This influencer’s virtual academy is helping BIPOC creators navigate pay discrimination. It has a 5,200-person waitlist

PHILADELPHIA -- Janesha Moore wants you to know she wasn’t an overnight success. The Philadelphia fashion influencer created content for nine years before hitting it big in 2023, when her Instagram followers jumped from 30,000 to more than 170,000 in just a year.

During that time, she made over $110,000 from social media.

Her secret? Affiliate marketing, or when influencers receive a commission for directing followers to purchase products using, say, a specific Amazon link that will pay the creator driving traffic to the site. The practice — thought to have died alongside blogging — has been revived by influencers. Moore, who posts outfit ideas and style recommendations, includes a call-to-action with almost every video or photo: comment “NEED” and she’ll send links to everything in the post.

Now, Moore is teaching others that method through the Strategic Influencer Academy, a virtual community for BIPOC content creators looking to make a living without relying on advertising partnerships, a practice with a history of pay discrimination.

Enrollment begins at $997 and caps at 30 students who receive three to six months of personalized coaching from Moore, info sessions with popular e-commerce platform LTK, and a year’s access to an online library of 30-plus virtual lessons on...