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Being an influencer is now a real job (apparently)

They say there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.

Well in today's modern world I think you can probably add one other certainty, insurance.

If you own anything of significant value then it makes sense to protect that value by insuring it against loss or damage.

Insurance is even compulsory if you're borrowing money to buy an asset such as a house or a car. Lenders want to be sure that, in the event of disaster, they're not going to end up out of pocket.

Many countries overseas require mandatory vehicle insurance before you can drive anything on a public road. Here in NZ that's not the case, probably because we have ACC to cover personal injuries and related loss of income.

However, insurance makes sense. Spend a little to potentially save an awful lot.

Another popular form of insurace amongst the self-employed is an income-protection policy.

Although ACC will provide a degree of income-related compensation should you suffer an accident, other things that may incapacitate you -- such as an illness are not covered so being self-employed and finding yourself unable to work for six months because you've caught some horrible infection could see you financially ruined.

With this in mind, I was very interested to see that even the creator economy now has specialist insurance available for people like myself who are reliant on being an "influencer" to pay the bills.

Last week I came across a website that even offers special policies for YouTube Creators.

Surprisingly, this offering covers a lot of stuff, including having your channel hijacked, losing camera gear, public liability and professional indemnity.

I have no idea what these policies cost but I expect that for some it would be a wise investment to get at least some cover.

Every day I see channels that have fallen victim to channel hijacking as a result of naive creators accepting bogus sponsorship offers that arrive by email and involve downloading an "info pack" which, when opened, install malware that steals session tokens, passwords and other stuff. Just this morning I received two such emails and immediately consigned them to the bin. However, many other creators think they've struck gold and walk blindly into this trap.

Even big creators can fall foul of this ploy and in 2023, LinusTechTips lost their YouTube channel for several days in this way.

The process involved in recovering a YouTube channel lost to such a hijacking can be long and tedious so having insurance to cover such a contingency would provide quite a bit of "peace of mind" to anyone worried it might happen to them.

Fortunately for me, I don't accept *any* sponsorships or "brand deals" so I simply delete all such emails with no fear of "missing out".

I see that this insurance website also offers cover to influencers who publish on Instagram, TikTok and people who create Podcasts.

Right now, if I was almost anyone else, you would expect to see something along the lines of:

but that's not the way I work. I'm not recommending this site or the insurance cover it offers to anyone. Nobody's paid me to write this column, I do not benefit in any way from people using the site or paying this crowd any money. I just thought it interesting and an indication of the fact that "influencer" is now such a respected job title that it is worthy of its own category of insurance.

No, I don't have "influencer" insurance. Although I certainly qualify for the title, I'll take my chances with the hijackers and I keep my gear pretty close to my body when I'm recording in a public place. It's a gamble -- but then I have been known to buy they occasional Lotto ticket.

Carpe Diem folks!

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