Content creators? Full time job?

[JustWonderingggg]

I keep seeing accounts where people are basically just filming their normal family life school runs, food shops, the usual chaos and they’ve got thousands of followers. They refer to it as their full-time job…

From the outside it looks fairly straightforward, and a lot of it seems quite generic, yet they talk about it as “work.” They’re being sent hundreds of pounds’ worth of items from Amazon wish lists, getting gifted bits from brands, and even having people offer to do things for them for free.

So how much are they genuinely making from this?
I appreciate it might not be long-term sustainable, but in the short to medium term is it actually quite lucrative? Or does it just look easier (and more profitable) than it really is?

A few of the mums I follow seem to put lots of stuff in their captions like “single mum” “council house” “benefits” “tax payers” as rage bait as they call it, but the same people are having people falling over themselves offering to send them free items (which they video themselves opening)

I am not a fan of the type of content creators mention in this thread. I don’t agree with using or including kids in create content and I really can’t stand the rage bait style posts. I fell into it by accident posting photos and videos of projects I was working on and now it has become a nice sideline. I definitely do not make a full time wage from it but it’s nice to have a little extra coming in. I have boundaries about the type of content I will create and I will only accept gifted products that I would happily spend my own money on. It can be lucrative for some but I guess a lot is down to what you are willing to do and I still like having privacy in my family life

I don’t think it sounds easy at all.

Constant pressure to come up with new, different content.

Keeping yourself relevant when there are hundreds of other people out there doing the same.

Knowing you have a short shelf life. Example - I used to love watching content created by a young American guy who travelled around the UK visiting places to eat. It was genuinely interesting to hear his take on the UK. Now, six months later, I barely pay him any attention because the content has got a bit repetitive and other things have caught my attention.

It’s not a long term career and I suspect most people earn buttons compared to the hours it takes to create this stuff.

My friends daughter does it. She’s now producing content for high end fashion brands and makes a very good living from it. She’s very driven and set her sights high right from the start.
It’s basically just a form of marketing.

I’m on the other side of this, I do this part time and earn a decent living out of it. I’d love to go full time one day. I don’t take the free stuff, because it isn’t free, it’s classed as income and therefore I have to pay tax on it - it’s not worth it! But someone in my category (100k plus followers) will easily earn £2k+ per reel

All I can tell you is my experience. I'm on tiktok and have over 11k followers and am in the creator rewards program and honestly I got one month 20p thats right 20p for a post that got over 6k views. So these ones that are making enough to give up day to day employment and don't full time must be getting hundreds of millions of views, unfortunately I am nowhere near that but equally I don't do tiktok full time and its just a hobby for me.

You also have to take into account that, like any self-employed job, the money they make is their gross income, not the net, and they aren't getting any of the benefits that come from being an employee.

As in, it's easy to think "they're getting £3000 a month, that's more than my salary," but they (should!) be paying tax on their profit every year, and declaring all their "gifts" (again, who know whether they do), not to mention paying into a pension etc, which will have to be fully self-funded, without any contributions from an employer. They'll need good equipment - cameras, mics, a decent laptop and editing software.

They won't be getting paid if they're ill, or want to go on holiday. If they take two weeks off, that's not just 2 weeks they might not be earning much, but it could also have the knock on effect of causing a long-term drop off in viewers - there's a pressure to be constantly posting, every day. Yes you can line up things to automatically post, but if you think how long it takes to plan, film and edit one video, that's a huge amount of time spent in order to accrue enough content to take a fortnight completely off. Plus there's the expectation they'll be monitoring engagement, replying to commenters, checking that one of their videos hasn't been flagged/deleted for copyright infringement/ hugely offending someone and need to delete a vid (and post a cringey apology), cross referencing multiple different platforms, engaging with brands and other content creators to amplify their platform and get them to do the same back, etc. etc. Basically it would be really hard to take any more than a day or two off at a time.