Profiling the micro-influencers of Australia: Andrew Morrey

Name: Andrew Morrey Instagram: @cheepjokes Followers: 52.5k

How did you start your journey on Instagram?

It essentially started as a way to get people across to my YouTube channel [of the same name]. The plan was to create a Lego sitcom. I then started doing stop motion videos on Instagram when they introduced that, but you couldn’t upload videos from your camera roll. So the stop motion that I was doing was literally hitting the record button for a split second at a time, and filming the whole thing in the Instagram app – it was pretty horrible and jerky. [Laughs]

Would you consider doing your work on social as a full-time gig?

I still have a day-time job. The stop motion work is more a hobby. The following is growing and it’s nice. But I would be afraid to do it as a full-time thing because of the way the industry moves, which is pretty unpredictable.

When did you think you could start to monetise your posts on Instagram?

About six months after I started four years ago, I got a paid commission job. A PR company in the US contacted me to make a paid video for Regal Cinemas. It was in line with The Lego Movie that was coming out. They asked me to make three 15-second videos for their social media channels and for me to share as well. That was my first paid job, which is when I realised that there was a market for that. But I didn’t have any jobs come through for a year after that [Laughs]. It wasn’t until I found Tribe that it became more regular.

How do you decide how much you should charge a brand for a post?

Initially I just went with what they offered me – I didn’t know any better than that. I based myself around that going forward, even though I had a few thousand more followers by then. I asked Tribe to get an idea. The Tribe app has a guide on that now. But a lot of it varies depending on the brand.

On average, I charge about $350 or $400 for a photo post. Then stop motion is higher because there are more production elements to it.