How Much I Earned as a Micro Golf Influencer in 2023

Hey Everyone! As everyone winds down for the year and does their recap posts/videos I thought I would make a quick one on how much I made as an micro influencer in 2023. Now, absolutely no one asked me to make this post, but I always find them interesting and think they provide transparency for people who may be interested in starting out or are already on their path.

Now before diving into the money! Let me first summarize how I reach my audience. Personally, I actively manage 6 different online platforms. Those being Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and an online Blog.

Interestingly enough throughout all my conversations with brands, IG continues to be the platform most companies prioritized in terms of ensuring content be shared there first. TikTok probably comes in second for me and third was YouTube. I found a lot of brands I talked to were just getting started on TikTok so this is definitely and area I want to continue investing in, but not at the expense of IG.

Now for the fun part: How much did I actually make. As a micro influencer my monetization is broken down into 2 components. free product, and affiliate revenue. In terms of free product, I have earned about $5K worth of free products driven by various brands deals. My biggest partnerships and collaborations this year were with Garmin and Evnroll Putters. They contributed the bulk of the $5k, but I also had a number of smaller collaborations with companies that sent over things like balls, hats, gloves, brushes, towels, apparel and more. The second component of my monetization for The Golf Guy comes form affiliate links. These are brands I partner with and when any of you lovely people decide to buy one of these products with my code or link I receive a small commission. From these I was able to generate ~$3k worth of revenue. This overall totals ~$8K for the year which is by far my best year as a content creator/influencer.

I also wanted to mention that there are some pretty cool intangible benefits that come with being a micro influencer. Through it I have gotten to meet some pretty amazing golfers, photographers, and fellow content creators. Some of these folks are now some of my best friends. Additionally, some of you followers/subscribers have been nice enough to invite me out to your clubs to play and shoot some content which are courses I likely would have never had access to otherwise. Although you can't really put a price on these things, they are honestly one of the best benefit of doing this.

Now we can't talk about all the money without also mentioning the cost. Contrary to popular belief, running any decently successful social media presence requires a ton of time and some money as well. In terms of pure costs to run my presence I paid about $1.2k in various software's and licesns’s to create the content. This includes things like an adobe subscription for editing, Squarespace membership for my blog, music licenses for YouTube, and other ad hoc software.

Personally, I don't account for the cost of playing golf/travel given I would have done all of this regardless of whether I was an influencer but that would be a pretty hefty sum if you were to also include those.

All in all, being a micro influencer definitely has its perks and does offset some of my annual golf expenditures. If we are looking at this from a pure ROI standpoint it would be a terrible decision given the hundreds of hours I have spent shooting and creating content, but personally I find it worth it given I genuinely enjoy creating new content and the tangible and intangible benefits add a nice touch.

I hope this video was helpful. Like I said at the beginning, I have always enjoyed other peoples videos like this so thought adding another data point to the pool might be helpful. Feel free to drop any questions or comments below and as always, thanks for reading!