David Beckham and I are alike in countless ways. We are both carbon-based organisms, for example, and I can state with some degree of certainty that we have both been in a lift. However, despite our endless similarities, our lives do diverge in one very important way: Beckham can earn up to £228,000 just for posting something on Instagram and, well, I cannot.

Beckham has just been named the country’s best-paid social media influencer. He’s still small fry compared with the might of Kylie Jenner’s $1m-per-post fee but, nevertheless, earning multiple times the average national annual wage just for putting a photo on the internet is nothing to be sniffed at.

But why does he get all this money for Instagramming and I don’t? An investigation:

Follower count

It goes without saying that Beckham has more Instagram followers than I do. He has 49.7 million of them, all hanging on his every pixel; whereas I’ve got a paltry 4,755. But let’s do the maths here – £228,000 sounds a lot, but it means that Beckham is only being paid a fraction of a penny per follower when he does a sponsored post. Would I dupe my fans by selling my soul to a corporation for a similarly small amount? Are you kidding? Of course I would. Sign me up. No, really, sign me up. I’m cheap.

Products endorsed

As far as a cursory glance through his most recent posts reveal, Beckham’s Instagram account has three big sponsorship clients: Adidas, Tudor Watches and Kent & Curwen. This last one is especially interesting because, although Beckham co-owns the company, he doesn’t label the posts as being paid for. This apparent blurring of lines raises some questions about the ethics of the social media influencer.

The last two identifiable brands I featured on my Instagram account were Tropicana (from an article where I ate loads of trifle and then vomited), and Vintage Books, because they published my memoir Don’t Be A Dick, Pete, which came out in paperback last month. Did I receive a single payment for posting either image? No I didn’t, not even for the book, which Cosmopolitan magazine called “the funniest book of the year” and is still on sale at a very reasonable price. Beckham might have all the money, but I clearly have the moral high ground here. I cannot be bought. Unlike my book, which very much can.

Subject matter

OK, now I’m annoyed. Going from what we both post there is nothing – literally nothing – to separate Beckham’s Instagram account from mine. He posts pictures of his dad, and I post pictures of my dad. He posts pictures of himself taken by other people, and I post pictures of myself taken by other people. He posts pictures of his children, and I post so many pictures of my children that it’s likely to cause them several deep-seated psychological problems once they reach adulthood. Surely I should receive remuneration for this?

Really, and I’ve explored this with some degree of intensity, there are only a handful of things that separate @DavidBeckham and @StuHeritage on Instagram. First, he posts quite a lot about football and I do not. But then again football was his job, so it’s no different to me posting that time the Guardian Guide did a bad job of superimposing my face on to Mystic Meg’s body last year.

Second, his feed is full of pictures taken with his celebrity pals. Scroll back far enough and you’ll find pictures of Beckham with Prince William, Diego Maradona and the Stone Roses. But then again in October 2015 I posted a selfie taken with the man who came fifth in the 11th series of The X Factor. It got 80 likes, so who’s the real big shot here?

The only other thing I can think of is that Beckham is a globally recognised sporting hero famed for his charm and good looks, and I am a man paid to eat trifle for a newspaper. But that can’t be the reason why he gets paid a third of a million to use Instagram and I don’t, can it? Hardly.

• Stuart Heritage writes about film, TV and music for the Guardian