A woman has told how she got herself into a staggering amount of credit card debt while trying to emulate the superficial lifestyle of an influencer – before actually having a social media following large enough to cover the costs of the lavish lifestyle.
Lissette Calveiro, 30, admitted in an interview with Fortune that in the mid-2010s she had decided to fully realize her dream of becoming a fashion and lifestyle influencer.
But by trying to fake it until she made it, Lissette ended up in $10,000 worth of credit card debt — with only a relatively modest, and barely revenue-generating, following of 10,000 on Instagram to show for it.
“You feel like you have to foster an interesting lifestyle, much less a premium lifestyle,” she told Fortune of her motivations behind “business” spending like vacations, shopping and meals at popular new eateries.
Lissette Calveiro, 30, (pictured) told Fortune that when she pursued her dream of becoming a fashion and lifestyle influencer in the mid-2010s, she ended up with $10,000 in credit card debt.
Despite her expenses, Lissette had initially only amassed 10,000 followers on Instagram – barely big enough to generate a steady stream of income
“It’s like, ‘Oh, I have stuff to do every day, don’t you see?'” she explained of the mentality.
“(Influencers) just keep investing in these experiences or things that aren’t at the level of affordability for their lifestyle,” Lissette added.
“By the time I opened up about my finances, I had 10,000 followers, not a million,” she further admitted.
“But I was trying to copy what the million dollar girls were doing.”
While the highest levels of influencers can rake in millions of dollars annually, Lissette speculated that most aspiring online personalities are almost certainly living “some kind of backend life,” financially speaking.
“Most content creators have other revenue streams,” Lissette told Fortune. “And they don’t make it public because it’s not ‘sexy’.”
But in an unexpected turn, Lissette eventually started gaining tens of thousands more followers when she started opening up about her financial circumstances and past missteps. She now has just over 80,000 followers on Instagram and almost 50,000 on TikTok.
Additionally, according to filings reviewed by Fortune, the brand consultancy that Lissette built around her own online presence raised $525,000 in 2022, just under a quarter of which came specifically from content creation.
Emma Rose Léger, 27, (pictured) told Fortune that she has “definitely drained my bank account several times” in her attempt to make it as an influencer
Emma, who now has 623,000 followers on Instagram and 236,000 on TikTok, admitted that after having to pay for Coachella tickets in 2018, she was left broke during the festival weekend
Another fashion and lifestyle influencer, Emma Rose Léger, 27, told Fortune that in her early days of “influencing,” she “definitely drained my bank account several times.”
Although she now has 623,000 Instagram followers and 236,000 on TikTok, Emma went on to explain that she paid for Coachella 2018 tickets out of her own pocket in 2018 – an expense that left her with virtually no money for the weekend of the iconic music. festival.
“No one would have known from an outsider perspective and from social media… I literally had no money in my bank account that weekend,” she told Fortune.
As Brooke Erin Duffy—an associate professor of communications at Cornell University who has long studied the rise of influencers and the creator economy—tells us, most wannabe influencers likely come from a background of pre-existing social and economic privilege.
“It takes more than grit and luck to succeed in such a saturated marketplace,” Brooke told Fortune.