First of all, a disclaimer: the point of this post is to educate, nothing more. It is for newbies to understand how they can be aware of and affected by influencers.

I will be censoring all names. Examples provided are entirely fictional for all intents and purposes.

What is the role of an influencer? Basically they provide value by directing attention to a project (they can also act as advisors but the end goal is the same).

Remember that every project's main goal is to mint out.

How are influencers paid? They are usually paid with a flat fee in usdc/sol and/or a percentage of mint funds. Influencers may also ask for a number of free NFTs or WLs.

It varies greatly and samples of influencer rates are provided below.

Now you know how it works, lets look at an example:

"Influencer" provides value to Yeah Tigers project through promotion, shill tweets and WL giveaways in influencer's own private alpha dao.

"Influencer" is paid for with 50x Yeah Tigers nft air dropped directly into the influencer's wallet during mint time.

"Influencer" sells all 50 nfts a few hours after mint, pocketing 224 sol in gains while the price was going up.

Within 24 hours post mint, "influencer" has sold all nfts.

"Influencer" then provides more services by shilling the project a little bit after mint. Note by this time period, "influencer" has sold majority of their allocation.

So project mints out, influencer's job is done and gets paid. End of story right? Wrong.

What happened to the people who bought the 50 Yeah Tiger NFTs after the influencer dumped them?

Let's take a look: 82% took an L while 18% or 9 nfts were sold for a W.

The combined gains of all 9 who sold for a W are less than 10 sol.