To be a successful influencer, all Hayley Berlingeri needs is her face, her family and her phone.
Her descriptions of busy days as a mother-of-four in Adelaide have gained her a loyal following on Instagram.
"School holidays are nearly over, can you believe it?!," she wrote on the platform recently.
"And we survived … just! Hehe!"
Her relatable posts are often followed by recommendations for products she has been sent by her management agency.
Ms Berlingeri, a social media content creator, spends 15 to 20 hours a week photographing and filming herself and her children, editing the pictures and video, and uploading them to Instagram.
"The main thing is that I'm able to do it with my kids and do it at home," she told the ABC.
"It's really great for family life and I love that it's fun — I get to be creative, I get to work with my kids."
The 41-year-old primary school teacher began her new vocation nine years ago, after her sister opened an Instagram account for her to share pictures of her new baby.
It became a lucrative pursuit when companies — unsolicited — started sending her clothes and other products for her child.
"People would send little outfits for them and I'd dress them and mostly send the content back to them for them to use on their socials," she said.
"But as time has gone on, I've kind of stepped in front of the camera myself.
"It's just been this natural progression, really."
Now, she has a talent manager and receives a steady stream of products and services to endorse.
"I was a full-time teacher and junior school coordinating principal and I make a lot more money doing this part time at home with my family than I did in my full-time role," she said.
"So yeah, you can definitely earn a lot of money."
Traditional ads becoming less trendy
Social media influencers like Ms Berlingeri are highly prized for blending advertising with "authentic" experiences and opinions — selling products as they share snippets of their lives on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
It is a form of marketing that, like social media itself, has grown enormously in the past decade.
Former digital marketer Carlea Atkins has built her whole business — a social media studio called Consume — specifically to service influencers.
"[It's] a bit of a creative hub for digital creators, influencers, brands to come to a space to shoot social media content," she said.
"Most of the feedback is, 'Oh my God, we didn't know we needed this'.
"Content creation is so important for a fashion brand because it just means you get your clothing on the right person and you'll sell out your collection in no time."
Chief executive of social media marketing agency Hypetap, Detch Singh, said influencers are now considered a key part of brands' promotional strategies, primarily because of their effectiveness.
"If we test branded content versus influencer content on a particular channel, nine times out of 10 that influencer content will outperform the branded content," Mr Singh said.
Analysts estimate the annual value of influencer advertising at several hundred million dollars in Australia, and about $25 billion across the globe.
Mr Singh said large companies were reportedly spending up to 10 per cent of their advertising budgets on that form of marketing, with smaller, usually newer, brands opting to use it almost exclusively.
Flinders University business management expert Roberta Crouch said it was difficult to determine the exact amount of money being spent on influencer marketing.
"Tertiary scrutiny of what you can find online and elsewhere shows that substantial spends are being transferred from traditional media into the use of influencers," Professor Crouch said.
But this shift to influencer marketing is not without risk.
'Is this OK?'
Social media is a volatile environment and influencers who stray – often inadvertently – into controversial territory can face severe backlashes.
Many leading influencers often feel the need to carefully curate their posts.
"People are holding you accountable if you slightly slip — and that never used to happen," Ms Atkins said.
"In my own personal friend group — and a lot of them are content creators — we are doing a lot of vetting and sending each other images or captions or whatever it may be to be like, 'Is this OK?'"
Brands can also come under fire if they fund lavish influencer events — which, amid today's cost-of-living pressures, are considered by some to be insensitive — and a "de-influencer" trend is now growing.
The lack of regulation, compared to traditional advertising, has also been identified as a problem.
Many influencers have not been declaring they are paid for their posts, leading the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Tax Office to announce crackdowns earlier this year.
"I think consumers are often quite naive about the degree to which influencers are paid and reimbursed and what they say is quite scripted, versus what they honestly think," Professor Crouch said.
"The whole idea of having an influencer is that they are meant to be objective, they are meant to be regular people."
There are other ethical questions about influencer marketing.
Ms Berlingeri, for example, said she faced criticism for using her children in her sponsored posts.
"My kids generally love it," she said.
"When the day comes that they are not wanting to do it, then that will be the end of it. It has to be."
But the potential downsides are clearly not dissuading budding influencers — Mr Singh said his business was overwhelmed by influencers wanting to be hosted on its platform.
"We probably get over 100 expressions a day," he said.
"We probably select one or two of those."
Unsurprisingly, industry surveys suggest that those most likely to want to become social media influencers are younger people, lured by the apparent glamour of the lifestyle and potentially huge payments.
"We pay influencers anywhere from a few hundred bucks to a hundred grand for a piece of work," Mr Singh said.
But those already working, like Ms Berlingeri, have a warning.
"There's work involved," she said.
"It's time-consuming and, as fun as it is — there are many, many perks — at the end of the day it is a job, and this is what we do for a living.
"This is how we make our money."
