How much money do Instagram stars actually receive for an advertising post – and who are the top earners on the platform? These two questions are now answered for the fifth time by the annual “Instagram Rich List” from the Instagram tool provider Hopper. This year it is penetrating into new price spheres – and is coming up with a new number 1. We show you the top 10 and have selected which German influencers can charge the highest prices.
Just a week ago, Cristiano Ronaldo became the first Instagram user ever jumped the mark of 300 million followers; For a long time he has also been the most followed person on Instagram (only the official Instagram account itself has more subscribers). Now Ronaldo seems to have risen to become the top earner in terms of advertising mail on Instagram, like the latest edition of „Instagram Rich List“ from Hopper HQ shows.
Instagram Rich List 2021:
Top earning stars on Instagram
(swipe left on the phone to see the entire table)
(Those: Hopper HQ)
With an average of 1.6 million US dollars, the football icon could for the first time charge more money for an advertising post than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, according to Hopper. The film actor had topped the list last year – although even then he had fewer Instagram followers than Ronaldo, who was ranked 3rd on the “Rich List”. “With the start of the European Championship this month and a few controversial marketing campaigns in the past few weeks, the presence of the football king has shot through the roof,” said Mike Bandar, co-founder of Hopper HQ.
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Hardly any other soccer star is likely to monetize its social media reach as radically as Cristiano Ronaldo. If you scroll through your posts from the past few weeks, you will come across advertising for the hair care brand Clear, for Therabody massage guns as the sports results app Livescore. But that is by far not all, because Ronaldo has built his own brand under his abbreviation CR7, which offers more and more fashion and lifestyle products – initially underwear, today also other clothing (“CR7 denim”), sunglasses, shoes and Perfume.
An overview of the product portfolio of Ronaldo’s own lifestyle brand CR7 (source: CristianoRonaldo.com)
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Does Ronaldo earn more with Instagram than with football?
In addition, there are various joint projects with long-term business partners (here is a list on his website). For example, Ronaldo has opened two Pestana CR7 hotels with the Portuguese hotel chain Pestana; the hair transplant clinic chain Insparya is also one of its partners. This entrepreneurial activity of Ronaldo suggests that it is correct a calculation by Business Insider from 2019 At least appear possible: As early as 2019, the soccer star is said to have earned more money with paid advertising posts on Instagram than with his main job as a player in Juventus Turin, calculated the US medium.
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Except for the change at the top, there were only a few shifts in the top 10 of the “Instagram Rich List” last year. One of them: For the first time, no member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan is in the top three places. But Kendall Jenner was able to get back into the top 10. Football star Lionel Messi is also back in the top 10, which he slipped out of last year. PSG kicker Neymar and pop star Taylor Swift were pushed out of the top ten places this year.
High prices despite low organic reach
Swift now ranks 11th. Hopper estimates that the first eleven accounts on the Instagram Rich List can all claim an average of more than $ 1 million per post. These are new record sums; Apparently the prices rose again and exceeded the pre-corona level. Last year, Hopper reported price drops for the top stars’ accounts for the first time due to the pandemic.
Is it really possible for companies to pay over $ 1 million for a single direct mail on Instagram? After all, thanks to the platform operator’s switch to an algorithmically generated feed, Instagram accounts now only reach a fraction of their followers. According to a survey by the US social media agency Ignite the average organic reach on Instagram is currently 9.3 percent; so accounts usually only reach a tenth of their followers. And the more followers an account has, the lower the percentage should be, also because more and more bot accounts are added as the gross reach increases.
Do Instagram posts cost as much as a superbowl spot?
But Instagram posts can often trigger a ripple effect, especially with accounts of world-famous stars: Fan accounts on Instagram can pick up on the star’s posts as well as tabloid media (“We tested the hair care gummy bears that Kylie Jenner is promoting”). This can increase the range. Not to be neglected is the aspect of image transfer, which does not exist in “non-personalized” advertising media.
