Lauren moved from the Gold Coast to Cairns in Northern Queensland where she continued being a self-taught photographer alongside her full-time dental assisting job. When she initially moved she only had around 2,000 followers on Instagram which grew as she continued to share content. When she had around 16,000 followers she secured her first photography job with the local tourism board to be filmed whilst exploring the region and sharing it on her Instagram account. She was further inspired to continue her photography after chatting to other influencers who shared what they did and how they made money. After gradually building up her influencing jobs until it wasn't feasible for her to continue working as a dental assistant she then quit to pursue photography full time.
"It was getting busy with the travel jobs - some of those might take a week or two to go off to the destination and shoot - so every month I was literally just taking half the month off to do a different job. Brands started contacting me and I was making good money from it, so I wanted to give myself the flexibility and be available to do it."
Jack's journey into a social media career was different. He left school at 17 and was employed as a carpet cleaner. When he hit 22, he began to get fed up so he saved enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Bangkok to go backpacking.
"I had no plan and hardly any money. I had just my first night booked in a hostel" Jack told Cosmopolitan.
After a few months Jack's savings started to run out and he realised he'd better find a way of making money or he'd have to go back home to his carpet cleaning job. He decided to use Instagram that was still fairly new as a little DIY business venture.
"Instead of trying to grow myself on Instagram, I tried to grow niche accounts which reposted images; I had one for animals, fashions, cars - all sorts of things like that - and they grew pretty fast. It was literally just finding content throughout the Instagram community, reposting certain niches on certain accounts, and then monetising by contacting brands in that niche and asking if they wanted to advertise on the accounts."
After two years Jack's advertising business was making quite a bit of money however that meant he wasn't making the most of his travelling experience. "I just felt like I may as well have been at home doing it in my room. I was spending so much time on my phone and my laptop, searching for wifi all day. I wasn't really doing what I set out to do in the first place."
Jack then sold all except one of his niche Instagram accounts which had several hundred of thousands of followers combined then lived off that money while continuing to explore the world for a further year. Whilst exploring he started to post photographs to his own personal Instagram account which grew rapidly then he started to get approached by brands and tourist boards wanting to work with him.
It was on one of these jobs in Fiji where Jack and Lauren met. "We were both doing the same thing, and he asked me if I wanted to come to Bali and hang out after the Fiji job, which I thought would be fun. We could just keep doing what we were doing, taking pictures and creating content and stuff."
Whilst both calling Bali home, Jack and Lauren travelled around together and both of their Instagram accounts blew up. They travelled to exotic locations such as Sri Lanka and the Maldives and started posting photos together.
"As soon as we started posting photos together brands would contact us much more frequently than they would when we were travelling by ourselves. I think they probably saw more value in a couple because it's a target audience for most in the travel industry" said Jack.
This clearly paid off as they will not do a single post for less than USD$3000. The most Jack has received from one post is USD$9,000 and the most Lauren has ever received from one post is USD$7,500.
"I did a job for a phone company where I flew out for three days; there were two days filming and then I had to do five photos on Instagram, and that was $35,000" says Jack, which gives you a clear idea of how they are making a six figure salary whilst travelling and they aren't even charging top-level. "We've turned up to jobs before that we've charged thousands for, and we've got there and they've been like, 'your rates are so low'."
As far as editing and taking the photos goes they "edit photos in a professional way using Adobe programmes. It might look quite planned out sometimes, but we're just taking photos of what we're doing anyway. Sometimes it's a job and we'll be told to take photos of things, but most of the time it's pretty chilled. Everything that we take and put on Instagram is real life" says Jack.
"People follow us because they enjoy our content, so when we post about a brand, location, or whatever it is we're being paid for, our followers trust it more than when they see a random advert in a magazine. Since we only work with brands we personally like or truly believe in, it's authentic. We would never promote something we don't agree with just for money" they add.
The advice they have for anyone wanting to follow in their footsteps; be consistent in your content, keep it to a high standard, find your style or niche and stick to it, don't copy what's already out there, think about the aesthetic of your profile and your grid, try hard and don't be a try hard, and consider collaborating with other like-minded people - their main bit of advice: have fun.
"Both of us started out doing this purely by having fun, doing what we want to do," Jack says. "And I think that really resonates," adds Lauren.
"We never expected to be offered this kind of money for simply following our passions and doing what we love. We both feel so lucky. It still doesn't feel like real life sometimes" the couple adds. You bet it doesn't with them living what others would consider the dream life.
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