Dog gets $130k fur fee
But online fame not guaranteed
JAMES HALL, NEWS.COM.AU COCONUT Rice Bear has a follower-following ratio most influencers could only dream of and it’s providing a lucrative income for the handsome samoyed. Well, for her owner anyway.
The white four-year-old pooch has amassed 363,000 Instagram followers but her internet reach doesn’t stop there.
She’s also on Facebook, Twitter, has a YouTube channel and even a TikTok profile.
“She’s the queen of San Francisco,” Coconut’s owner Chuck Lai told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It’s strange because people think they know her. We can’t walk down the street.”
Mr Lai has used the samoyed’s “playful and silly, but a little dramatic” charms to attract companies for sponsored posts. She’s been paid by a dog harness maker and even a personal finance website, earning about $150 per 10,000 followers.
Coconut’s savvy business team want to limit the sponsored posts to two a month. With her followers, that means she can pocket about $5400 a post, which adds up to a staggering potential annual income just shy of $130,000.
That’s about the same salary a general practitioner earns.
Coconut – well, Mr Lai – even sells merchandise on her website with items including a poster and a calendar. A mug with a photo of Coconut running beside the Golden Gate Bridge is fetching nearly $30. DOGGED EARNER: Pets with a large social media following can earn six-figure salaries for their owners, but there’s a lot of work involved.
Mr Lai said he originally created social media accounts as a fun way to document his best friend’s life.
Her audience accrued naturally until a Hong Kong social media website, 9GAG, posted one of her videos and the pooch’s followers shot up by 50,000.
Mr Lai told the publication he spends a couple of hours a day editing videos, constructing posts and engaging with the hundreds of thousands of fans.
I know what you’re thinking because I was thinking the same thing. My dog is obviously cuter than any other so surely I can turn a financial loss – thanks to all those trips to the vet with a gutful of sticks – into a money earner I’d otherwise need a medical doctor’s degree to pocket.
But Mr Lai says the changing Instagram algorithm makes it harder than ever to build a profitable following.
He told the San Francisco Chronicle that Instagram was still the most lucrative platform but said the video equivalent TikTok was now the easiest to grow an audience.
On the platform, you select a song to accompany your video and other users can stumble across your posts by searching for the music played.
Mr Lai says it means you’re much more likely to land in users’ feeds because of this.
Coconut is clearly a handsome pooch, but her owner doesn’t want his best friend taking all the credit for the lucrative income.
Mr Lai said most of the success was due to him building a connection with the huge following.
“Videos and captioning, that’s what everyone likes these days,” he said. “You’re giving a voice to your dog.”
Another San Francisco pooch, Boo the Pomeranian, was an online trailblazer.
Dubbed the ‘world’s cutest dog’, Boo amassed more than 16 million Facebook followers and released his own book, titled Boo: The Life of the World’s Cutest Dog, before dying earlier this year.
Grumpy Cat, real name Tardar Sauce, was one of the first pets to have her internet fame monetised after becoming a popular meme.
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