Discover How a 20-Year-Old Earns $4,000 Monthly with This Effortless Side Hustle

“SOFIA! … The camera lens looks greasy as s**t… Posting this was pointless.”

It might be brute honesty, but more than 600,000 people flock to Evan Gray Smith’s Instagram and TikTok to get very forthright advice on how to up their social media game. 

Meet the outspoken Pace University student who’s become notorious for critiquing Instagram profiles, especially those that misuse emojis for story highlight names. And he’s turning a tidy profit from it.

Such is the demand for the 20-year-old’s expertise on Instagram aesthetics that he’s begun charging his followers $25 for a personalized review.

And they’re more than willing to pay for his insights.

What began as a high school pastime in Massachusetts has evolved into a lucrative side gig. Back then, it was popular to poke fun at friends’ social media pages, but Smith saw an opportunity to elevate the concept by offering more constructive criticism.

‘I was like, what if I do kind of a more constructive version, where I reconstruct their feeds and tell them what I want them to change? Because I’ve just always been so hyper-fixated on what mine looks like,’ he told the Daily Mail. 

He started with his friends, and eventually, he had hundreds and hundreds of comments from strangers asking him to do theirs. 

More than 600,000 people flock to Evan Gray Smith’s social media pages to get advice on how to level up their Instagram profiles. He makes up to $4,000 a month doing it 

Smith would rate his own grid an 8.75 out of 10 and said he takes his color scheme very seriously. He calls his Instagram a ‘little art project for me’ 

Smith’s grid showcases whatever he is up to in his daily life. He admits it is not a perfect 10 out of 10

By Fall 2022, he had to become more selective with what requests he fulfilled to keep up with demand. 

He started charging $3, allowing his followers to boost themselves to the top of his review list. Slowly, the price got higher and higher, jumping to $5, then $7, and now $25. 

The now-college junior hasn’t seen a slowdown in demand either. He has a sign-up form, which is only open for short periods, and roughly 40 paying customers will make it before it closes. Then, he sets off to make 20 videos, two profiles per video. 

He now makes $1,000 alone just from one cycle’s sign-up. 

But Smith makes the majority of his money from the tens of thousands of views his videos get. 

One of his recent Instagram ratings TikTok video – labeled part 1,206 – raked in 100,400 views in less than 24 hours. His other video, posted just an hour before that, got 16,600 views. 

‘She wouldn’t be picking up butterflies, let’s be f**king for real,’ he said, while reviewing a woman named Grace’s page, who had herself sleeping as the profile picture and a photo of her holding a butterfly on her grid. 

‘Delete this one, I f**king hate aquarium photos,’ he said as he worked his way further down Grace’s page. 

He gives his honest opinions on pages, such as suggesting a user deletes certain photos, changes their highlight names, and rearrange their grid. It takes him 1.5 hours to make a video from start to finish and it will pull in tens of thousands of views 

‘SOFIA! … The camera lens looks greasy as s**t… There was no point in posting this,’ he told one user during one video 

‘Why would you choose the one with the f**king glare?’ he said of the second subject of the video, Xavier. ‘I can’t even tell what’s going on.’ 

His brutally honest takes earn him up to $4,000 a month, he told the Daily Mail. 

The majority of his money is made through the TikTok Creator Rewards Program, as most of his videos are over a minute long and he boasts far more than the follower count needed to enroll.

On the lower end, he takes home $2,800 a month. All for an hour and a half worth of work per video. 

He starts by taking screenshots of two people’s pages, ones he hasn’t seen before starting the video. Then he spends 30-40 minutes analyzing their profile. After that, he takes around 30 minutes to record his footage and another 30 minutes to edit. 

Done. Post. Two times a day. 

‘Even though the series is kind of a little harsh, and there’s obviously a bit of making fun, it’s all [with] good intentions,’ Smith, who bartends part-time, told the Daily Mail. 

‘It’s for the fun of it. Everybody who’s paying for the ratings knows what I do, how I talk in the other videos. It’s meant to be a joke while still getting that aesthetic that you’re looking for.’ 

Some of Smith’s advice include diversifying photos, including solos and group pictures  

He also recommends including architectural shots as well to balance out the grid. ‘A lot of people enjoy scrapbooking. This is kind of like a digital scrapbook,’ he told the Daily Mail 

He understands the demand for aesthetic content and the pressure to look cool and fun on social media.

‘I think it definitely highlights the best moments, but that’s kind of what Instagram’s for,’ Smith told the Daily Mail. ‘Those are the ones that you want to remember. 

‘If I have a photo that I don’t necessarily love of myself, but I think it’s a really fun picture, and it has great memories, I’m still going to put that in. Like, I’m not as hyper-fixated on my appearance as I am, like, the vibe.’  

