Inside TikTok’s most unlikely money-makers
TIKTOK may be a breeding ground for influencers, Love Island stars and budding celebs, but it’s not just glitz and glamour that can bring in the cash on the streaming app.
In fact, some of the top-earning creators have very unlikely niches.
Creators are known for bagging big money brand deals – from the likes of Superdrug beauty collabs to M&S food promotions.
Here, we take a look at some of the biggest money-makers making bank from seemingly mundane activities.
Chip Shop Diva
Destiny Harold has turned working in a fish and chip shop into a lucrative social media career.
The star, better known online as Chip Chop Diva, catapulted to fame for filming videos in at work in Merchants fish and chip shop in Bewdley, Worcestershire.
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Destiny works two days per week at the fish and chip shop while studying, and unexpectedly blew up online for posting videos from behind the counter.
And now, she has worked with numerous brands on high-profile collaborations.
Last summer, she partnered with car brand Dacia to serve chips on the beach in Deal.
While she was also named one of the “icons of the year” by confectionary brand Quality Street in December.
Destiny now has over 20,000 followers on Instagram and almost 2 million likes on TikTok.
Bus Aunty Bemi
Bemi Orojuogun is known to her over 400,000 TikTok followers as “Bus Aunty”.
She became famous for filming selfie videos in front of London’s red buses.
Bemi simply goes around the capital and films herself in front of different buses, with her videos racking up millions of views.
Working as a mental health nurse by day, Bemi’s catapult to fame was completely unexpected – with the online sensation shocked by her own prominence.
The videos have even led to political impact, with Bemi meeting Prime Minister Keir Starmer in December.
Meeting the Prime Minister on a bus in Norfolk, Bemi urged him to look at making public transport across the UK more accessible as she pointed out that not everywhere has such constant travel options like London’s TFL.
After he laid out the government’s plan to improve transport nationwide, Bemi was lauded as a “real role model” by fans.
Weeks later, she was invited to 10 Downing Street for the Pride in Place reception, an event which celebrated millions of pounds of investment into our local communities.
Samuel Wolfenden
Samuel Wolfenden is a Farrier & Equestrian Influencer, becoming famous in 2023 for filming content at work.
The hunky star shares content from his workdays with horses and tips for fans.
He boasts a whopping 1.3M followers on Instagram.
Since rising to fame, Sam has appeared on This Morning – with Josie Gibson often commenting on his social snaps now – and taken part in fashion shows.
Amongst his famous list of followers are Maura Higgins and Katie Price.
Charzreviews
An account named Charzreviews, run by Charlotte Blockley, is one of the UK’s most prominent ‘review and restock’ creators.
While you may think testing household products such as pillows and storage bins is mundane, this creator has built up quite the career from it.
Charlotte known in the creator community for being a “TikTok Shop millionaire”.
The title comes as she has generated over £1,000,000 in sales (total revenue) by simply showing how she uses everyday gadgets in her UK home.
She boasts over 200,000 followers.
Jane Hastings
Liverpool hailing Jane has highlighted the power of TikTok shop by using it to boost orders for her small toy shop.
The creator live streams on the app daily to demo toys the shop sells and pack customer’s orders.
While it may not seem like much, Jane is thought to have sold over hundreds of thousands of items through the platform.
Jane describes herself as a “nan of 10” and posts under her toy shop’s page, @toystoystoys.uk.
She told Liverpool Echo of her success: “Within the the first 12 months I’d sold 100,000 items.”
Her page has almost 50K followers.