An Instagram travel creator who’s earned 5 figures this year shares her rates for sponsored content and how much she’s been offered on Threads

• Jessica Ufuoma fell in love with travel in her mid-20s after moving from Nigeria to Canada.
• She became a full-time content creator when her income from brand deals overtook her corporate salary.
• Ufuoma shares her sponsored-content rates for Instagram and what she’s been offered on Threads.

Jessica Ufuoma still can’t believe brands pay her to travel and blog about her experiences.

“I’ve been doing this seriously since 2018, and it still feels unreal sometimes,” she told Insider.

Ufuoma was never interested in traveling outside of Nigeria as a child, until she was 24 and moved to Canada for a master’s program in international business. She had to spend three months each in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Peru as part of her degree.

She fell in love with travel during that 2015 trip to Peru, according to the creator from Canada. The trip also made her realize how she was often the only Black woman on her tours, such as one to Machu Picchu. That’s when she decided to start blogging and posting about her solo trips on Instagram.

“My thought was that if I publicly shared what my experiences were like, more people who looked like me would want to travel,” she explained. “Back in 2015, there wasn’t a lot of representation in the travel space like there is now.”

Ufuoma, 31, is now a full-time travel creator with 128,000 Instagram followers and has visited 50 countries. According to documentation verified by Insider, she’s made $50,500 this year through brand deals as of early ****August 2023.

Her first few trips after Peru were paid for with savings, but now her travels are mostly paid for by brands, which cover her travel expenses to new destinations or pay her to post sponsored content. Despite the fact that Instagram is her primary platform, she has recently begun receiving requests to post on Threads as well.

Ufuoma started gaining followers and brand interest by pivoting her social-media strategy

When Ufuoma first began documenting her travels, she was determined to visit as many countries as possible while staying within her budget.

She had been putting money aside from each paycheck for travel since completing her master’s program in 2016 and landing a job with Nokia.

She would usually post a single photo from each country she visited, along with a brief caption.

“There were no stories, carousel posts, reels, or anything like that back then,” she explained.

People would ask Ufuoma questions in her comments about how she paid for her trips, specific places she visited, and other topics. She changed her social-media strategy in 2018, when she had about 3,000 Instagram followers, to include longer, more informative captions. Instead of describing the photos she posted, these captions focused on advice for others who wanted to visit the country. She also began posting regularly on stories once the format became available.

“It became less about myself and more about my audience and what they wanted to know,” she explained.

After two months, she had secured her first brand deal. A travel insurance company paid her $300 to post one photo and describe the significance of their product on her Instagram feed.

As her fan base grew and more brands approached her, Ufuoma began negotiating and landing more lucrative opportunities, such as sponsored trips and work with airlines and cruise ships. She went on a Virgin Voyages cruise to Greece, Croatia, and Montenegro in July, and the company paid for her travel in exchange for her posting content throughout the trip.

Ufuoma left her full-time job at Nokia in November to focus on content creation. By 2022, her income from brand deals had surpassed her six-figure ****corporate salary.

“It wasn’t an easy decision because, as immigrants, abandoning the safety net is not something our parents taught us to do,” she explained. “I decided to just take the risk because if I didn’t take a chance now, I wouldn’t be able to do it later.”

How much she charges for sponsored content and why she’s turned down brand deals on Threads

Threads piqued Ufuoma’s interest when it debuted in early July because it is Instagram’s newest app.

The day after she downloaded it, she received an Instagram DM from a brand offering her $1,200 in exchange for a single sponsored post on Threads. Ufuoma declined the offer because she didn’t think it would go over well with her audience, who she said seemed to enjoy the app’s “ad-free” nature.

“Most people on my feed were saying how happy they were that Threads didn’t have any ads, so it’s sometimes just a matter of reading the room and seeing what your followers resonate with,” she explained. “It just didn’t seem like it was the right time.”

Soon after, a brand she had previously worked with asked if she would post a Thread in support of their company. They were willing to pay her $500 for the post. She considered the proposal and attempted to negotiate a rate of $1,500 plus some other terms and conditions because she had a good working relationship with that company. She eventually declined the deal because they couldn’t reach an agreement.

“A lot of experiences in the past have taught me that I’ve been lowballed, and being a creator of color definitely factors into that,” she explained. “I want to be paid what I’m worth, so I’m not going to accept anything less.”

Ufuoma currently categorizes her Instagram content as “silver,” “gold,” and “premium”:

• Silver: a minimum of $5,000 for one in-feed post and three stories.
• Gold: A minimum of $7,500 is required for one in-feed post, five stories, and one reel.
• Premium: A minimum of $12,000 is required for three in-feed posts, five stories, two reels, and a link in the bio for one week.

She stated that the final rates are determined by factors such as usage rights, specific deliverables, timelines, and how much she personally likes the brand.