It didn’t take long for Jessica Zollman to amass a giant following on Instagram. As the company’s fifth employee and 95th user of the app in 2011, she was in on the ground floor of the tech giant a year after its launch, advising users on best practices that are now ingrained in social media’s DNA. Naturally, scores of followers flocked to her account.

A photographer by trade, Zollman, 34, soon found herself swimming in opportunities for commercial work. So she left Instagram in 2013 and joined a photo and advertising agency, where she became a roving photographer shooting on behalf of brands and endorsing products with the occasional #sponsored post.

Her newfound Insta-fame quickly earned her a ride on a “beautiful, mysterious train, making a really, really impressive amount of money” as an influencer, she says. But four years later, the train had sputtered to a halt, leaving her scrambling financially.

“Market saturation happened,” she says. “People started noticing how lucrative doing that kind of work was, and so there became this new goal of becoming the influencer.” Brands weren’t paying as much because people would work for less – or even for free. “I had to lower my day rate. I had to work twice as hard for twice as less,” she says.