When I started my Instagram account five years ago, as a bit of a diary to help me recover from my eating disorder, never did I ever think it was going to become my full-time job.
About a year into using my platform, a supplement company contacted me because they wanted to send me some free whey protein- you wouldn’t believe the excitement. Months after that I got an email from Nike because they wanted to send me some trainers- No exaggeration, I called everybody I knew to tell them I had made it.
My first ‘Paid partnership’ was about two years after I’d created my account. 2 years after I’d posted religiously twice per day trying to help people. It was some Whey protein, and I had no idea about my worth, so I pulled a number out of nowhere and hoped for the best.
Making money through social media, wasn’t a thing back then, but over the years brands have had no choice but to change their marketing strategies since nobody watches TV adverts anymore.
For around 18 months now, Social Media has been my primary source of income or has given me a platform to generate multiple streams of
I’ll be honest, because of the lack of transparency around paid partnerships, and a just general lack of talk around money, especially for women, I’ve struggled to completely own my job role and often feel quite tense due to the stigma attached to brand collaborations.
So how does it work?
Most commonly, a brand will contact me or my management with a campaign that they would like to collaborate on. This brand might have previously seen me speaking about them on my platform, come across my platform and thought our messages align, or have absolutely no idea about me and my ethos what so ever ( those ones don’t usually end well lol).
After they have laid out the expectations of the campaign ie number of posts, stories etc, what the campaign message will be and the terms of the contract, my management will then negotiate a fee.
He will then send the information over to me and I will decide whether or not I want to go forward with the campaign. After that, I will try the product (if I haven’t already) and make my final decision.
I will then create a brief, often hirer a photographer, pre-shoot all of the content, and pre-write the captions (often leaving a short space to fill in relevant info for posting day) to be sent off for approval by the brand. Nobody has ever or will ever tell me what to write or writes my captions for me. There may be critical things that need to be included about the campaign or product, but if I didn’t see these things to be true, I would not participate in the campaign.
We will then agree on a date that the post will go out, and then there we have it!
The things I ask myself when fronted with a campaign are :
Does this campaign/ product align with me and my values?
Will my audience benefit from being made aware of this campaign/ product?
Whenever it comes to accepting a paid partnership with a brand, I am very particular. I know that I could be tonnes richer if I didn’t give a shit about my audience, but I care A LOT. Something as small as a slogan that I don’t agree with on their website, or them not being able to provide me with sufficient research will be a big no-no. I’m also an absolute no to anything calorie, weight loss, free from related.
Final note
I am still often shaken by the brands who get in touch and I am like ‘wtf how do these people know I exist’, so I can honestly say that I am proud of the platform I’ve created. Collaborating with brands allows me to put time and effort into the 90% of free stuff that I create across my platforms to assist women everywhere to feel a little bit more confident in their mind and bodies- my overall mission.
So if you see your favourite influencer partnering with a brand or promoting a product, know that it’s (most of the time) coming from a really helpful and honest place, and make sure you show it some love and support- It means the world to all of us.
I hope this post has given some transparency around what goes on behind the scenes. If you have any questions, hit me up on
All my love,
Vic xx