TikTok economy: calculating the expenses and incomes of the popular TikToker

Why do Tiktokers earn so much? How to get popular? How much should you invest in your project, and how much can it bring? Our American colleagues asked about this the popular tiktoker Snarky Marky , which recently crossed the 4 million subscriber mark.

In 2020, he was just a college student and lived with his parents in Toronto. Now he is popular not only in Canada, but all over the world: the tiktok he made went viral. He now has 4.3 million subscribers and his own business. Snarki Markey told us how it all works and talked about his income, not hiding a dollar. His word.

I never had huge internet ambitions, but I wanted to do something in the comedy genre or life style, like blogging or somehow showing people my life.

My channel turned out to be in the genre of improvisation - this is what I like to do, and I can quickly create a “tenacious” character image. I tried to improvise on YouTube, but it turned out that it kills too much time: you need to edit the video. TikTok is an ideal application: it is much more democratic, you don't need any special skills, you don't have to worry about editing. That's how I started working on TikTok in August 2019.

I came up with a character - this is a school teacher. She constantly argues with students and is indignant. The audience quickly fell in love with her, and I gained a couple of hundred thousand subscribers.

By February 2020, when I posted the most popular video in the teacher series, I had about 700,000 subscribers. This is a huge amount. But with this video, I was somehow able to reach even more people. The video has become a meme. People in the comments raved about my video. This success was so crazy and fast that now I would say it is a surreal experience.

I can pass by something very boring and mundane, for example, it can be a store. And suddenly I start thinking how to turn it on in tick-tock. Sometimes I jot down ideas in my note-taking app. For example, a new series of videos will be about office workers.

Sometimes my dad, for example, tells how his day went. It can be some simple, even boring everyday things. But I've already noticed a couple of details that I will take and add to my video. In general, my parents were very involved in the work on my channel. My father is my right hand on tik tok. My mom is also in the subject. I feel their support and I am glad that they understand what I am doing. Not surprising, because they live with me, and they constantly have to listen to me recording.

When the authors of large tik-tok channels began buy followers on tiktok, I realized that even one viral video can bring real financial benefits.

If they make deals, the day is not far off when they start offering me advertising contracts. And so it happened.

When a channel begins to actively recruit subscribers, its author gets a manager. Mine only recently came to me. TikTok also has a Creative Writers Foundation, which sets aside decent sums for content creation depending on the topic of the channel. Unfortunately, this fund is not yet working in Canada, which is very frustrating.

I have heard that some authors receive five figures from the Foundation. My manager is looking for commercial orders. He brings me suggestions from a couple of brands that have reached out to him. I choose brands that I think fit my style and audience. Then we agree on one video, or a series of integrations.

Therefore, if you have 2 million subscribers, you should be getting at least $ 2,000 per post.

My friends and I don't go below that number, and it's my manager's job to raise that rate. So far, my maximum that I have earned from a deal with the brand is just over $ 30,000. I made two tick-tocks and re-posted them to my Instagram. To be honest, it was a completely random and cosmic deal for me. My average level is $ 10,000 - $ 20,000, 15 percent of which goes to the manager.

We often discuss what kind of deals we make and how much money we get paid. Sometimes I see messages like, "Oh, I just got a $ 300 deal with a company." And I look at the number of subscribers, and there are almost a million. I'm like: Oh God, no! I immediately write to these authors: "Hey, you are worth much more than $ 300. Please go back to negotiations and raise the prices."

I try very hard to maintain this figure, one hundred to one hundred thousand, because I don't like it when people are deceived.

I have another project - Cameo. These are personalized videos on demand. I write them down for everyone, according to the schedule. It turns out from one to four a day. I have received over 800 requests lately. I charge $ 21 for these videos, which is roughly $ 25 CAD. The platform gets 25 percent. I started making more of these videos when the pandemic started. I realized that not everyone is doing well with money now, because many people have lost their jobs or quit. So I dropped the price to $ 10.

I also sell merchandise. I love student clothes, no matter what school or university it is, I still wear their merch. Since one of my characters is a teacher, I figured this varsity style would do just fine. So the collaboration started, I got my own merch: a sweatshirt - $ 55, and a T-shirt - $ 25.

But I'm not really talking about money. I don't spend a lot, and generally not too materialistic. I made my first money at the grocery store. I worked there for a little over two years. It was such a great job. To be honest, I miss this. The minimum wage where I come from in Ontario is $ 14 an hour. This rate got me thinking about how people's time is sold for money. I thought, okay, an hour's worth of $ 14. So if I buy this pair of pants for $ 70, is it five hours of work? These are good questions to ask yourself. They taught me to understand how valuable every dollar is.

I understand very well why some creatives spend money to look fashionable or presentable. The Internet works like that. And also - he is very subjective.

There is an analogy with a duck: have you seen how it swims? It seems that it just glides on the water, gracefully and calmly, right? Have you seen her paws underwater? This is a frantic struggle and a battle with the current for the opportunity to swim so gracefully.

Tiktokers are the same. They fight, they fight. But I don't have a ton of clothes. I just wear the same things. I don't need a lot of brand and new things: I just erase the old. Do you think someone will blame me for this? Let be. It's on his conscience. People on the Internet love to jump to conclusions.

This is because I want to ride the wave of Tiktok's success as long as possible. But I am smart enough to be realistic. Look at the best content creators on the Internet from five years ago, how many are still the best today? If you follow their work, you will see that each had its own peak, and each fell from that peak. If my views start dropping, I can get over it. I am so grateful for everything I received. Even if I don't have any views or subscribers right tomorrow, they've already done enough for me.