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- Bethenny Frankel first rose to fame on reality TV and now has a lucrative career as an influencer.
- The former “Real Housewives of New York” star revealed her 2023 income to Business Insider.
- Here’s how her often chaotic beauty reviews led to millions of dollars in revenue last year.
Bethenny Frankel was once famous solely for being a Real Housewife. Now she is making money as an influencer. She demonstrates this with English muffins.
A few weeks ago, she posted a video on TikTok. With her trademark combination of fast-talking, cheeky honesty and humor, she slapped the sleeve of Thomas’ English muffin.
“Can you improve this package?” Frankel yelled. “This is a story from the dark ages. This is how Fred Flinstone eats English muffins.”
In return, Thomas sent a box of items, including blueberry English muffins, which her 13-year-old daughter loves.
“It doesn’t matter if I hate on or love on, people are into it,” she told Business Insider.
Despite her innovative and sometimes brutally true opinions, people can’t seem to stop talking about and following Frankel. They’ve been together for the past 16 years, ever since she first came to the public eye as an outsider on The Real Housewives of New York, which she quit for good in 2019. (For about a year, she has continued her feud with her wives in public.) The programming network Bravo made an effort to unionize the reality TV star last summer. )
She now earns seven figures a year from social media, which she said is more than she earned as a housewife. (She hasn’t disclosed how much she made on the show, but she said it was in the millions.)
In 2023, the first full year of her “influencer” status, Frankel earned $3.2 million in endorsement deals, according to documents reviewed by BI. Brands like L’Oréal and Dunkin’ are paying five and six figures to be promoted by Frankel on TikTok and Instagram.
Her number of followers on the platform increased from 2.4 million and 320,000 to 3.3 million and 1.6 million, respectively. That was in February 2022, before she started posting regularly, according to data from analytics firm SocialBlade. According to her marketing platform Captiv8, across all social platforms, her content has garnered her 57.48% positive sentiment, which is average for reality stars. More than 40-45%.
Bethenny Frankel, “The Accidental Influencer”
Despite finding success through reality TV, she calls herself an “accidental influencer.”
Frankel prides himself on his over-the-top personality and authenticity, two things that have become trademarks of today’s TikTok set. That seems to have helped the 53-year-old change direction in her career.
Her secret, she says, was that she never wanted to be an influencer. After years of having her makeup done, she was learning how to do it herself. After seeing her beauty videos online, in 2022 she started posting her own videos.
Much of her content hypes drugstore brands and skewers expensive alternatives. La Mer’s Crème de La Mer (retails at $200 for 1 ounce) and Nivea’s signature Crème (about $12 for 16 ounces) are fairly interchangeable, she said in one video. Her posts have very little editing and have a messy quality. For example, a recent upload had fluff on her face.
“The more authentic you are, the less hopeless you are. If you work on what you’re passionate about and are honest, things will fall into place quickly,” she said.
It didn’t take long for this clip to catch the attention of major companies. According to her agent, in April 2022 she signed her first brand deal with CoverGirl. Since then, she has expanded beyond her beauty confines to reviewing products she finds at the grocery store and commenting on pop culture. She posts dozens of videos a week on her TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and approaches her social media with business savvy.
For example, if a brand wants to use her existing content in a promotion, she asks the brand to pony up. When they ask her to review a product, she’s not willing to accept free stuff or pay for something she doesn’t believe in, and she’s not willing to settle for a lower fee. And she says she was surprised at first when they tried to cater to what she understood to be expensive.
“I didn’t need free cosmetics and I didn’t need money,” said Frankel, who retained ownership of the Skinnygirl brand of food and lifestyle products. “I’m making millions of dollars in popcorn and dressings and shapewear while I sleep.”
Frankel’s path from reality TV to skinny girl to acting
For those unfamiliar, Frankel didn’t just appear on reality TV. She made Housewife history by founding Skinnygirl Cocktails and selling it in 2011. Skinnygirl’s actual acquisition price is up for debate. According to reports, the amount is as high as $120 million. However, according to SEC filings, neither the company nor Frankel disclosed the final amount, including any contingent payments based on sales targets. The deal is so large that networks include so-called “Bethenny clauses” in their reality TV contracts, requiring reality TV stars to give networks a cut of the business they advertise on air. ing.
Like other influencers, Frankel says she’s completely honest about her likes and dislikes. What’s different is that many She doesn’t seem to like it, which makes her positive reviews and opinions even more valuable. According to one of her agents, less than 1% of her posts are sponsored.
“When I quit reality TV, I thought the faucet would turn off to be honest, because that’s what it is. And I was fine with that,” she said. “You can’t buy me out. Brands might find that refreshing.”
Despite her entrepreneurial background, she has no interest in launching her own beauty line. Many celebrities and influencers have launched this line. lady gaga to Addison Rae, attempted with varying degrees of success. She turned down a well-known dermatologist who wanted to work with her, she said.
“I’d rather spend millions or billions of dollars on someone else who does large-scale research and development and let them shoulder the burden,” she says. “Let me be the creative, the face, and the messenger.”
so what teeth Next? I’m currently acting. She was about to board a plane to a movie performance when BI spoke to her.
“When the table gets cold, I walk,” she said. “If the table gets hot, I’ll keep betting. Do you want to call me? Do you want to pay six figures for a movie role? Of course. Would you like to call?” Great. “
Has reality completely ended for her? necessarily.
“The problem is they can’t pay me enough,” she said. “They don’t pay me enough money to leave this house and get my hair and makeup done and go somewhere.”
When it comes to making TikTok, that doesn’t matter.
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