She earns how much per post?!

Dubai-based businesswoman and beauty mogul Huda Kattan has topped the first ever Instagram Rich List: she’s the highest-earning influencer on the whole of Instagram.

The Influencer Rich list, created alongside a celebrity Rich List by Instagram scheduling tool HopperHQ, reports that Huda earns up to a staggering $18,000 (Dhs66,000) for a sponsored post (although she doesn’t do these often). Favouring Instagram over YouTube, the 33-year-old entrepreneur has turned her social media stardom into a growing business empire thanks to her beauty tutorials, famous matte lipsticks and product reviews. She also, however, often highlights the work of other up-and-coming make up artists for free, which is a huge boost for them (her form of pro-bono?).

Side note: Remember when she basically shut down Dubai Mall?

A post shared by Huda Kattan (@hudabeauty) on

The beauty businesswoman can endorse a product for a show-stopping fee of Dh66,000 per post, but her online footprint isn’t just about paid posts. In fact, Huda is conscious in the products she chooses to endorse, explaining in an interview last year that it’s better to do fewer paid posts in order to gain the trust of your followers. In the same week, Huda has also been named one of TIME magazine’s 25 most influential people on the Internet alongside J.K Rowling, Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian. She also ranked #3 on 2017’s Forbes top 10 beauty influencers earlier this year.

Here’s one of her typical videos (click to play):

A post shared by Huda Kattan (@hudabeauty) on

This social influence has allowed Huda Kattan’s self titled Huda Beauty line, which includes lip strobes, eye palettes and a highlighter kit, to become a top cosmetics line not just in the UAE, but across the globe, and Instagram’s power is only getting stronger. The same Hopper HQ survey found that one in 20 Instagram users now monetise their posts.

“With approximately 700 million active monthly users across the world, it offers a wealth of potential customers for brands that have the budget to harness the influence of the people on our lists, and a chance for people to make a real career out of ‘gramming’” said Mike Bandar, co-founder of Hopper HQ.

But transparency is key. Instagram recently announced a new rule highlighting all users who do create paid content, advertise that it is sponsored with a “paid partnership” label, to ensure that followers of popular channels know that content has been paid (unfortunately, it seems many still don’t do this).

– For more about Dubai straight to your newsfeed, follow us on Facebook.