Instagram fashion blogger Danielle Bernstein earns up to $15k per picture

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Danielle Bernstein, who founded the website We Wore What, regularly posts sponsored images on Instagram
By featuring certain products or phrases, the 22-year-old can earn anywhere between $5,000 and $15,000 for a single picture
Thanks to her 992,000-strong following, Danielle’s account has become increasingly attractive to advertisers

Published: 13:52 EST, 22 May 2015 | Updated: 15:34 EST, 22 May 2015

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A personal style blogger has lifted the lid on the lucrative business of bloggers who are paid big bucks by brands to feature certain products, or even phrases, on their Instagram accounts.

Danielle Bernstein, 22, runs the blog We Wore What, and has 992,000 followers on her Instagram.

Currently, her rate card sets the cost of a single piece of sponsored content from $5,000 to $15,000, but she explained to Harper's Bazaar that this rate can go up or down depending on the number of posts a brand requires, and length of her relationship with the company in question.

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Wearing it well: Personal style blogger Danielle Bernstein, 22, has revealed that she can charge up to $15,000 for a single Instagram post, like this one that features a Lancôme beauty product

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; according to Miss Bernstein, when she hits one million followers, she will be able to charge 'a good amount more' for sponsored content.

Indeed, Miss Bernstein is edging towards the top of the new Instagram economy, through which savvy social media stars are translating an ever-increasing tally of followers into a lucrative business, which – if their accounts are considered as ‘bankable’ as Miss Bernstein’s – could earn them millions of dollars a year.

Miss Bernstein explains that the range for Instagram accounts with a few hundred thousand followers is from around $500 to $5,000 per post, but accounts with upwards of six million followers can earn anywhere between $20,000 and $100,000 a shot.

Industry estimates say brands spend more than a $1 billion per year on sponsored Instagram posts, and that figure shows no signs of decreasing any time soon.

But the regulations outlining the booming Instagram industry are incredibly ambiguous at best. While some companies are content with sending free products to bloggers, in the hopes that they will feature the item on their accounts free of charge, other brands are offering enormous sums in exchange for a simple Instagram ‘shout out’.

Danielle Bernstein has over 1million Instagram followers

Staged moments: Miss Bernstein uses the hashtag #ad to indicate that this post is sponsored content - because it features a paid-for Lancôme product placement

Tough girl: In this image, Miss Bernstein shows off her style in black leather by The Kooples and hair by Bumble and Bumble, giving both brands a mention in the post. It is not known if this post was sponsored

Summer fun: Miss Bernstein showed off her LWD (little white dress) in this casual photo, which included no mention of any brand names

However, in a lot of cases, these sponsored images are in no way distinguished from the other content on the user’s account, despite repeated attempts by advertising standards authorities to try and enforce regulations requiring them to use a suitable hashtag, such as #spon, #ad, or #sp, to indicate when a post has been paid for.

Some bloggers even take part in agent-negotiated deals where the blogger agrees to feature the brand in a certain number of Instagrams, often promising not to put any competitors in the same shot (or even hold off mentioning them for a week or so). Even in these cases, however, paid-for posts are not always identified by the person creating them.

Miss Bernstein has done Instagram-only work for big brands including Lancôme and Virgin Hotels, which she designates with the hastag #ad. She is clearly concerned about her reputation, telling the magazine: 'It's super important who I associate myself with in this industry.

'It's not that I don't like other people, but there are some other bloggers that it's random seeming to associate myself with.'

Lancôme had her feature its new foundation, Miracle Cushion, in a picture of her morning routine and as part of her on-the-go make-up bag. For Virgin Hotels, she posed at the opening of the one in Chicago with Virgin's owner Richard Branson.

Beauty blog: In this post, the blogger wrote about her matching nails, lip color and dress using Essie nail polish and Mac Cosmetics. Again the image caption did not indicate whether the image was sponsored

Night out: Miss Bernstein was wearing all white when she posted this image, which she captioned 'dinner time with @jennikane flats and @balenciega bag'

A number of Instagram accounts have come under fire for not distinguishing which posts were sponsored, and in 2013 the Federal Trade Commission published guidelines for promoted posts on social media that require full disclosure of who is funding the posts.

For now, the popularity of Instagram influencers shows no signs of slowing down. Miss Bernstein reveals that she's raking in a six-figure salary.

'I hate talking about money, but let's just say it's more than I could have ever imagined as a 22-year-old. I fully support myself, and it's in the mid-six figures,' she said.

'I save, I invest, I'm trying to be smart about it all and learn as I go.'

Celebrities have also caused controversy in the past for violating FTC rules in the past. Kim Kardashian came under fire for tweeting

Kim Kardashian came under fire last May for tweeting a photo of herself using Eos lip balm on her 'pregnancy lips'with no indication that the tweet was paid for - until The New York Times reported the following month that she made an estimated $20,000.

The following month, Silicon Valley startup BlackJet admitted that Miley Cyrus had been 'given some consideration' for posting a positive tweet without disclosing this fact to her followers.