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How Do Celebrities Really Make Their Money?

How Do Celebrities Really Make Their Money?

If you believe celebrities are making their money off their good looks, you’d be right. But there’s actually a lot more that goes into filling the bank accounts of the famous.

Fame is a game and only those who know how to play it well stay in the limelight. It’s often said that any publicity is good publicity, and for the celebrities who want to retain their status, the maxim couldn’t be any truer.

You know who celebrities are because they’re always being talked about. They’re household names, they’re the punchline of jokes, they’re the center of attention … and this means that the attention, while full of praise in some respects, can also involve plenty of ridicule.

Celeb life often looks luxurious, and though many famous people do get to spend a lot of time hitting tropical waters and luxuriating in elaborate and decadent lifestyles, how many celebrities make their money might come as a surprise.

Literature

It doesn’t matter who the famous man or woman is, if the person has a bankable name, people will constantly come out of the woodwork at them, trying to get them to sign some sort of deal. There’s a range of options, but at the very least, celebrities can hold out for a book deal, or latch onto other literary types of outlets to bring in their money.

The goal is always about maintaining widespread interest in your name and your brand as a celebrity. If you let people blog about you and give them exclusive interviews, if you publish a biography about your life, if you let somebody make a movie, that’s likely to be all good for you.

If you’re high profile but your name isn’t enough to bring in the dough, you have to find other cash cows to keep yourself fed.

Clothing Lines

There are many types of people who have no interest in reading a blog or autobiography about a celebrity. Famous people know they have to reach out to as many markets as they can, though. For people who aren’t interested in reading, celebrities may cut a deal to come out with a branded line of clothing.

They’re rarely capable of actually designing the clothing. Instead, a company will often come to the famous person with a pitch that says something like: “If you let us use your name, we’ll give you X amount of the profit”.

All the celebrity has to do is sign off on the designs and show up for photo shoots. The list of celebs who have done this to bring in extra dough is astounding. But it’s part of the package of being a celebrity, it seems.

Fragrances

As we said earlier, the world market is full of niches that are waiting to be discovered and filled. If writing books and having a clothing line or two isn’t enough, celebrities will often find themselves exploring the fragrance line.

You know you have a fragrance or two in your collection that boasts the name of a celebrity. Many people around the world want to identify themselves with folks of prominence who seem to have it all.

If a perfume or cologne is the way to do that, so be it. If you’re not sporting Brittany Spears or David Beckham, are you even a legitimate part of society, bro?

Photo Shoots

Last but certainly not least, celebrities make money off of photo shoots. They are in the business of selling themselves, after all.

They are the brand. They are the business. Their name, their look, their face, their body is the thing that makes them money. The reality of this is evident in the selling of books, biographies, clothing lines and perfume, but it’s mostly evident by the photoshoots. Celebs sell products for a living. Celebrity endorsements are the cash cow of the lifestyle.

The next time you find yourself wanting to be a celebrity, think about whether you want your name to be the prison that traps you in a lifestyle of performance, with everybody pulling on you for everything. It’s actually not an easy gig.

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