn.”

Indian influencers’ advertisement revenues are paltry compared with their global peers. “Advertisers in India don’t pay as much, so the AdSense revenue on YouTube is as low as $1 per thousand views – over 10 times lower than what is given globally,” Suri says. “It is also difficult to compete against corporate giants who have created YouTube channels and creators who have a talent management agency and a team to produce content.”

Suri has applied to various companies and agencies for roles in creative fields such as writing, editing, or anchoring, leveraging the skills he picked up during content creation. The commerce graduate’s goal now is to find a stable job that pays regularly.

Aashish Gupta, another creator who zoomed out of his content journey to settle in as the talent manager of a more popular content creator, Elvish Yadav, points to a generational phenomenon of job security. “While obviously, money is the primary factor for most creators who quit content like me, it is also the circumstances,” he said.

Gupta started creating content in 2018 while he was in college, and balanced it with other pursuits, including film and music production and corporate jobs. He, however, realized that content monetization has a short shelf-life. “The thing with content monetization is that it is a risky job, which one can do in their early 20s, wherein there are no responsibilities. But one can’t sustain in it close to their 30s,” he said.

Gupta, who says he had financial commitments at home, highlights the challenges of inconsistent income and the favouring of top influencers. “This industry favours the top influencers with more followers and the ones who have a good network to get regular brand deals,” he says. “Otherwise, it is difficult to continue in this field because one month when we get a deal, we would earn around ₹10,000-20,000. But after that, we would struggle to make any money for a few months that followed… the inconsistency made it difficult to survive.”

Industry watchers believe that while the outflow of content creators is not alarming just yet, it reflects a deeper industry problem. “Over 2 lakh content creators have stopped producing content since 2024… This may look like a big number, but it is not alarming just yet if compared to the influx of new creators in the industry,” says Anirudh Sridharan, co-founder of creator network Hashfame.

Sridharan explains that the industry’s growth is not likely to be hampered by this outflow, given the large number of active creators. “Against that, the outflow of 2-3% people is normal in any industry that is operating at such a scale, and it cannot hamper the growth of the industry,” he says. He, however, warns this could become a bigger issue in future if the core problems are not addressed.

According to Sridharan, the three primary reasons for creators quitting are mental strain, lack of monetization opportunities, and loss of relevance. “For tackling the monetization problem, we have to consider the content economy as a large army of GenZ workforce catering to their need, rather than looking at them just like a bunch of youngsters using their phones to make videos for social media,” he says.

Sridharan also highlights the need for more conscious investment from brands. “Brands have to invest more consciously, as currently this industry is very unorganized and operated on a manual model, where rarely do brands go beyond the creators that come on the top of their mind or are a part of their network to discover more creators,” he said. This lack of discoverability leads to inconsistent income distribution, where the top 1% creators earn the largest portion of the ₹3,500 crore creator economy.

He also noted that only a small percentage of creators can make a decent income. “Only 5-10% beyond that are able to make a decent income of say ₹50,000 per month,” he said. The rest are either doing this part-time or struggling financially, and eventually, they may lose cultural relevance and be forced out of the business unless they constantly reinvent their content.

Sandwich issue

Brands say they prefer more established creators, who are more relevant because of the better return on investment (ROI) they provide with their solid metrics. However, they also say nano influencers, with sub-10,000 followers, charge incredibly low fees and even work on a barter basis in most cases, making them the second-best choice. Thus, brands mostly tap into these two categories, while leaving the rest of the influencers scrambling for deals.

“Purely from the lens of an ROI, celebrity influencers might command a premium fee, but they deliver unmatched top-of-funnel impact, typically driving a 3x–5x spike in brand searches and recall within days of a campaign. Their scale compresses the awareness curve, making them a solid financial bet when the objective is mass reach,” said Murali Krishnan, chief marketing officer of food chain Wow! Momo.

“On the other end, nano influencers, consistently deliver 6–10% engagement rates, which is nearly 2–3x higher than mid-tier creators, and they do it at a fraction of the cost,” Krishnan adds. “The challenge lies with mid-size micro- and macro-influencers, where their ability to deliver either deep influence or wide reach is getting diluted.”

The marketing chief said his brand is increasingly adopting a barbell strategy, putting major investments in celeb influencers for impact, and scaling up nano collaborations for frequency and grassroot authenticity, while being extremely selective with the middle-tier influencers, who are sandwiched between these two.

Side hustles

Instead of completely logging out, some content creators are creating content on the side, while focussing on their regular job.

Take Macedon D’mello, who earlier created comedy-related content but has now pivoted to dance-related material on Instagram. He works full time in a digital marketing agency, while also taking up freelance choreography, acting and voice-over gigs. “One does not have to necessarily give up on content creation. I have a regular job but I continue to pursue content, create for brands and also freelance on the side,” D’mello tells Mint.

“Content audience was at peak during covid, and at that time it made sense for creators to rely on it for their income completely. But if they didn’t make it big, it is best for them to do it as a side hustle, while earning from other sources to balance their passion with their profession,” D’mello adds.

“These small creators, with 5,000-10,000 followers, who are also doing a 9-5 job with a stable income charge a basic amount… And for that, they deliver videos that are as aesthetic and polished as someone with 4–5 lakh followers. And brands get usage rights too, said Kunal Chhabhria, partner at CollabX Entertainment.

Echoing Chhabhria’s view, Zil Shah, a talent agent at the same firm says: “Stability of income has become more important now. Some creators manage both, they shoot over weekends, edit at night, and work a 9-5 during the day. Others have taken a break from content completely. And this isn’t a one-off case it’s becoming quite common.”