Why I now regret splashing my children’s pictures all over the internet for money, writes MOLLY GUNN – who’s quitting as one of Britain’s biggest ‘mumfluencers’

My kids still can’t believe they got paid to watch a movie. They were seven, five and one at the time, and in return for posting a photo of them on Instagram watching the film Trolls, Sky paid us £3,000. We also have a free Skybox.

The kids were also impressed with the family holiday in a chic Cornish beach house, which included a hot tub, home cinema, surfing lessons and even a private chef. The house was so big that I took my parents with me. Completely free in exchange for a few photos and videos on my Instagram feed.

Ten years ago, in the early days of the social media boom – before “influence” even had a name – becoming an influential parent was exciting and lucrative.

What started as an online blog for moms spinning endless plates—part of the self-care trend that sought to correct the perception that motherhood is all drudgery and self-sacrifice—soon grew into a one-woman clothing company selling tops with fun logos.

Then, after a lot of hard work and as my social media following grew, I saw that I could make more money influencing other mothers under the name SelfishMother.

I had to be diligent and make sure the family was on board, but the reward was high.

Over the years, by taking photos of my family and posting them to my Instagram feed, I have made over £25,000 from paid social media posts.

But it’s time to stop now. I love being an influencer, but a lot has changed since I first started posting about life and motherhood. And my family has changed too. My children are growing up and I no longer feel comfortable talking about parenting in such detail.

So much so that I’ve decided to give away my feed @SelfishMother, complete with the 53,000 loyal followers I’ve built up over the years.

Yes, you read that correctly. I’m raffling off my account for charity so that a new owner can run it under a new name. My influencer days are over. I change the title of the feed to what the winner wants and give them the number of followers.

The truth is, now that my children are a little older – my two sons Rafferty, 13, and Fox, 11, and my daughter Liberty, seven – the idea of ​​mentioning them in regular posts seems wrong to me.

Online safety is becoming increasingly important and as my eldest becomes a teenager, I am aware of privacy issues. There are so many strange people, I don’t want too much information about my children in the public domain.

Last year I went through my personal Instagram feed (I have another account @MollyJane

Gunn) and deleted thousands of photos of my kids from when they were younger (after I ordered a physical photo book of the Instagram photos).

As they get older, they also have their opinions. My kids never objected to me posting about them when they were younger, but in recent years they have become more reluctant to be photographed. The boys especially don’t want to be embarrassed in front of friends at school because I tell every detail.

And yes, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that in the past the lines between intimate family moments and “marketable content” have been blurred. I regret posting pictures of my kids in bed when they were little, and of me breastfeeding. I also don’t think I should have posted a photo of one of them having a tantrum.

Maybe, I think now, these were private moments that I should have kept within the family.

Earlier this year I flirted with being a travel influencer. Outside of the @SelfishMother community, this is the project I’m most known for. For three months I took my children out of school – they were in grades eight, six and two at the time – and embarked on the trip of a lifetime to Asia, sharing on Instagram our days in Bali, the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Lanka. I posted videos of beautiful landscapes, but also tried to make it fun and relatable for other parents. I didn’t shy away from showing off my bad holiday hairdo or when it was just too hot to look shiny and polished.

And thanks to my Insta feed, we got a few nights stay at the incredible Jungle Resort Nirjhara Hotel in Bali, where we got our own two-bedroom villa with a private pool.

There was a small reaction to this. I received a few messages from teachers who disagreed with me taking my children out of school, and when I wrote about it for the newspaper, the comments were often testy, accusing me of “arrogance” because I “didn’t think the rules applied to us’. or I only did it because I wanted a luxurious vacation.

I also received hundreds of messages from parents congratulating me for giving the children a special experience and asking me how they could do it themselves. But since that trip, I haven’t posted about my life on my @SelfishMother Instagram feed. I’ve struggled to post while remaining “authentic,” in the jargon of modern social media. Posting “authentically” means posting honestly and not looking like something you are not.

I haven’t been on any other fun vacations and I’ve slowed down on posting on social media. It’s not like the ‘good old days’ anymore, when I was just joining the social media platform and you could only post photos, not videos.

There were fewer brands trying to get in on the action, and they tended to be smaller kitchen table companies than big, big brands with big bucks.

It was Leah, the daughter of rock star Ronnie Wood, who told me to start posting on Instagram in 2014, after I bought one of my very first Selfish Mother T-shirts.

Many celebrities followed suit, including model Claudia Schiffer, presenter Fearne Cotton and Jamie Oliver. The boost they gave the label saw over a million pounds raised for charities including Save The Children, Stand Up To Cancer, Choose Love and Mothers2Mothers.

As my following exploded, brands started sending me all kinds of things to promote to my followers: jewelry, food delivery boxes, art for the nursery. Bottles of wine and craft gin – so much alcohol! Maybe my feed gave the impression that I needed it. We were even sent two beautiful V&A sofas.

When my youngest daughter was born, I was inundated with baby products. I didn’t have to buy a baby greeting for six months, I was sent so many, in addition to bath products, bedding and a beautiful dream catcher. Later, toys and books poured in.

But other parts of becoming an influencer were much less fun. There will always be people online who seem to enjoy putting you down.

When I questioned a woman about copying one of my clothing lines, she went so far as to find my house on the real estate site Zoopla and make my address public.

On a message about receiving some beauty products for free, one woman replied: “You’re talking nonsense and your lipstick is too bright.” That was to the point, I think.

You get used to these comments. Many people are jealous of what they see or they want your life but don’t want to work for it. And yet, ten years later, I look at the influencing business and wonder if we have reached saturation point.

Social media followers are the currency of our times, but you don’t even need a large number to call yourself an influencer these days. “Micro-influence” is the buzzword right now, and a “micro-influencer” on Instagram might only have 1,000 followers. As a side issue, everyone is working on it.

On the social media platform TikTok, everyone is now an influencer. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, as long as you can convince someone to buy something. By linking to it in your video on TikTok Shop, anyone can earn a percentage of the sales.

Such influence is often autonomous and you therefore do not need a relationship with the brand. When I did that, sometimes there was a formal deal with a signature on the dotted line (a post in exchange for money), or perhaps there was an unspoken agreement where a brand would send me a “gift” in the hope that I I would post about it as a thank you.

Not all of my influence was intentional: one follower told me she had bought all the cardigans I’ve ever worn on Instagram, even though I didn’t specifically promote them at all.

Instagram used to feel more like a photo diary than a marketing strategy, and it was better for it.

It was fun and it was hard work. But now I toast to a new chapter. Yes, I will still be on Instagram as @mollyjanegunn – writing blog posts and sharing articles – but I will no longer try to influence you. That world has changed too much, and so has mine.