How I accidentally became an Instagram Influencer.
Born in Singapore and raised in Canada during the early 90’s, I’m a product of the first generation Asian-Canadian experience (read here: “banana”). Like many of my brethren, I finished post-secondary (a Bachelor’s degree with a major in History, as well as a double minor in Publishing and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies) and immediately entered into a completely unrelated industry: financial services. While this career path did well to pay the bills, I always felt the need for a creative outlet.
My first foray into the world of fashion and lifestyle blogging began back in 2012 with the creation of a Blogspot website. However, in September 2017, I suddenly decided that I wanted to take blogging more seriously— just to see where it would take me.
Since starting the Instagram account “The Stylish Wordsmith,” my eyes have been opened to a whole new world—I’ve learned so much about social media and this thing called “influencing,” met many new people (both online and offline), and have been given many exciting opportunities that otherwise would not have been possible.
During the pandemic in 2020, I started to make enough money from Instagram and TikTok brand partnerships to see it as a viable career. In January 2021, I officially quit my job to do content creation full-time. Giving myself one year to see how things went, I ended the year making a total of $53,000! Following that, I made $85,000 in 2022 and $43,000 in 2023. Currently, I’m in my FOURTH year of being a full-time influencer!
Although navigating the rollercoaster ride of being an Instagram Influencer is pretty much a full-time job to itself, I realized that I was neglecting the reason that I began my new account— writing. Therefore, the desire to create this particular blog was born.
If you’re interested in learning a bit more about the weird and wacky world of Instagram “influencing,” feel free to join along! Within this blog, I’ll be sharing both technical aspects and interesting personal experiences (that might be considered somewhat funny) of this subculture I’ve been involved with over the past few years. I’m looking forward to seeing where this takes me next…
Cheers, Debbie (aka “The Stylish Wordsmith”)