- Jessica Ufuoma fell in love with travel in her mid-20s after moving from Nigeria to Canada.
- She became a full-time content creator when her income from brand deals overtook her corporate salary.
- Ufuoma shares her sponsored-content rates for Instagram and what she’s been offered on Threads.
Some days, Jessica Ufuoma still can’t believe brands pay her to travel and post about her trips.
“I’ve been doing this seriously since 2018 and it still feels unreal sometimes,” she told Insider.
While growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, Ufuoma wasn’t really interested in visiting other countries — until she turned 24 and moved to Canada for a master’s program in international business. As a part of her degree, she had to live in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Peru for three months each.
She fell in love with travel during that 2015 trip to Peru, the Canada-based creator said. The trip also opened her eyes to how she was usually the only Black woman on her tours, like one she took to visit Machu Picchu. That’s when she decided to start posting about her solo trips on Instagram and created a blog.
“My thought was that if I publicly share what my experiences are like, more people who look like me would want to travel,” she said. “Back in 2015, there wasn’t a lot of representation in the travel space like there is now.”
Now, 31-year-old Ufuoma is a full-time travel creator with 128,000 followers on Instagram, and who has visited 50 countries. This year, she’s made $50,500 through brand deals as of early August 2023, according to documentation verified by Insider.
She paid for her first few trips after Peru with savings, but now her travels are mainly funded by brands, who cover her travel expenses to new destinations or pay her to post sponsored content. Even though her main platform is Instagram, she’s recently started getting requests to post on Threads, as well.
Ufuoma started gaining followers and brand interest by pivoting her social-media strategy
When Ufuoma first started documenting her travels, she was determined to visit as many countries as she could — but on a budget.
She had been setting aside money from each paycheck for travel, since completing her master’s program in 2016 and landing a position with telecommunications company Nokia.
She would usually post a single photo of the countries she visited with a short caption.
“There were no stories, no carousel posts, no reels, or anything back then,” she said.
Ufuoma would get questions in her comments from people who wanted to know how she afforded her trips, specific places she visited, and more. In 2018, when she had about 3,000 Instagram followers, she changed her social-media strategy to include longer, more informative captions. These captions focused on tips for others who wanted to travel to the country instead of describing the photos she posted. She also started consistently posting on stories once the format became available.
“It became less about me and more about my audience and what they wanted to know,” she said.
After two months of that approach, she secured her first brand deal. A travel insurance company paid her $300 to post one photo to her Instagram feed and describe the importance of their product.
As her following grew and more brands started reaching out, Ufuoma began negotiating and landing more lucrative opportunities, including sponsored trips and work with airlines and even cruise ships. In July, she went on a cruise with Virgin Voyages to Greece, Croatia, and Montenegro where the company paid for her travel in exchange for her posting content throughout the journey.
Last November, Ufuoma quit her full-time job at Nokia to focus on content creation. The income from her brand deals by that point in 2022 had surpassed her six-figure corporate salary.
“It wasn’t an easy decision because as an immigrant, quitting the safety net is just not what our parents have taught us to do,” she said. ” I decided to just take the leap because if I didn’t take a chance now, I was never going to do it.”
How much she charges for sponsored content and why she’s turned down brand deals on Threads
Ufuoma was intrigued by Threads when it launched early in July because the app is the latest from Instagram.
The day after she downloaded it, a brand sent her an Instagram DM offering to pay $1,200 in exchange for a single sponsored post on Threads. Ufuoma turned down the deal because she didn’t think it would sit well with her audience, who she said seemed to be enjoying the “ad-free” nature of the app.
“Most people on my feed were saying that they were so happy how Threads didn’t have any ads, so sometimes it’s just a matter of reading the room and seeing what your followers resonate with,” she said. “It just didn’t seem like the right time.”
Soon after, a brand she had previously worked with reached out asking if she would post a Thread in support of their business. They would pay her $500 for the post. Since she had a good working relationship with that company, she considered the proposal and tried to negotiate a rate of $1,500, plus some other terms and conditions. Ultimately, she turned the deal down because they couldn’t come to an agreement.
“A lot of experiences in the past have taught me that I’ve been lowballed, and being a creator of color definitely factors into that,” she said. “I want to be paid exactly what I’m worth, so I’m not settling for anything less.”
Currently, Ufuoma packages her Instagram content as “silver,” “gold,” and “premium”:
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Silver: $5,000 minimum for one in-feed post and three stories
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Gold: $7,500 minimum for one in-feed post, five stories, and one reel
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Premium: $12,000 minimum for three in-feed posts, five stories, two reels, and a link in bio for one week
The final rates, she said, depend on factors like usage rights, specific deliverables, timelines, and how much she personally likes the brand.
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