For years, quitting your job to become a social media influencer belonged in the same category as moving to Hollywood or trying to make the NFL: technically possible but probably best attempted by other people.
Now, for a growing number of young workers, it feels like a more plausible career pivot.
The rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels and Amazon storefronts has created a new kind of white-collar exit strategy — one in which workers ditch office jobs not necessarily to become celebrities, but to piece together an income online through brand deals, affiliate links and highly personal videos documenting everyday life.
In many cases, the followers necessary to sustain a living are smaller (and more attainable) than people might assume. A small but loyal audience can now generate enough income to rival a midlevel salary. Welcome to the middle-class creator economy.
Last year, 25-year-old Abi Platock balanced a corporate marketing job in New York while posting online in her spare time. She built her audience by posting one or two videos a day, offering career advice, beauty tips and daily vlogs.
“I signed my first brand deal in the four-figure range, and for me that was just such a big eye-opening moment,” Platock says of her partnership with deodorant brand Secret. She had only 8,000 followers on TikTok at the time. “You can totally make it work without having hundreds of thousands of followers.”
Platock, who now has roughly 25,000 followers across platforms, has signed about $25,000 in brand deals so far this year and expects her annual creator income to reach around $50,000 by yearend.
Her experience reflects a broader shift in advertising. Brands are increasingly moving money toward so-called microinfluencers — smaller online personalities who have less than 100,000 followers.
“They are hiring a bunch of microcreators at scale instead of hiring a handful of macrocreators for what could potentially be the same cost,” says Ali Grant, co-chief executive officer of the Digital Department, a creator management company.
And they perform where it matters most: engagement. An engagement rate of 3% is considered strong, and some microinfluencers exceed 10%, Grant says of the closely watched metric that tracks how often followers interact with content through likes, comments, shares and saves.
Microinfluencers average a 3.2% engagement rate, almost triple the 1.1% rate for macroinfluencers (more than 1 million followers), according to growth marketing agency ATTN. And though macroinfluencers generate roughly six times more revenue, their associated costs can reach about 18 times higher, according to an American Marketing Association study.
A TikTok partnership with a creator who has around 50,000 followers can run a brand more than $3,500 for a single post, Grant says; with 10 times the followers, that fee might just triple, to around $10,000.
Bonsa Nemera spends his weekdays working 12-hour shifts at a government-run dental clinic in New York. In his spare time, he posts content on TikTok and Instagram spanning oral-care tips to food reviews for his roughly 100,000 followers. The 28-year-old resident dentist has a $76,000 annual salary and says he’s signed around $180,000 in deals from content work so far this year.”I almost doubled what I would have made in a year at my full-time job in two months,” he says. Nemera says his professional credibility resonates with both audiences and brands. His viewers are especially receptive to his personal finance content, where he offers money-management and investing advice, despite no formal training. The posts have landed him partnerships with major financial technology companies such as Inuit Inc.’s Credit Karma and Block Inc.’s Cash App. As his online presence grows, he says he expects to cut back on his hours practicing dentistry.
“I treat content creation the same way I treat dentistry,” he says, “if not more seriously.”
The influencer marketing economy ballooned to a projected $33 billion in 2025 up from $1.7 billion in 2015. The segment gained momentum after the Covid-19 pandemic, as dissatisfaction with traditional work pushed many to reconsider conventional career paths, says Brooke Duffy, a professor of communications at Cornell University. “They realized the trade-offs in terms of the investments of time, energy and human capital were not necessarily worth sacrificing so much of one’s personal self for,” she says.
Success online can bring greater freedom — and even higher pay than many traditional office jobs, which have a median US salary of $69,000, according to Glassdoor. But the middle-class hustle still requires constant effort to maintain. The career has no promise of lifetime longevity. And unlike traditional workers, creators have no predictable paycheck or job protections, making career stability elusive.
Roughly 57% of 3,000 surveyed full-time creators earn below a living wage from content creation, according to a report last year from Influencer Marketing Hub. Income from social media can fluctuate wildly from month to month, driven by shifts in algorithms, sponsorship cycles and platform trends.
“You could have a month where you make zero dollars, or you could have a month where you make $10,000,” Platock says.
That volatility is one reason Grant, whose marketing agency represents more than 300 influencers, typically only signs creators earning at least $200,000 a year, a threshold she views as evidence of an established business.
Nemera, who expects to make more than $450,000 from content this year with a major ramp-up before the holidays, says he has doubts about the creator economy’s future but plans to stay in the industry as long as he can. “I’ve started treating creating like a business where I’m really just trying to spend as little as I can in order to grow,” he says.
Even with the support of a talent manager, Platock also has reservations about going all-in on social media. As income from TikTok and Instagram began approaching her monthly salary, she decided to leave her full-time role behind; but she supplements her influencing income with a part-time job in marketing and by teaching Pilates.
As influencing has become more lucrative, it’s also sparked debate over how much work the job requires. In 2022 a video resurfaced of beauty influencer Mikayla Nogueira — who now has 17.4 million TikTok followers — complaining about the demands of her work.
“Try being an influencer for a day because the people that say it’s easy are so far out of their minds,” she said in the now-deleted post. The backlash was immediate, with thousands of viewers accusing Nogueira of being out of touch.
“There’s a stigma against complaining,” Cornell’s Duffy says, “because influencers purportedly have these dream jobs.”
Gallup Poll data released last year found employee engagement in the US had fallen to its lowest level in a decade, with more workers describing themselves as “struggling” rather than “thriving.” Among the hardest-hit groups were Generation Z and workers in finance and technology. Broader workplace challenges, including rapid organizational change, hybrid and remote work transitions, and rising employee expectations are considered drivers of the overall trend.
For many workers, influencing can seem like a better deal; flexible schedules and independence wrapped in a veneer of creativity and fun. Almost 60% of Gen Zerssay they’d become an influencer if given the opportunity, according to a 2023 survey from Morning Consult.
Of course, much of creator labor is invisible. Behind a single post can be hours spent planning scripts, editing videos and communicating with brands – work audiences rarely see. And the same economic ripples can make treading water in content creation just as difficult as in a traditional job.
Creators are dependent not only on audiences and advertisers but also on the platforms themselves. TikTok going dark in the U.S. last year for about 12 hours over a potential federal ban on the app’s Chinese parent was a potent reminder of the system’s fragility. Beyond the headlines, companies already abruptly alter algorithms, monetization systems and visibility rules. “The platforms themselves ebb and flow” in their ability to attract and retain users, Duffy says.
The uncertainty is enough for Florida-based influencer Anna Fenstermacher to keep her traditional job. With around 33,000 TikTok followers, the 30-year-old says she made roughly$140,000 from content creation last year, posting home decor and fashion content, while working a full-time job in hospitality. The latter guarantees her a steady paycheck, healthcare and retirement benefits.
She spends about 30 hours a week outside of her day job planning, creating and editing content. The bulk of her creator earnings comes from affiliate links, including her Amazon storefront, where she shares recommendations for clothing, makeup and household items. When viewers click her unique link and make a purchase, she earns a commission. Last year she made more than $90,000 through the Amazon Influencer Program alone, in addition to around $30,000 from brand deals, she says.
Starbucks, Charlotte Tilbury and other well-known brands have tapped Fenstermacher for campaigns. Such partnerships pay well, she says, but they often require creators to perfect every detail before the posts go live.
“I think people think it’s just snapping a couple of photos or like recording a quick video,” Fenstermacher adds. “For some of these brands, you’ll do reshoots two, three, four times until you get it right.”