Becca Bastos, who grew up in Mineola, was working full time as a nanny when she started posting videos on TikTok spoofing Long Island moms. Now Bastos, 27, has 2.5 million followers and has made enough money through her posts to quit her job and move to Los Angeles.
Joe Mele, who lives on the East End, dropped out of Binghamton University, where he was studying business administration, to create comical TikTok videos with his father, Frank, 61, and family. Mele, 24, now has 27 million followers, makes his living as a content creator and was recently tapped to appear in a TV commercial.
Grace Mary Williams of Huntington Station started posting on TikTok about candy and toys and now has 2.3 million followers and sells her own brand of slime for kids. When she told her grandmother that she was pursuing content creation as her job, Grandma was skeptical.
“Until after my first brand deal and I told her how much it was,” says Williams, 24.
Creating content full time is the aspiration of many TikTok users, says Catherine Halaby, TikTok’s head of entertainment for North America. “And we know that is happening constantly.” The platform has proved lucrative in a variety of ways, with sponsored videos, for instance, allowing creators to earn $100 to more than $1 million per post. It has changed the lives of a number of Long Islanders who have successfully harnessed the app’s potential.
According to a 2023 Creator Compensation Report by Boston-based influencer marketing platform Mavrck, a survey of 552 content creators in the United States showed 3% earned more than $10,000 per month last year through social media, and 47% made less than $500. When looking at TikTok’s earning potential alone, the biggest breakout personalities made the big money and 75% reported earning less than $500 per month on the app.
Bastos was offered $200 for a video when she started out in 2020. “I didn’t even know that was something I could monetize,” she…
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