Allison McCarthy would love to stop and smell the roses—but she’d rather cash them in to pay off her student loans.
Last week, the 28-year-old health care worker set a challenge for herself: she would try to pay off the last of her student debt by live-streaming on TikTok. She asked her viewers to buy and send her roses—virtual gifts that streamers can then cash in for real money.
McCarthy was inspired by Jane Labowitch, an Etch A Sketch artist who live-streamed her creative process in 2022 in exchange for roses and other gifts. Within 30 days, Labowitch was able to pay off her art school debt of $13,484.58.
On March 8, McCarthy posted a video referencing Labowitch’s story. “Should I do that?” she asked her followers.
Yes, she should, the 13 million people who viewed her video affirmed. McCarthy jumped on the opportunity and started live-streaming daily on Friday, March 8, chatting with viewers for up to three hours at a time—and collecting thousands of roses along the way.
“I answer questions, sometimes I get into financial things,” she told Fortune. “A lot of people now are asking me how they can do the same thing, so I kind of give advice on content creation.”
By Wednesday afternoon, she had made $7,310 from TikTok—but the majority of her earnings actually came from from TikTok’s creator payout program.
McCarthy broke it down via receipts that were reviewed by Fortune: she made $3,082 from viewers’ gifts, and $4,228 from TikTok’s Creativity Program Beta, which rewards creators for high-performing videos. Though she owes $7,500 in student debt, she estimates she would need a total of $9,500 when accounting for taxes.
The debt payoff journey
McCarthy got her first bachelor’s degree in business management in 2018. The following year, wanting to enter the medical field, she decided to pursue another bachelor’s degree—this time, in medical imaging. By the time she obtained her second degree and began her full-time job in 2021, she had amassed just under $20,000 of student debt.
“I make a decent salary, so it’s not like I’m struggling,” McCarthy, who lives in Pennsylvania, told Fortune. “But I just have this drive to pay off my debt as fast as I can.”
McCarthy’s pursuit of a debt-free life has led her towards many a side hustle—including driving as a contractor through the Amazon Flex program and delivering for DoorDash and Instacart. In 2022, she began documenting her debt payoff journey on TikTok with videos about her finances, telling her viewers how she spends her paycheck and how she splits bills with her fiancé.
She made the occasional viral video, but the numbers were inconsistent. Up until this month’s mega-viral hit and live-streams, McCarthy said she was making about $300 per month this year through TikTok’s creator program.
To McCarthy, the TikTok algorithm is still very much a black box. To assess creator payouts, TikTok uses an “optimized rewards formula focused on 4 key areas: originality, play duration, search value and audience engagement,” according to the company.
Content creation is a much less consistent side hustle compared to Amazon Flex deliveries, McCarthy said. But on the flip side, it barely feels like a job.
“I wouldn’t consider it work,” McCarthy said. “It’s not challenging … it’s kind of fun.”
How much do TikTokers make?
The rose is among the most popular TikTok gifts, but other items on the menu include virtual ice cream cones, pretzels, and treasure boxes. TikTok takes a 50% cut on revenue generated from virtual items “after deducting the required payments to app stores, payment processors and any other adjustment required under our terms and policies,” according to the company.
TikTok declined to share the cost breakdown of individual gift items, but it costs users 1 virtual coin—which translates to about 1 cent—to buy and send a rose. In McCarthy’s case, viewers pay 1 cent to send her a rose, and she pockets half a cent per rose.
“That’s the worst thing,” McCarthy said about splitting profits with the platform. She added her Venmo username to her TikTok bio to receive direct donations—but to little avail.
“I think I got maybe $10 from Venmo,” she said.
Live-streaming can be extremely lucrative for some TikTok creators. Last summer, Pinkydoll, the “NPC streamer” who became the internet’s main character for a brief moment in time, shared that she was making between $2,000 and $3,000 per stream.
Transparency sells
McCarthy is part of a growing class of influencers openly discussing their finances—and reaping the rewards of transparency.
The “loud budgeting” trend that swept TikTok this year encouraged young people to openly set financial boundaries with their friends and family. TikTok videos hashtagged #WhatISpend have amassed over 421.9 million views, and a 2023 Harris Poll survey found that more than half of Gen Z and millennials are willing to post their salary online.
“There’s definitely been people in the comments like, ‘Oh, you’re just begging for money,’” McCarthy said. “But I feel like in none of my videos am I ever begging—it’s just that people want to donate or participate.”
To McCarthy, the idea that strangers on TikTok would pool together thousands of dollars to help her out is still mind-boggling to her—but the comments she’s received have shown her that many people can relate to her student loan plight.
“We’re all kind of struggling,” she said.
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