And for years, influencers did make real money on the platform. Nikolai said that he earned a healthy five-figure sum per year through twtMob and later Speakr, by posting sponsored tweets about Samsung and several movie studios. “They facilitated well-paying sponsorships, and I always got paid,” Nikolai said.

Since then, Speakr has continued to grow. In 2016, the company signed a lucrative partnership deal with Time Inc., which launched an influencer network “powered by” Speakr. “Why we chose Speakr is because they’re really smart ... They have an edge there in their space, and they give us that edge in our space, as well,” Regina Buckley, Time Inc.’s senior vice president of digital business development, said at the time. (Time Inc. did not respond to several requests for comment.) 2017 saw the company’s profile rise even further, and Hansell became a go-to quote for reporters writing about his growing industry. In one private Facebook group in which influencers discuss deals, Speakr was mentioned as a reliable platform.

According to influencers who spoke with me, the trouble with the company started between late 2017 and spring 2018. Suddenly, checks weren’t coming on time. Brandi Jeter Riley completed a campaign for Speakr in December 2017 and expected to receive payment within 30 days, she says. By April, the money still hadn’t arrived, so she resorted to tweeting at Hansell. “Hello! Congrats on being a 7-Figure #ecommerce company! Could you please help me get paid for a program that I did with you all in December?” she tweeted on April 24. She also emailed the company and took to Facebook, leaving a one-star review on Speakr’s page. “Speakr has not paid me for services I provided in 2017. They are not responsive to emails. For a company that needs influencers to support their business, they certainly don’t seem to value us,” she wrote. Finally, on April 30, she says the company rendered payment.

As the months went on, more influencers began to have issues. Some, like JoJoe, were told by a Speakr account executive that payments would be arriving shortly, only to receive radio silence when they tried to follow up. Erin Sullivan, an outdoors-focused influencer with 65,000 followers on Instagram, tweeted in early September that she had yet to receive payment for a campaign she did months ago. Ariane Andrew, an Instagram fitness star with more than 800,000 followers, posted a tweet promoting 23andMe in July for $750 and says she also had not been paid by September. Last week, she finally received the $750 she was owed, but says that at this point she feels entitled to more given the time she spent trying to track down her money.

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Jason Horton posted a tweet about the movie Second Act in July for $100. He told me he was only paid in November after “escalating my emails to the point where I was going to show up at their office.” All in all, he spent hours of his time tracking down his money. “It was a lot of work,” he said. “A lot of checking back ... I did the work in a very timely way, so I expect to get paid in a timely way.”

We have to stop letting folks take advantage of us, y’all. Like... seriously. I don’t want to be on Twitter tweeting at brands about unpaid invoices (hey, @speakr ), but if they don’t respond via email, what should I do? — Brandi Jeter Riley (@BrandiJeter) April 26, 2018

Cassie Garcia, a lifestyle influencer, also did work for Speakr over the summer. By November 5, she says she hadn’t been paid. “It’s like pulling teeth to get a straight answer from @speakr,” she tweeted at the time.