And those who are coming to him for advice also care about the grid’s aesthetic as much as he does. 

‘I think the pressure comes from the people who also care,’ he said. ‘I think that there is a demand for people to now be aesthetic with their content, but that’s if you care about the content that you’re putting out.

‘A lot of people enjoy scrapbooking. This is kind of like a digital scrapbook.’ 

Plenty of his close friends don’t care about their grids or the way their page looks overall. And he understands some people post infrequently and only really highlight big moments, like a wedding or a graduation. 

But for those posting multiple times a year, and creating story highlights, ‘they’re going to put effort into it and they’re going to care about what it looks like,’ Smith said.

Smith shared his top tips for what people should and shouldn’t do on their Instagram profile 

Smith shared a photo of himself at the beach. He is planning a trip to Italy with some of the money he has earned from his side hustle

And he does have his best dos and don’ts for those looking to curate their pages a little more. 

Do: Have your face in your profile picture (‘because that’s exactly what the profile picture is used for’), keep your bio short and sweet and keep emojis to a minimum, keep your highlight names short and consisting of words, and have an array of shots from solos to group photos to architecture. 

Oh, and commit to a color scheme. 

‘The best thing you can do is transition between those colors, and try to keep it consistent for an extended period of time, so that it doesn’t look all over the place,’ he said. 

Don’t: Do borders, collages (‘it’s just not my cup of tea’), harsh filters, lots of editing, and posting aesthetic photos that are pulled from Pinterest. 

‘Those pictures are inspiration, they’re not meant to be stolen,’ he lamented. ‘Just go ahead and duplicate it, or kind of copy it yourself in your own way, and add your own twist on it, rather than just stealing the actual picture.’ 

And despite claiming to be the ‘Instagram bible,’ Smith does not think his own page is a perfect 10 out of 10. He calls it a ‘little art project’ and rated it an 8.75 out of 10.

But, he says, his page is authentically him. His followers will see him doing an array of things and him living life, traveling, going on dates with his boyfriend, and hanging out with his friends. 

The 20-year-old college student, who also bartends, is now investing his money with the help of his dad

‘And I want them to also see the color scheme,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘I think that’s my main thing that I care about. 

‘So, if I get a compliment on my Instagram, it’s not like: “That photo of you is so good.” It’s like: “Oh my god, that color scheme, this section of your feed just looks so good.”‘ 

‘Like, that’s what I look for.’ 

Despite his success as a New York City influencer, Smith doesn’t plan on making this gig his full-time job long-term. 

The college student, who is studying media and communications, is hoping to find a way to take his viral ratings system and make a long-term impact somewhere in marketing. 

But for now, his dad is helping him invest his money, but he’s also splurging on a spring break trip to Florence, Italy.

‘I do have money put aside, because this income might not last forever, and I might as well make the best of it.’ 

Evan Gray Smith’s analysis of a Daily Mail reporter’s Instagram 

Smith looked at Daily Mail reporter Alyssa Guzman’s Instagram and told her what she was doing right and wrong.

I’ll admit, I didn’t take all of Smith’s advice after our sit down, but I did take some of it. 

If you had asked me prior to chatting with him if I thought Smith would approve of my profile, I would have said I had a pretty good chance of getting it. 

My highlight names contained no emojis, I had a semblance of a color scheme throughout my grid, and it looked cohesive. It looked like a girl in her 20s living in NYC. 

So, what did I do wrong? 

Well, for starters, despite having no emojis, my highlight names contained the word ‘highlights.’ 

Strike one. 

‘It’s kind of implied that it’s a highlight,’ the 20-year-old told me. 

Strike two: Too many solo shots. 

Alyssa Guzman’s grid before (left) and after (right) Smith’s advice

‘There’s definitely a few too many solos,’ he told me. ‘I want to see more of an array of landscapes on your covers as well.’ 

He advised me that I could have used an exterior shot of the Upstate New York bookstore I was at, rather than a back-facing shot of myself to ‘separate the multiple solos’ in a row. 

Strike three: My Reels covers. 

One of my videos showed a 12-point grid with a photo from every month of a specific year. Smith, personally, prefers to banish borders – or any semblance of it – from the grid. 

‘I feel like if there’s not a specific cover that looks like a photo on the feed, I always just remove it from my profile grid,’ he advised me. 

So, I quickly opted to change the cover photo to a picture of my friend and me on New Year’s Eve.

At the end of the day, Smith lives up to the self-given moniker of being the ‘Instagram bible’ as the 20-year-old truly does have an eye for the aesthetic.