
I was scammed by a celebrity influencer - jrnichols
https://medium.com/@wannabe.influencer1/i-was-scammed-by-a-celebrity-influencer-6612d61e1a9e
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CamelCaseName
Wow, great write up. Thanks a lot for taking the course and talking about it,
perhaps it was because you went into it willing to burn $500 but many would
stay silent.

I can't believe at the missed business opportunity here. It sounds like she
could have easily pulled 7 figures from running those classes. Even if she
hired a "business manager" of sorts for a cut to grow her lessons, it would
have been a really financially rewarding endevour.

One thing that boggles the mind is how many people were not planning to
request a refund! I couldn't imagine spending $500, not receiving what I paid
for, and being okay with that.

Honestly, it still surprises me how much some Instagrammers make. A friend of
mine runs a food IG (~3,000 followers local to the area) and pulls in 1-2 free
meals a week, effectively funding the content creation costs. Another friend
is in the ~40,000 follower range and gets paid something like $50-$200 + meals
for each event -- you just go and book a time slot on their website.

Yet for me, IG feels so fake, but there are enough repeat advertisers that
there must be real users out there who follow and purchase influencer
recommendations.

~~~
robertAngst
>Yet for me, IG feels so fake

Its pay to play for sure. You don't get shown unless you are providing
Facebook with money.

This is why the content feels fake. Only highly profitable instagrammers can
afford to pay to promote.

~~~
ryanlol
What do you mean? My content constantly hits discover and I certainly haven't
paid FB a penny.

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tlrobinson
So it sounds like the course actually did a pretty good job of teaching the
author what a "celebrity influencer" does?

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woogiewonka
These "influencers" and their instagram accounts are so cringeworthy. How can
anyone live their life like this, constantly posing and putting on an image?
This can't be healthy. I get the money making aspect and getting paid to do
something like travel.. but at what point does posing for glamour shots take
away the fun of enjoying the places you go? Why do people follow these people?
I don't get it...

~~~
robertAngst
> but at what point does posing for glamour shots take away the fun of
> enjoying the places you go? Why do people follow these people? I don't get
> it...

That is exactly it, it becomes a job.

Its not really different than watching cable TV and hearing someone review a
travel destination.

>This can't be healthy.

I think this is 'grass is greener on the other side' effect. What makes
traveling and growing your influence unhealthy?

Its that we want this ideal lifestyle, and are jealous(?).

Whatever the case, most people are not making even 6 figures off their
instagram accounts by just posting pictures. OP's article talked about
offering an additional service.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Its not really different than watching cable TV and hearing someone review a
> travel destination.

Hmm. First video I looked at:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TOltq6OgR4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TOltq6OgR4)

After the "intro" \-- which isn't exactly like someone (who isn't Paris Hilton
or Stefan Raab etc.) reviewing _anything_ in earnest -- it's just the usual
half-coherent babbling most youtubers do. You don't fly a TV team to a
destination and then just scratch your ass and drop sentences any random
person interviewed on the street would say. That's not a "review", even for TV
standards which are hardly anything to aspire to.

Youtube is much dumber than TV, just enter "game name review", and depending
on the game most of it will be people playing a game, badly, sometimes without
even talking, and when they talk, it's not a "review" at all, but " _hi guys,
my dog is cute, I 'm bringing you the best reviews please subscribe, I'm about
to review this game, okay I'm now reviewing this game, it's a game, it sucks
and has many flaws but I enjoyed it, please leave a like, thanks for
watching_".

The best are the people who cut out every breath they take, every moment they
think (or maybe they just go blank, who knows), and then they still manage to
say not a single thing in 15 minutes.

> What makes traveling and growing your influence unhealthy?

That was referring to "constantly posing and putting on an image". If that's
so great, why do you have to rephrase it first?

And what is "growing your influence"? I see a lot of people with NO grip on
themselves, what influence do they have? Isn't Alex Jones also having a
healthy career by that same token? A bunch of "followers", "just growing
influence". They must be providing value, because they "make 6 figures".

> Its that we want this ideal lifestyle, and are jealous(?).

Turning oneself into the equivalent of a Teletubbie? No, thanks.

When someone makes it clear they find it cringey and would not enjoy "being
that", maybe first accept that that is actually so. When someone says "I hate
this, why would anyone do this?", don't say "Don't you actually love it
though? whatever the case may be.."

Seeing a lot of these personalities that are anything _but_ a personality, I
think that's the main reason really, that they have no personality, no
thoughts, but a long life to fill with that nothing. That makes people hyper,
and people who are likewise lost cling to that bubbling nothing to distract
them from the fear that sits squarely upon their neck as well. It's not driven
by idiocy, fear drives the idiocy. Watching 99% of youtube to me is like
watching a blob of water in an overheated pan gliding around on air. The
question isn't where is it going, but what is it running from.

------
Rjevski
To be fair, the main lesson here is that you shouldn’t be paying 500$ to an
illusionist.

That “Angie” whoever she is, is just a fraud. She’s not actually delivering
any value. Whatever she’s pretending to earn could be all fake (it’s honestly
not that difficult to fake these “perfect” photos and definitely doesn’t
require to be a millionaire), and even if it’s real now, she’s gonna be the
first one to get the door the second this social media/bullshit media bubble
pops and brands realise it’s not worth it.

You want to make money? There are plenty of career paths that will make you
good money by delivering actual value to your customers. Bragging on Instagram
and getting virtual internet points isn’t one of them.

