Forbes Magazine recently named the top-50 creators of 2023. The article highlighted some TikTokers, vloggers and influencers who’ve become famous based on content creation. Most of the creators are now incredibly wealthy and are changing the narrative that you must be a doctor or athlete to become a millionaire.
The era of there only being one way to attain wealth is over, and it’s time for society to understand that. Influencers hold more power than we think, and that’s what has made them millionaires.
Think about the last time you were influenced. You probably didn’t even realize it was happening, and that’s the beauty of influencing. It’s so authentic that you don’t realize how much time and effort goes into the process.
By simply watching a TikTok, you’re being influenced. If influencers incorporate products in their videos, within a couple months time, they could receive compensation. And depending on how popular TikTok influencers are and how much they can sway their audience, they’re entitled to receive more from the company that hired them.
As a result, most influencers try to incorporate sponsored products with each post so they can profit from every video.
The ongoing argument that you must go to college and become a doctor or lawyer to be successful has been beneficial for some generations and damaging to others.
Within the last 20 years, though, this perspective has shifted. The more conventional route has been to become an entrepreneur and start a business, but more and more people are figuring out that the path to becoming a millionaire isn’t linear.
This has inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs to pursue the business field with an unconventional route such as social media. The entrepreneurs of today look a lot different from decades ago.
This new reality creates new opportunities for those who don’t feel a connection to a certain career path. The pressure to succeed has been taken off with this new possibility.
In the past, content creation and content creators weren’t taken seriously, but now, companies see how valuable they are.
The progression of creators getting paid what they deserve hasn’t been easy, so seeing creators becoming wealthy feels very full circle. The original influencers came from YouTube, and back then, they were definitely not taken seriously. Through perseverance, the first wave of YouTubers were able to pave the way for content creation to be taken seriously as a job and lead us to the present time.
In other words, YouTubers walked so that TikTokers could run.
In 20 to 30 years, who knows what the next generation of millionaires will do for their careers? The range of possibilities is endless, and I can’t wait to see what type of career paths create the next generation of millionaires.
Lindsay Bickham is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from New Orleans.
