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So essentially my sister has 500K followers on TikTok but doesn’t make any money. Am I missing the bigger picture here?
Posted by on October 6, 2025 at 7:13 pmSo, to summarize, my sister has been on TikTok since the pandemic began. She’s 21, by the way. Throughout the year, whether it’s day or night, she’s always on the camera, making content. Besides her 9-to-5 job, she never hesitates to put herself in front of the camera. The more she posts, the more traction she’s gained. However, I’ve noticed recently that she hasn’t been making any money at all. She’s only surviving on her job, which is great, but at the same time, she’s been piling up bills and asking family for assistance. Am I missing something here? How can someone with so many followers not be making any money? She’s even made videos with other famous influencers, yet she’s still working?
Also, for those that’ll ask if her followers were bots, no, they aren’t. She wouldn’t even know where to begin to get fake followers. All of that came from her content.
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1 Reply
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How would she be making money? Is she selling something? Getting brand deals? Should be pretty obvious. Creators dont make their money from having a lot of followers
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Money isn’t automatic, you have to go through a tremendous amount of effort to monetize. It’s her hobby that she does because she enjoys it, don’t overthink it. Not everything needs to be profit oriented.
Edit: and not every large audience is a buying audience either, she may not be able to sell to them!
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She needs management to make more money if she doesn’t want to go looking for deals. She can try to reach out to some of her mutuals to see if their management company would be interested in representing her.
But the kind of deals she would attract would depend on what kind of content she does and how brand-friendly it is. If her content isn’t brand friendly, she won’t get good brands reaching out to her. And if she is a POC the deals won’t be for as much & she will need to be more strategic, esp if her content isn’t brand friendly.
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Does SHE want to make money? It sounds like you’re asking on her behalf. If she does it may not be a hobby anymore.
But yes as other commenters have mentioned, think about the type of content and what products are sold within that niche.
Also do her followers engage (like comment etc) in large numbers or is it just a high follow count?
Engagement is worth more.
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If you’re in a country that has the creator fund, she could join that and get paid for views. tiktok also offers subscriptions for some creators.
it sounds like she’s not very motivated to monetize her account, which is fine.
I noticed you said she doesn’t have an email in her bio. she should create a new email just for collab requests and put that in her bio if she wants brand deals. she can also reach out to brands that she likes and ask about partnering with them.
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How many views does she get per video?
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If she wants to make money it‘s important to put an email in her bio. I‘ve worked both as a content creator and as a creative manager and the email in bio is one of THE most important things you need to do in order to make money through brand deals.
I had barely 20k followers and made good money -
She just not monetizing. No tik tok shop? No selling her content for shorts? No merch or drop shipping or partner brands? She’s leaving $$$ on the table and needs an assistant to find the money for her? Would she revenue share if they could find her the cash.
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I have 20k and made well over $1500 so idk what she’s doing but my money comes from Brand Deals or Affiliate
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I have 65,000 followers on Facebook and made $5,000 last month. Not sure why she wouldn’t be monetized on TikTok
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Creators won’t make money off the platforms unless they have millions of followers and views. So to have it replace a 9-5 you have to make your money through brand deals/ partnerships, or selling something yourself to your following
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Your sister has a very expensive hobby.
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Making money on Tik Tok can be a little difficult, it’s not like making money on YouTube. Essentially she would have to do brand deals or partner with Tik Tok ads, but it equally comes with a price as if you just start accepting every deal that comes your way you will quickly be called a sell out and could lose credibility and followers. It’s also not simple finding out what deals are real and which ones are not. I have about 350k followers and I do have my email in my bio. Out of about 30 emails I get for brand deals a month, only one has been completely credible and up my alley where I reached back out, only to be denied. Most of my money comes from my selling my art, but I’m hand making it all, and it takes up 99% of my time.
Now you can turn your Tik Tok audience into a YouTube audience, but unfortunately most tiktokers don’t do well with YouTube as short content needs a lot of views in order to start making money
Also she is 21, give her a break. Seriously, she is young in comparison and is just starting to learn to be an adult. I absolutely had no idea what I was doing at 21 and made a whole lot of mistakes. I’m sure she will figure it out soon.
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She may not want to monetize and that’s ok, but if she does there are a lot of good tips here.
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If you’re in the states she can apply for the creator fund
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