Aspire, the leading Influencer Marketing Platform for 800+ Shopify merchants and e-commerce brands, announced findings from its first-ever Creator Survey. Based on a survey of more than 1,700 creators, the report sheds light on trends in influencer marketing, where creators are seeing an increase in rates and earnings in the past year, but brand values impact decisions on which partnerships to pursue.

“The biggest takeaway for brands is that values alignment and authenticity matter,” Aspire CEO Anand Kishore said. “Creators are much more likely to engage with brand partners that share the same values as their audiences. We're in an era of high trust commerce. Younger generations especially are rejecting ads for content that feels authentic and breeds trust”.

A New Era of Influence Driven By High-Trust Commerce & Brand Values

According to a recent report from Adobe, there are now 303 million creators making content online, as the creator economy as a whole grew in value to $13.9B – more than double its value in 2019. This growth has also trickled down to creators' take-home pay. In the last year, as Aspire's survey showed 4.3% of creators are earning six figures or greater, or approximately 12M globally.

Within the last six months, roughly half (55.2%) of creators said their rates increased and nearly two-thirds (65.8%) reported that their workload increased over the 12 months prior, with women (66%) seeing a higher increase than men (61%).

Along with the increase in campaigns overall, not every project is greenlit. According to the survey, a vast majority (64%) of creators turned down a brand campaign in the last 12 months due to a misalignment between the brand's values and their own.

Sustainability also revealed itself as a key consideration among a majority of creators with nearly three-fourths (74.4%) of respondents saying they are “very willing” to work with brands committed to sustainability.

Despite sustainability being a consistent value held by creators and their followers, only about 15% of creators who take on projects related to sustainability said they would charge a lower rate for them, while a majority (63%) said they would keep rates the same. This demonstrates a strong willingness among creators to not compromise rates even if the brand's values are grounded in goodwill and aligned with their own.

This sentiment held true when creators were asked about the biggest challenge of working with sustainable brands, as getting paid their standard rate ranked among the top two most prominent issues for creators. Here's a full breakdown of responses:

1. Finding the right sustainable products that my followers will love: 40.6%
   
2. Getting paid what I normally charge: 34.5%
   
3. Finding the right brands that support their values: 18.4%
   
4. Other: 6.5%
   

How Brands Can Improve Collaboration with Creators

The survey also revealed how brands can improve the collaboration experience. 1 in 5 (20.8%) creators said they want more creative freedom and more responsiveness (20.6%) when working with brands. Here's the top list of improvement areas creators want to see::

1. Allow for more creative freedom: 20.8%
   
2. More responsiveness & communication: 20.6%
   
3. Treat me more like an extension of their team: 17.1%
   
4. Better briefing on the campaign: 16.2%
   
5. Show a better understanding of my brand & audience: 13.6%
   
6. Provide more clear KPIs up front: 11.7%
   

Survey Methodology

Aspire distributed the creator survey to creators ages 16-55+ in its database between June - July 2022 gathering 1,726 responses. This online survey was not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For additional questions, please contact aspireiq@vsc.co

For more information about Aspire, visit www.aspire.io.

About Aspire

Founded in 2013, Aspire is the leading influencer marketing platform for e-commerce brands and is trusted by some of the most successful Shopify brands, including Brooklinen, Michaels, Rue21, among others. By utilizing “word-of-mouth marketing,” Aspire empowers brands to scale their business by fostering authentic relationships with influencers. Operating without fees or commissions, Aspire has paid more than $100M to creators to date. Aspire was named a leader in influencer marketing solutions by Forrester in 2020.

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