~~~
wpietri
I am not really an Instagram person, but I don't think you're right here. I
think the value provided by Instagram today is basically that of glossy
fashion and style magazines in the decades of yore. Some people like to look
at pretty photos of pretty people wearing pretty things.

~~~
nosuchthing
Except there were maybe 20 of those magazines where as now the barrier to
entry is so easy that there's 20 million kids making these sorts of photos.

~~~
wpietri
So? The same happened with text on the internet. Now everybody's a publisher.
That seems like a good thing to me.

~~~
Rjevski
The problem here is that there’s a limited pool of consumers (and thus money)
for this content.

It used to be that the aforementioned magazines were sufficient to fill that
gap of the market; as a result they were making decent money, could put out
decent content that people were happy with and didn’t have to resort to scammy
behaviour to make profit.

Nowadays the floodgates are open and everyone is a wannabe “influencer” except
the pool of consumers & money remained the same, so they now have to resort to
less than acceptable techniques to try and make money, and this article is one
of the possible outcomes.

Text on the internet has the same problem by the way - there’s now a shit ton
of garbage content written only to gain clicks and attention without actually
delivering any value to the reader.

~~~
wpietri
Sure?

I agree that free distribution and approximately infinite supply have been a
problem for many content businesses that based their businesses on scarcity.
But as far as I can tell the topic here is whether Instagram content is
valuable. It is. Many valuable things can be hard to monetize. E.g., air.

------
ryanlol
I think it's quite the stretch to describe someone as a celebrity just because
they have 800k instagram followers. And yeah, that site is full of scammers
with high follower counts.

I own a couple of nice names and constantly have people with million+
followers messaging me trying to scam me for them.

~~~
reidjs
Well if you have 500 people willing to pay $500 for a course I would call you
a celebrity. Not because of the number of followers, but because of the value
of those followers.

~~~
spaceflunky
She's just tapping a market with a huge demand and no one offering any
"supply."

There are no university courses for "instagram star" so if you're the
charlatan who is promising fame and fortune for the low low price of $500,
there are plenty of people willing to hop on board. If anything I would say
500 people is really low.

------
julianlam
Don't think of it as having been scammed, but moreso that you paid your $500
tuition to the school of life. You won't make that mistake again.

What honestly shocks me is the "aw shucks" attitude in the email from
Teachable. I get that they're sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place,
and they did issue as many refunds as they could, but to turn to students and
say "we've paid out the remaining amount of money... so sorry about that!" is
like rubbing salt into the wound.

If she moved to a custom payment gateway, they probably know what it is, and
that gateway ought to know about the scam she's pulling. After all, they have
an incentive to keep these bad actors from using their systems.

~~~
ryanlol
The key lesson here is to always pay everything with a credit card.

------
Beefin
I'd be willing to bet the majority of IG accounts with 10k+ followers don't
provide any real value outside of pretty pictures.

~~~
catacombs
If you're a hot, white, blonde female, those are all the qualifications you
need for thousands upon thousands of followers, assuming you are active on the
platform.

------
Aloha
Quite arguably the job of an 'influencer' is to scam people.

~~~
robertAngst
This affects me daily.

I run a popular website that has saved hundreds of thousands of people money
and time. Its been cool, but I lose about 1-3k/yr.

Often people tell me to run ads, or put affiliate links, or whatever.

The issue becomes, I wouldn't be saving people money.

The entire purpose of Efficiency Is Everything is to help people. If I'm
shilling some crappy mutual fund or promoting an expensive protein shake- I
failed my purpose.

/rant, but I do not think I will be profitable unless I contradict my original
purpose.

~~~
Aloha
I dont think adding a couple unobtrusive ads would impact saving people time
or money.

------
mcrittenden
There's a response here:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BrTnd_wBblI/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BrTnd_wBblI/)

~~~
reasonablemann
It has sociopath written all over it... then again, sociopathy is likely the
reason she's followed by so many people.

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jclay
I don't know, I have a hard time finding sympathy for this.

I've paid many thousands of dollars towards courses to get my degree from a
top university and most of them were awful. As with any university, there's of
course no way to get a refund or make any public complaints that would yield
an outcome.

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throwawaylalala
File a chargeback with your credit card conpany. Encourage others to do the
same.

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readhn
Why would someone pay for this with a debit card?

Pay with a credit card, then you are at least protected if anything goes
wrong.

~~~
Rjevski
Why can’t you chargeback with a debit card? I’ve done it multiple times
successfully.

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bitL
"Celebrity", "influencer", "/r/nottheonion" \- this is reaching unthinkable
levels of absurdity... Developers of "/r/outside" should nerf gains from those
side-quests...

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robertAngst
As I've read more about this topic, what if the lady was going through a
divorce + busy?

I know that doesnt absolve from responsibilities, but I cannot imagine that
experience.

~~~
tfmatt
Is this sarcasm?

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p3nt3ll3r
Dont people know that most of these "followers" are fake accounts created from
some third world digital slave labor company?

~~~
Rjevski
You’re grossly over-estimating the average intelligence (and willingness to
actually stop and think for a minute) of those accounts’ target markets.

I have friends who spend pretty much their entire lives on FB and Insta and
they would swallow anything from there... last time one was surprised when I
told her a watch she saw advertised on FB with a huge discount (300£ to like
around 39£) was never at 300£ in the first place.

