The luxury product, materialistic worship influencer segment is only a tiny percent of the influencer economy.
For every one influencer posing with a sports car in Dubai, there are a thousand other influencers whose content can be produced at very low cost. Video games, parenting, fitness, beauty/make-up/skincare, cooking, woodworking, gardening, backpacking, dancing, DIY, personal finance, etc all have tons of content creators working from home (or the gym, park, shop, whatever).
I know a woman who started posting videos that were just her holding her cell phone recording a selfie video talking about being a mom. She now has brands paying her tens of thousands of dollars to promote their products, and her videos are still just phone selfies sitting on her couch.
My observation isn't limited to that segment (I've never actually seen any content from them). Attention is finite and eventually each niche becomes a zero-sum game of competing over limited eyeballs. Once it becomes competitive, spending money becomes the best lever available to the content creators.
I don't think this necessarily applies to all influencers like those with loyal followings, but it's a general pattern I've observed.
For every one influencer posing with a sports car in Dubai, there are a thousand other influencers whose content can be produced at very low cost. Video games, parenting, fitness, beauty/make-up/skincare, cooking, woodworking, gardening, backpacking, dancing, DIY, personal finance, etc all have tons of content creators working from home (or the gym, park, shop, whatever).
I know a woman who started posting videos that were just her holding her cell phone recording a selfie video talking about being a mom. She now has brands paying her tens of thousands of dollars to promote their products, and her videos are still just phone selfies sitting on her couch.