A former 'Made In Chelsea' star raised £750,000 to help more people become influencers online

Zyper, the tech startup run by former "Made In Chelsea" star Amber Atherton, has raised a £750,000 seed round to help the company develop its app that it hopes will turn people into "an army of micro affiliates."

Right now brands pay famous, influential social media users for promotion and exposure online. Influencers might get paid in free products or money. But sponsored content is still a relatively closed off network restricted to famous people like vloggers and Instagram stars.

Atherton, however, wants to make it easier for people to be paid to post online. Zyper said in its press release that it wants social media users to be able to earn "content creation air miles" for their posts that can be redeemed for rewards.

It sounds similar to Klout, the San-Francisco startup that measures influence and rewards the most influential people with perks. Atherton, however, doesn't see the comparison. "Klout's execution and timing was wrong," she told Business Insider. "There is still a massive opportunity in understanding personal brand influence and peer-to-peer networks. Klout sort of of felt like Linkedin with an influence score."

Zyper says it uses its algorithms to identify influence on a "granular" level, regardless of the number of followers someone has.

Could the growth of Zyper cause social media sites to become saturated with more and more sponsored posts? "There will definitely be a rise in spon [sponsored] posts as brands leverage peer-to-peer endorsements but ultimately people need their feeds to remain engaging, and just a tirade of spon posts will lose you engagement, followers and authenticity — it's got to be balanced," Atherton said.

"Zyper is about being an exclusive ambassador for the brands you love for a longer period of time which builds trust and a greater recommendation conversion."

A video of Zyper's prototype app shows that users progress though levels based on their "Zyper points."