Influencing consumers via social media was never something I thought I’d be doing at any point in my life, however, I was drawn into creating a social media account to share evidence-based information about food in 2018 after seeing so much misinformation and disinformation regarding food and nutrition being spread online.
When I started my Facebook page, I had no intention of making money from it. My goal was to provide free, science-based resources to consumers in order to reduce fear and anxiety regarding food choices. This was important to me, as a new mom especially, as I struggled with stress and anxiety when it came to not only feeding myself, but my young child as well.
This was, in large part, because of the vast amount of misinformation and food shaming online. What I didn’t know then is how much of my time I’d end up spending not only on my Facebook page, but my Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube pages that I’d soon create. It slowly grew into a full-time job that I wasn’t getting paid for.
At some point I knew that in order for the amount of time I was spending researching, creating content, posting, and responding to comments, messages, and emails to be sustainable I was going to have to make some money from it. However, I wasn’t really comfortable doing ads or sponsored content as I feared it would ruin my credibility that I’d taken so long to build. I also didn’t want to turn my content into a subscription-based platform, as I want the resources I share to remain free.
I did, however, start a Patreon in 2019 as a way for followers to essentially donate to the cause so that I could continue to create free content. Although I greatly appreciate everyone who has donated and continues to donate, I hate asking followers for money. It’s very uncomfortable for me. I much prefer utilizing the monetization programs put out by the platforms that make money from content creators like myself. However, relying on these platforms is a horrible business decision, as it turns out.
In 2021, almost three years after starting my pages and hundreds of thousands of followers later, I was able to finally start monetizing my videos on Facebook and Instagram. This meant that I could allow random ads to be shown in my videos, and I would receive some of that revenue. This was very helpful, although nothing close to the amount of money I can make as a consultant, but I believed in the cause, so it kept me going.
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The issue with this model is that creators have no way to control the percentage of ad revenue they receive, which was constantly changing. Not to mention, the algorithm is constantly changing as well, so all of a sudden your videos may just stop getting views for no rhyme or reason at all. We really have no power in the situation and are just left up to the whims of whatever these platforms feel like paying creators at the time. This was OK for a while. I could make up to a couple of thousand dollars a month from both Facebook and Instagram combined, which felt sustainable enough for me at the time. TikTok isn’t even worth mentioning here, as I was receiving less than $20 a month from their joke of a creator program.
As TikTok’s short form videos gained in popularity during the midst of the pandemic, Instagram began incentivizing shorter videos they call “Reels” as a way to compete. If you qualified, and were asked to join their “Reels bonus” program, you could start monetizing reels based on yet another ever changing rate per view. Basically, there was a maximum dollar amount set for creators each month and depending on how many total views you’d get on your reels during that period, you could work toward the maximum amount that was set for your page. For my page, it was set at a maximum of $1,000 a month for 1 million views on my reels posted during that time period.
I had heard of other creators with a similar amount of followers as me getting a much higher maximum, so I have no idea how those amounts were determined. It was yet another thing us creators had no control over.
Shortly after they rolled out this Reels bonus, they got rid of IGTV, which was the program that allowed creators to get paid for random ads in their longer videos. So now, it was just the Reels bonus. For the first few months I was able to get close to 1 million views to get the maximum bonus for my page. That drastically changed one day when I realized my bonus was now set at 11 million views for a maximum bonus of $1,200 a month. I was getting nowhere near 11 million views a month on my Reels, so that revenue went down to a couple of hundred dollars a month for even more effort and time being put into my page now that I was getting more and more followers.
So, not only was there no longer incentive to create videos over 90 seconds, but the Reels bonus was giving a small fraction to creators as it previously had. Meanwhile, in February 2022, Facebook rolled out a similar Reels bonus program, which I wasn’t even aware of until the end of 2022 because I was never asked to join it. Despite having hundreds of videos on Facebook and over 300,000 followers, I apparently wasn’t qualified for that bonus until I started posting Reels and got up to a certain amount of views in a month. I was finally able to take part in the Facebook Reels bonus program in February 2023, only for them to discontinue it the very next month. The game is exhausting.
These shorter and shorter videos being incentivized is also very frustrating for a science communicator like myself, as it’s incredibly difficult to communicate accurate, nuanced science-based content in less than 90 seconds. Oh, by the way, that doesn’t even matter anymore because Meta recently decided to get rid of their Reels bonus altogether not only on Facebook, but on Instagram as well. So now creators are left in limbo, wondering what they’re going to come up with next, if anything at all.
This essentially forces us to either do sponsored content, subscription content, or just not get paid at all for our work. So, you can see how influencers, whose main purpose is to sell products (usually spreading misinformation at the same time) are able to do this as a lucrative career, while science communicators like myself are either so disincentivized that we decide it’s not even worth it anymore, or we have to begin to lean on sponsorships and paid ads for any source of meaningful income at all.
After over four years of playing these games with different platforms and navigating the various ways they decide to incentivize creators and then a few months later change or discontinue it altogether, I’m back to relying mostly on followers to donate via Patreon as a source of income, which I hate and appreciate at the same time, and doing a bit of sponsored content, which I also don’t prefer.
It seems this was their plan all along. Incentivize creators just enough to get them on your platform and create a following and then take it away. For me, it’s hard to leave altogether because I spent so much time building a following and creating content, in addition to the fact that I want to continue to create free science-based content as I feel it’s important, but at what cost? I don’t know the answer, but I’m frustrated that even those of us who had no intention to influence by creating ads and sponsored content basically don’t have much of a choice anymore.
Our time, of course, isn’t valued by these platforms. That’s not surprising. What’s disappointing is that despite my very careful selection of who I partner with and making sure that when I do partner with a company to create a paid ad that communicates the same evidence I would share on a non-paid post, there are inevitably commenters voicing their opinions that doing so makes me lose credibility or renders myself untrustworthy. It doesn’t, but the fact that so many of these people have consumed my content for free for years and think I don’t deserve to get paid is disheartening. I’ve heard from others that it’s more creator friendly on YouTube, so my plan is to start posting more over there. Unfortunately, I haven’t put all that much time into that specific platform as I have the others over the last few years, so I’m basically starting all over.
I’m not sharing any of this information to get people to feel sorry for myself or anything like that. I can drop this at any point in time and be just fine taking on more consulting hours, and for that I am grateful. But I want you to know what is happening behind the scenes for a lot of your favorite science communicators on social media. It’s exhausting, and this doesn’t even begin to get into the harassment and horrible messages and comments most of us deal with on a daily basis as well.
I always get asked why there aren’t more science communicators on social media? Why are there so many more people spreading disinformation and misinformation? This is why. Spreading false information to sell products is exponentially more profitable and a whole heck of a lot easier than accurate, nuanced science communication.
Through all of this I’ve learned that I need to value my time, my mental health, my physical health, and my expertise when it comes to creating free content, and I hope that I am able to do that in a more sustainable way going forward. Another question I’m asked frequently is what you, as consumers of our free content, can do to help. For one, don’t be that person complaining when your favorite science communicator does a few paid partnerships here and there. Continue to engage with their content, whether it’s a sponsored post or not. Likes, views, shares and positive comments are always appreciated!
Food Science Babe is the pseudonym of an agvocate and writer who focuses specifically on the science behind our food. She has a degree in chemical engineering and has worked in the food industry for more than decade, both in the conventional and in the natural/organic sectors.
