How do you start as an influencer on Instagram?

Start with one topic and one promise to the viewer, not with followers. "Cheap outfits for work", "Colombian recipes in 60 seconds" or "weekend plans in Miami" each tell a stranger why to follow after one video; "my life" does not, until people already know you. Write that promise in your bio, use a name that is easy to read and spell, and plan your first ten videos before you post the first one, so the account looks like a series and not a test.

Then post short vertical videos. Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts all use the same 9:16 format, so one video can go up on all three and you learn faster which one your audience uses. Keep a rhythm you can hold for months next to a job or school: two videos a week that never stop do more than a daily burst that ends in three weeks.

Start where the people you want to reach already watch, and post the same video on the others. TikTok tends to show new accounts to strangers through its For You feed, Instagram is where many brands look for creators and where your friends already follow you, and Facebook Reels tends to reach an older audience, which suits topics like family, food or local services. None of them needs a different video: a 9:16 clip with captions works on all three.

On Instagram, switch to a professional account (creator or business) from the first day. It is free, and it is the only way to see Insights: which videos people watched to the end, which ones they shared, and where your viewers live. That data tells you what to film next far better than a guess. YouTube Studio shows the same kind of data for Shorts.

Show outfits people can actually buy, and say where they come from and what they cost. A fashion account grows on repeatable formats: one outfit three ways, a try-on from a store, what to wear to a specific event, or a weekly "under fifty dollars" look. Repeatable formats are easier to film, easier to recognise in a feed, and easier for a brand to picture its own product in later.

Film in daylight, facing a window, with the phone on a stand at chest height, and record each outfit as short separate clips: the full look, a slow turn, the details, and you saying one sentence about it. That gives the edit enough to cut a fast try-on. A try-on video under 90 seconds fits one Starter edit with Esteban Moreno Media, from $100 per video. If a store lends or gives you the clothes, say so in the video; the disclosure section below explains how.

No camera is needed to start: a recent phone filming in vertical is enough, as long as the light and the sound are good. Clean the lens, film facing a window or outdoors in the shade, and record your voice close to the phone or with a small clip-on microphone, because viewers forgive an average picture faster than sound they cannot understand.

For the first videos, film more than you need in short clips instead of one long take, so the edit has choices: an opening line that says what the video is about, the main moment, a reaction, and an ending that tells people what to do next. When you send footage to an editor, send the original files from the phone, not copies saved from WhatsApp, which compresses them. Esteban's weekly Starter takes up to 10 minutes of footage per video. The guide to filming on a phone for an editor lists the shots in order.

Start with short videos, and add a vlog once you know what your audience likes. A short video takes an hour to film and tells you within days whether the idea works; a vlog takes a day to film and an evening or more to edit, so a new account learns much more slowly from it. Many creators use the vlog as the source: they film the whole day, post the vlog on YouTube, and cut three or four short clips from the same footage for Reels and TikTok.

To start a vlog, pick a format you can repeat, such as a day at work, a trip or a weekly routine, and film the beginning, the middle and the end of the day so the story has a shape. Esteban Moreno Media films and edits vlogs: editing is priced per video, and a full YouTube vlog falls in the calculator's YouTube band, $450–$850 per edit.

Yes. In the United States, the FTC's guidance for influencers says that any material connection to a brand, whether payment, a free product, a discount or an affiliate link, has to be disclosed clearly where viewers will notice it. In a video, that means saying it out loud and showing it on screen, not only adding a hashtag at the end of the caption where most people never look.

Use plain words such as "ad", "sponsored" or "the brand sent me this", and turn on Instagram's Paid partnership label or TikTok's content disclosure setting when a post is paid. Disclosing does not make a recommendation weaker; hiding it is what costs trust, and it is the creator's responsibility, not only the brand's. If you work with an editor, tell them which videos are sponsored so the on-screen disclosure is part of the edit from the start.

When you can keep filming but editing is what makes you miss weeks. Esteban Moreno Media edits short videos for creators and influencers, including accounts that are just starting: from $100 per video on the Starter package, or $85 a week for 1 video or $160 a week for 2 videos if you post every week, with a 4-week minimum and each weekly video delivered in 48–72 hours. Published market rates for a short-form edit run $100–$500 per video, so compare what each offer includes, not only the price.

Esteban is a video editor based in Fort Lauderdale who works remotely, in Spanish first with intermediate English, so you can send clips, voice notes and changes in Spanish. To start, send your topic, two or three videos' worth of original clips and where you post. The content creator editing page explains how a filming day becomes a week of posts.