'For years I didn't take a day off': Ireland's top influencers on life behind the lens 

Almost half of us want to be influencers — but what's it really like when your life becomes your source of income? Nicole Glennon and Maeve Lee ask some of Ireland’s most-followed content creators

Under the looking glass: Daithí De Nogla, Miriam Mullins and Melanie Murphy have millions of followers watching their every move

A survey carried out by Censuswide found that almost half of us would like to be an influencer — and one in ten would like it to be our main source of income.

The allure of #influencing as a full-time career has become so attractive that next year, the new South East Technical University (SETU) is set to offer a four-year honours degree in content creation which is being pegged as Ireland’s first ‘influencer course.’

From the outside looking in, it’s easy to see why so many of us are drawn to what looks like a luxury lifestyle that can be achieved by garnering a large social media following. All-expense paid trips abroad, mountains of free products, invites to sold-out gigs, premieres and the world’s most glamorous sporting events... 

But what happens when your life becomes your source of income? And your salary is at the whim of an algorithm? What if clocking off means losing the internet’s attention and with it, your livelihood?

Note: This article was first published on July 16, 2022

Melanie Murphy

Melanie Murphy. Picture: Lucy Nuzum

• Location: Dublin
• Main Platform: Youtube 
• 628k subscribers on Youtube
• 118K followers on Instagram

Melanie Murphy has been making Youtube videos for over a decade — but when she’s asked what she does for a living, she struggles with the answer.

“If a taxi driver asks me what my job is, I say I run a media company and I also write books. YouTuber brings a lot of assumptions with it — I don’t like the word, ‘influencer’, at all.” 

The 32-year-old, who recently moved into her first home with her partner Thomas and their son (she keeps his name and face private), is one of many Irish creators to have made a living based on sharing her life, warts and all. She’s spoken openly about her sexuality (she’s bisexual), her eating disorder, past toxic relationships, miscarriage and her ups and downs with sister Jessica (also an influencer). Her most-watched video on Youtube is a video entitled ‘How To Cover Acne & Scars (IF You Want To).’ At the time of writing it has close to 19m views.

It’s unsurprising to Murphy that many young people aspire to be influencers today.

“When I was younger, everyone in school wanted to be Britney Spears, or an actress,” she says. “You’d see them releasing their own products, have ads on the TV.

“When people say they want to be an ‘influencer,’ it implies that you want to have an audience.” 

And for Murphy, a self-confessed ‘oversharer,’ her audience of over half a million is very attractive — and lucrative — to brands. Recent research from Dublin-based Digital Marketing Institute suggests two-thirds of marketers are planning to increase their influencer budgets this year.

“The money is really great [in influencing] if you put in enough work and if you have an agent who understands the value of your time and your platform.

And the more niche you are, the more money you can make.”

The Dubliner has an agent who deals with contracts, chasing up payments and media requests, but other than that, she’s a “one-woman band.”

Asked to describe her job, the soon-to-be mum-of-two laughs, “Chaotic. “You have to be very adaptable, very comfortable with constant, consistent change. And you have to wear so many hats.

Melanie Murphy shares a lot with her followers, but has kept the identity of her son private to protect him Instagram: @melaniiemurphy

“The most common streams of income for people are Google Adsense, brand deals, affiliate links, merchandise, product lines, consulting, doing paid talks, book deals, live tours, podcasts and the related ads.”

Murphy, who is also a published author, says variability and instability are the most challenging aspects of influencing full time

“I have a media company, and I have enough money in my company to know that my job is guaranteed for X amount of time. But a lot of people live month to month, and you can be waiting six months or more on a paycheck to come through from a brand.”

Burnout is also a massive problem for online creators.

For about four or five years, I didn’t really take days off. I worked every day, and it became impossible for me to distinguish between what was work and what was my life. It was like The Truman Show.

Murphy says her relationship with content creation has changed over the years, particularly since becoming mother. The urge to share has also changed as she’s moved from her early 20s to her early 30s.

“I think you get to an age where... if you’re happy and you’re having a nice day, you don’t have this constant overwhelming urge to share it anymore. You realise the value of being present in the moment more and not documenting everything.

“When I was younger, I felt I had to prove my life was really fun and exciting and that drove me to share. I don’t feel like that anymore.”

