Thanks to Jeffree Star's experience in cosmetics development and his at times vicious honesty, his Jeffree Star Approved label has become one of the most coveted positive reviews a beauty brand can earn on YouTube.
But as you ought to know by now, some reviews come at a high price for brands — an extremely high price, depending on the YouTuber. In a Twitter rant set to expose how paid beauty review deals go down, Star revealed how high his price sticker can go.
Jeffree Star has never been afraid to tell you if a product is good, straight-up bad, or merely so-so.
But that in no way means he's never accepted money for a review.
That's not an inherently bad thing — it's how most beauty YouTubers make enough money to live, and it allows them to buy resources to make better content.
For honesty's sake, Star's been threatening to reveal the inner workings of paid beauty reviews for quite some time now.
We certainly know he has the power to following the NikkieTutorials and Too Faced incident.
Star didn't technically reveal Nikkie De Jager's payment, mind you. But he did threaten to reveal her collaboration contract with the brand and went silent for a few days. Shortly after, "drama" YouTubers got ahold of the paperwork from an anonymous source.
Anyway, back to now. This week, Star tweeted, "Remember how I was going to film a video exposing makeup brand deals? The brand I was working with just bitched out and canceled because they are worried that the price they pay me will upset their other clients..."
How much money is enough to make a brand go running when the amount gets revealed? A lot, evidently.
"This video idea is important and I find it funny how brands are afraid to expose the $$$ they pay influencers but it's advertising," he wrote. "Just like Pepsi paying to be in a movie... But makeup companies want it to be a secret. WHY? This brand offered me $165,000 to use their new product."
PARDON ME? ONE HUNDRED. SIXTY FIVE. THOUSAND DOLLARS.
That's an entire year's salary…for someone who's already rich.
Really, this should come as no surprise. YouTubers make hundreds of thousands to millions every year with brand deals, ad revenue, merchandise sales, and more. And Star is one of the highest-paid personalities on the entire platform.
But still. $165K. For one video.
"Hopefully I can find another company who would love the exposure as well as talk about the secrets and 'behind the scenes' about brand deals in the beauty industry," he continued. "2019 what's good? Who's not scared?"
He also clarified that the brand was afraid of that price sticker being revealed because Star was allegedly getting paid more for his review than other influencers were.
He also claimed that he doesn't pay any influencers to review Jeffree Star Cosmetics and never has.
"It's not my problem your formulas are bad, my audience only gets the TRUTH," he finished.
Still, it's healthy to question what product reviews might sound and look like after an influencer takes a paycheck that large.
Influencers, in general, jump through a lot of hoops to make paid advertisements look organic, and even the most objective of figures can be positively swayed by receiving a free product or charging a fee for a feature on their social media. That goes for us beauty journalists too.
But hey, you trust who you trust, I guess.