If you assume that celebrities represented on Instagram reach ten percent of their followers (also through additional reach effects), the prices for advertising posting converted to a thousand contact price (CPM) are still quite high (for Cristiano Ronaldo around $ 52). But they are still in a similar range to a 30-second spot in the superbowl. The sporting event is expected to have an average US viewership in 2021 with almost 92 million people and the prices for a 30-second spot at $ 5.5 million have been lying.
Tiktok as a reach lever for Instagram
In order to create the “Instagram Rich List”, Hopper wrote directly to all account owners and asked them about prices, according to a spokeswoman for OMR. On the other hand, internal data (the company offers a tool that users can use to plan, schedule and automatically post Instagram posts) and publicly available data were evaluated. This includes the number of followers, engagement rate, the subject area (prices may vary depending on the niche) and the demographics.
It was also taken into account whether the respective person became known alone via Instagram or outside the platform. Deals with celebrities and sports stars are usually part of a larger package and therefore more expensive, says Hopper. Unsurprisingly, then, that the top positions in the ranking were not taken by “native Instagram influencers” and that Lele Pons, the first female influencer, only appears in 44th place. It is noticeable that four digital stars in the top 10 influencers “grew up” through Tiktok.
Instagram Rich List 2021:
The top-earning influencers on Instagram
(swipe left on the phone to see the entire table)
| place | Name | Number of subscribers | Price per post |
| 1 | Eleonora Pons | 44.5 million | $180.000 |
| 2 | Charli D’Amelio | 42.4 million | $172.700 |
| 3 | Addison Rae Easterling | 38.5 million | $155.800 |
| 4 | Summer Ray | 26.6 million | $108.300 |
| 5 | Dixie D’Amelio | 24.6 million | $99.800 |
| 6 | Zach King | 24.4 million | $98.900 |
| 7 | Loren Gray | 21.8 million | $88.900 |
| 8 | Pew Die Pie | 21.7 million | $88.700 |
| 9 | Cameron Dallas | 21.6 million | $87.900 |
| 10 | Logan Paul | 20.4 million | $82.400 |
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(Those: Hopper HQ)
Who from Germany earns the best on Instagram?
The entire “Instagram Rich List” includes 395 accounts this year. There are also sub-views by region and niche (celebrity, influencer, fitness, beauty, etc.). Only four Germans made it into the overall ranking: Beauty Youtuber Bianca Heinicke, alias „BibisBeautyPalace“ 164th place at $ 18,800 per post, fashion influencer Leonie Hanne (Already a guest on the OMR Podcast in 2016) with $ 14,300 per post in 180th place, travel photographer Hannes Becker 188th place at $ 12,600 per post, influencer Caro Daur with US $ 10,300 per post in 207th place and Kim Duong alias “Blvckd0pe” # 252 at $ 5,100 per post.
It is astonishing that many other high-reach Instagram accounts of German origin are not included in the list – for example those of German soccer stars such as Toni Kroos (28.1 million followers), Mesut Ozil (23.9 million followers) and Marc ter Stegen (12.8 million followers), even if they don’t market their Instagram reach nearly as aggressively as Cristiano Ronaldo. But also internationally known influencers like Lisa & Lena (15.9 million subscribers) and Pamela Reif (7.9 million followers) do not appear. A company spokeswoman did not answer a request from OMR to Hopper about the reasons for this.
A list as a clever content marketing hack
There is no doubt that the “Instagram Rich List” is an enormous content marketing success for Hopper. The tool provider has been compiling the list once a year since 2017; the attention has increased every year, and above all: Over the years Hopper has collected a lot of backlinks to its own website. The SEO tool ahrefs counts almost 4,000 backlinks from around 1,700 referring domains on (meanwhile changed URL) of the “Instagram Rich List”; including extremely valuable links from heavyweights such as Wikipedia, BBC, CNBC, Yahoo, Bloomberg and Business Insider from a search engine optimization point of view.
The development of the number of backlinks to the URL of Hopper’s “Instagram Rich List”
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