Lakinya Francis is building a LinkedInHaley Sanchez will be expanding her email lists and Michael Elefante intends to expand his website.

Francis runs a company which helps people to make money by vending machines.

Influencers, who have relied on Instagram to advertise, promote and sell their products for years, are now rethinking the places they put their content.

CNBC interviewed 10 small-business owners and creators of online content. FacebookFor this story, you can use either its Instagram, WhatsApp, or combination thereof. The losses they suffered during Facebook’s outage varied from just a few dollars up to more than $5,000 From sales, affiliate links and sponsored posts to product launches.

It is an example of the extent to which Facebook can influence the online economy. People who depend on Facebook to advertise or do their jobs can suffer losses even if there is a minor outage. Even worse is a six-hour record outage.

Zuckerberg invests in small business owners and creators

Santosh Janardhan, vice president for infrastructure at Facebook, has apologized. the mass outage in a blog postTuesday night. Janardhan claimed that “configuration changes” were the reason for services being lost, though he did not give details.

It’s more than 200 million businesses actively use Facebook’sInstagram has many tools that allow content creators to use it for sales, sponsored posts, affiliate links and revenue. The outage happened as Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and TikTok make aggressive efforts to encourage and woo content creators. SnapchatOther social media platforms, such as.

In an attempt to rival TikTok’s short video features, Instagram released Reels last year. Zuckerberg announced recently that the company will pay $1 billion. 2022 to users who create content for both Facebook and Instagram. Facebook said that it would not accept a cut. creator features like online events and fan subscriptions until 2023And announced new ways theyInstagram could bring in some serious cash this April

“Investing into creators isn’t something new for us. However, I’m excited to grow this work over time,” said he. wrote on FacebookThis year, earlier.

Facebook and Instagram will refund those who have paid for advertising through them on Monday. Michael Heller is the CEO of Talent Resources and the founder. Talent Resources works closely with influencers.

Alexa Vogue (Vice President of Brand Partnerships at TTPM Influencer Talent Management) stated that campaign posts for influencers and companies scheduled for Monday will be moved to Tuesday or Friday in the case of glitches. She adds that a YouTube outage or TikTok disruption, which her clients are paid per view of, could have led to more financial loss.

She said, “Yes, it was a wake up call. But in the grand scheme things influencers who are successful will always succeed.”

Diversification is essential

Instagram is popular among small- and medium-sized businesses as well as creators. Instagram is easy to communicate with users using stories and direct messaging. It also offers more targeted communities of followers who convert into sales.

The majority of respondents to CNBC’s influencer survey said that they plan on building their website and diversifying which platforms they use. Others used TwitterTikTok, email and TikTok can be used to increase sales and reach audiences throughout the shutdown.

Francis is the founder of the company and plans to use LinkedIn and email lists. This tool helped her sell some products during Monday’s outage.

Sanchez owns a candle shop and the outage occurred during busy holiday season. Sanchez uses Instagram regularly to update her customers with stories, tag products and redirect people to her Shopify shop.

Sanchez explained, “That is where I am making my business,” I don’t make hundreds of sales per day. This is my full-time work, even though I own a small candle company. Even if it means I lose three sales, I still consider that important.”

Monday was her day to contact customers, build up her email database and prepare for any future outages.

Elliott Elkhoury is a resource seller for real estate investors. He estimates that he lost between $3,000 and $5,000 Monday due to inability to run advertisements and missing traffic on his platform.

Heller estimates that losses due to Monday’s advertising spending and brand content were in the thousands of millions. According to Heller, the financial impact on clients was likely to be between $3 million and $4 million.

Michael Elefante is a short-term renter who also teaches other people how to do them. His losses are estimated at between $1500 and $2,500 via affiliate links. He’s now going to concentrate on his website and direct mail messaging.

John Eringman is a financial content writer with more than 50,000 Instagram followers and over 1.2 million TikTok users. He estimates that he has lost around a hundred dollars. He was able to do this through both book sales and individual coaching sessions via Instagram.

Eringman is diversifying his business through TikTok’s following and the creation of a website. However, Eringman could have lost $2,500 if Wednesday’s outage continued.

He says that social media has a life span. You should be in control of your audience, not Facebook and Instagram.