Daithí De Nogla

Limerick Youtuber Daithi DeNogla Picture: Don Moloney

• Location: Limerick and LA
• Main Platform: Youtube
• 7.45M subscribers on Youtube 
• 2.5M followers on Instagram
• 1.9M followers on Twitter
• 504.6K followers on TikTok
• 67.7K followers on Twitch

When interviewing someone for a profile, you usually look for some basic information — their age, location, their kids’ ages/names. But Limerick-born Daithí De Nogla is hesitant to share such details, and for good reason.

“I don’t want to dox myself,” he laughs, referring to when someone’s private information is published online as a form of punishment or revenge.

The 30-year-old (one piece of information he is happy to share) is one of Ireland’s most-followed online creators with over 12m followers across his Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Twitch profiles. He makes a variety of gaming content and the odd ‘vlog’ (video blog). While the latter are increasingly popular, De Nogla isn’t a massive fan.

“You behave differently when the camera is on you,” he says. “For me personally, gaming-wise, I’m pretty chill, but when it comes to vlogging content, it doesn’t feel very natural or organic.

“When you go out to enjoy something, you’re consuming something that someone else created. But when you’re vlogging, you’re creating something for someone else to consume — you’re kind of just consuming it in the meantime. Your mindset is about entertaining the people that are gonna consume what you’re doing.

“Vlogging [your life], it will eventually feel not real. It will feel structured.

“That’s the issue with YouTube,” he says. “Are you ready for your hobby and the things that you really love to become your job? And when something becomes a job over a hobby, it’s pretty miserable,” he says with a laugh, “it’s like a part of your childhood dies.”

De Nogla, who first began uploading content to Youtube in 2012 and speaks with a strange American lilt, says the entry point to success nowadays is a lot higher than when he started.

“[The online space] is very competitive, very tough. You have people pumping $100,000 into every video, you’ve got people uploading big group content, hour-long videos that are jam-packed with activities.”

And many of the top creators, like himself, now have teams around them.

I have editors, a manager, an assistant, a thumbnail artist, they do a lot of the work behind the scenes.

Starting off, the Limerick man says he was probably working around 70 hours a week, but nowadays his workload is a lot less because his focus has shifted — he has a fiancé and a baby girl who he is trying to entertain throughout this interview.

“Some people, once they’ve made it, they get comfortable, let their foot off the gas, I’ve done it a bit myself,” he says. 

"But while you’re comfortable, other people are improving. And there’s always room for people to come in. Success is very volatile and there are always people getting cancelled these days.”

“You have to be on top of your behaviour 24/7. You’re kind of under the looking glass.”

Daithí De Nogla signs calenders for fans Instagram: @daithiden0gla

To young people who may see his success and hope to follow in their footsteps, the dad of one has some poignant advice.

“You have to be solid in yourself [first], otherwise you will end up being too influenced by your audience.

“There are fans who can be, let’s say, overzealous, about how much they feel entitled to their opinion about your life. If you get in a relationship and it’s public, they’ll [can] just decide they don’t like her or him and rag on your relationship.

“And you’re gonna be disappointed. That’s guaranteed. No matter how successful you get. You’re gonna put a lot of work into something you have expectations and hopes for but you don’t decide what people attach to, what people really, really like.

“And Youtube, It just rewards numbers.”

Miriam Mullins

Miriam Mullins at Longitude for JD Sports Instagram: miriammullins_

• Location: Cork 
• Main platform: TikTok 
• 1.9m followers on TikTok
• 107k followers on Instagram
• 46.4k subscribers on YouTube

During the pandemic, TikTok’s popularity boomed and while the Chinese social media platform was on the rise, so was the following of one Cork native who now has a whopping 1.9m followers and over 110m likes on the short-form video-sharing app.

Miriam Mullins, a household name amongst Gen-Zers, has taken Irish TikTok by storm. And while the 26-year-old also has a presence on Instagram with 107k followers (her dog Lucy also has almost 5k followers) and YouTube (46.4k subscribers), TikTok is the platform that keeps her busiest.

“It’s the most current, it’s the most fast-paced, it’s still growing rapidly as an app,” she says of the internet’s latest obsession.

While bored and isolating after returning home to Cork from the States during the pandemic, Mullins downloaded the app and after two months, she had 100k followers.

As she says herself, it “just kind of just snowballed from there”.

Social media is now her full-time job, and her day typically consists of briefing calls with various brands in relation to any upcoming ads, creating concepts for said ads, filming videos, emails, meetings with her manager, and researching trends on TikTok.

Mullins, who also has a degree in creative digital media, says she can’t remember the last time she put “her phone away and had a full-on day off.” 

“Every day there is something and if you drop off for a week, people get bored easily and they move on.”

In terms of revenue, Mullins explains that in Ireland, it is actually very difficult to make money from TikTok itself. This is due to Ireland not having a TikTok Creator Fund, as is the case in some other countries. The Creator Fund allows users to earn money and it started off with approximately £54m of funds when it launched across a small number of European countries.

Mullins and most other content creators earn their money in other forms, such as ads. For her, this is across both TikTok and Instagram.

Miriam Mullins shares a photo from a private jet

“I film the content, I upload it. You wait about 48 hours, and you send the brand your insights,” she explains. 

“I get paid once a month from my management for ads. Obviously, I’m self-employed so I have to do all of my own taxes as well.” 

For Instagram, it is difficult to decipher an average amount for a single ad and this usually depends on different factors such as audience engagement.

However, with TikTok, a person with 1m followers and over 100k views on their videos, could get about €2,000 euro for a single TikTok, according to Mullins, though this depends on the brand’s budget.

As she delves into the details of her job, it’s clear that she is passionate about what she does. However, one thing she admits she has struggled with during her growth is privacy.

I’ve been followed to my car and stuff, and people know where I live, things like that, you just have to be careful.

“I suppose I never realised the extent of it. Because when I started, I was in lockdown, and nobody was going anywhere, and the numbers were growing but I could never really feel the numbers.”

Though, “the pros totally outweigh the cons”, for Mullins, in certain settings, she has to be careful and things like a night out in Cork are no longer an option.

“I can’t go nightclubbing in Cork,” she says. “When people are drunk and stuff it’s just another level altogether."

"I can’t really enjoy nights out as much as I should at my age."

Nathalie Lennon

Nathalie Lennon: You have to be switched on a lot more of the time than you did in the past

• Location: Wicklow
• Main platform: Instagram
• 66.4k followers on Instagram
• 21.8k followers on TikTok

Nathalie Lennon is a radio host, an earth scientist, a health and nutritional coach and with over 66k followers on Instagram — an influencer. But, there was a time she was uncomfortable using that word about herself.

“It comes with a bit of a negative connotation sometimes,” she says. “But I’ve kind of learned to own it. I’m proud to use the word.”

The 28-year-old believes many underestimate the amount of time that goes into creating content and says there is a lot of work behind-the-scenes of her picture-perfect Instagram grid.

“From when you first get the idea, to trying to capture the content — be that a video or a photo — to editing the video, to adding a voiceover, text, there’s a lot more that goes on before you just happen to scroll by it on your feed.”

From Baltinglass in Co Wicklow, Lennon’s main platform is Instagram, which is home to more than a billion users worldwide and is ever-evolving. She has been on Instagram since it first became popular, which was around the time she was studying Earth Sciences at Trinity. Since then, a lot has changed both for Lennon and the photo-sharing app with the addition of Instagram ‘stories’ ‘swipe-up’ links and ‘reels’ adding a new layer of marketing possibilities – and extra work for influencers.

“You have to be switched on a lot more of the time than you did in the past,” she says. “When it started, it was you post a picture and that was it.” 

While still enjoyable, it’s a lot more time-consuming, she admits. Helping her stay organised is her agency, 1st Option, who assist with certain aspects such as inquiries and jobs.

“But other than that, it really is me behind the scenes trying to do as much as I can solo,” she explains.

 Instagram: @nathalielennon_

Describing her job, the fitness influencer says she is “trying to help and inspire people to look after themselves inside and out”. 

She currently has her own business, Nathalie Lennon Fitness, and shares everything from workouts and outdoor adventures to outfits and motivational mantras with her Instagram followers.

While she loves what she does, Lennon does not believe being an influencer is something that people should aspire to solely become. She is well aware of how “fluid” the industry can be, considering how much has changed since she started.

“To aspire to become [an influencer], is exciting and it’s doable but I think it’s good to have more than just that,” she says, also noting the importance of additional revenue streams.

“This has been such a rapid change and creation of a brand-new industry. No one knows how things are going to change in the next five years or ten years.”

If working solely as an influencer, she admits she would have some feelings of uncertainty about the future.

“When you look at the reel of change over the last ten years, who knows what’s going to happen over the next ten — but it’s exciting, that’s not a negative thing.”