The impending TikTok ban could have some serious consequences for creators.
In between catchy dances and obscure trends, TikTok has become a life-changing platform for many. The Pew Research Center found that one-third of adults in the US are active TikTok users, and the short-form video app helped generate $24.2 billion in revenue for the US economy in 2023 alone.
Lexi Larson has been a long-time social media user, but it wasn't until her daily vlogs gained traction on TikTok that she found herself growing a platform of her own, allowing her to launch her small business Sunday Cherries. The first videos on her page to gain traction were her no-spend January vlogs, where she refrained from buying anything that month to save extra money. After that, she began sharing work-from-home vlogs, sharing an average day in her life as someone who works in marketing.
“I was kind of just figuring out my life and what I wanted and social media was my way to get my creativity out there and have some fun,” Larson, 28, shares with PEOPLE. “My marketing job was very analytics-based, and so social media for me was always a fun thing to do on the side.”
Within a couple of years, Larson's platform has grown to more than 360,000 followers on TikTok alone. She says that although she was able to pay her bills with her full-time job, the money she began earning from TikTok's creator program and various brand deals allowed her to begin saving money. As her savings grew, so did her desire to launch her small business.
At the beginning of 2024, Larson quit her full-time job to start Sunday Cherries, a loungewear business. She notes that a small business as product-focused as Sunday Cherries requires quite a large upfront cost to secure products and a warehouse to store and ship those products from.
The $50,000 she says she saved to put toward that small business was “100%” from earnings on TikTok, between brand deals and being paid for the views on her videos.
“I definitely would not have been able to start a business or invest into starting a business at all without mainly TikTok,” she says. “Without the growth I had seen on TikTok, there's no way I would've been able to do any of this.”
But it's not just small business owners who have been able to change their lives through the app. For Priscilla Lopez, a TikTok Shop affiliate, she was able to bring her family out of thousands of dollars in credit card debt solely through her earnings on TikTok.
Speaking with PEOPLE, Lopez, 36, says that although she had sworn off social media, her and her family's difficult financial situation made her consider TikTok as a source of income. After being laid off from her position as a special education teacher early into the pandemic, she and her husband quickly found themselves in a tight financial spot. The couple and their young children moved in with her family for a bit while Lopez looked for a job and her husband tried to pick up a second job, but their efforts were still leaving them with little breathing room.
Priscilla Marie/Tiktok
After hearing multiple success stories about creators making thousands of dollars a month through TikTok Shop reviewing and promoting products, Lopez ended her social media hiatus and began doing research.
“I was just soaking it all in. I was up past midnight every night researching, watching these tip videos of people who were making tens of thousands – like life-changing money,” Lopez says.
So she started making videos, posting budgeting and home-cooking videos to garner the minimum followers required to apply for the TikTok Shop affiliate program. Although she only made $13 her first month, by the end of the year, she'd earned $77,948 through the program.
“It's been a whirlwind and a blessing. And just to see God's hand in every step it took to get there, just down to the timing of (it),” Lopez says.
In December 2024, Lopez shared a video of her telling her husband that thanks to the income she'd made online, they'd successfully paid off $10,000 in credit card debt. She's since added to her income streams, starting a second account to coach others who want to make money online and selling related courses. She says since starting this in October, she's made $27,000.
“If a video goes viral, it's life-changing, honestly,” Lopez continues. “You're only one video away from making thousands and thousands of dollars.”
Although president-elect Donald Trump has asked the courts to postpone the incoming TikTok ban and Shark TankKevin O'Leary claims to be close to purchasing the app, creators are already feeling the effects of the uncertainty of its future. Both Larson and Lopez shared that they have seen a decrease in brand deals and revenue in recent months as creators and brands wait to see if the app will shut down on Jan. 19.
“My income has slowed down big time…It's not bad, but it's not what I'm used to,” Lopez shares, admitting that she's making less than half of what she's used to earning in a single day as people refrain. from making TikTok Shop purchases. “I feel like people are not buying because they're nervous. Like, what happens if (TikTok) gets banned? Am I gonna be able to return? Am I even gonna get the product?”
“I have noticed like brand deals have kind of been slowing down the past couple months, kind of like in anticipation – we don't know what's going to happen,” Larson says.
There are, of course, other social media apps that have helped influencers and content creators launch themselves into self-employment, but both Larson and Lopez note that none of the payout models seem to be as lucrative as TikTok's.
“In terms of what the social media company is actually paying the influencer for views, I actually get more views on Instagram than I do on TikTok,” Larson says, noting that she has managed to direct a good number of her followers to her Instagram. page as her TikTok has grown. “But (on) Instagram, I (get paid) maybe like $10 a month for the amount of views that I get. And then on TikTok, I'm making like 500 to 1500 a month-ish for views.”
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Larson is currently pouring some of her energy into getting her YouTube channel off the ground, hoping the AdSense revenue from that platform may eventually help close any gaps in her income from a TikTok ban. But she also admits that she posted videos consistently on YouTube for years, though it “wasn't getting any traction.”
“TikTok was the first platform that actually I was able to get some traction. And then from there, everything snowballed,” she says. “I literally wouldn't have any of this without TikTok.”
Kristen McDow
Lopez is already considering other options should the app be shut down, and she has some friends in the TikTok Shop community who have recommended newer platforms that show some promise – though she admits the prospect of starting from scratch is still daunting.
“Personally for me, it's too overwhelming to think about,” she says, noting that she still goes live twice a day and is often working until 2 am to maintain her current platform. “It's gonna be kind of starting from scratch, which I'm not excited about.”
Lopez is also an Amazon affiliate, and though she intends to lean on that should the ban go into place, her digital courses will need to be reworked for whatever new platforms crop up in place of TikTok.
“Those beginning pains (are) exhausting, it's frustrating,” she says. “You spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. But I know I've done it once with TikTok from scratch, so I know that I can do it again. I just have to get in the right mindset.”
“It's really frustrating because millions of people have changed their lives with TikTok,” Larson says. “I have no idea what's gonna happen. If TikTok does go away, maybe Instagram isn't enough to sustain it. Maybe I have to get a job again and give up Sunday Cherries.”
It's not just the loss of income that has many creators worried – it's the communities they've built through the social media app that will have to be moved to a different platform as well.
“I have built so many relationships and friends in the community that I'm in,” Lopez says. “This is why we love TikTok because it's unlike any other app where it's such a community… We can do anything on TikTok because of the way the algorithm works. (Videos) could just go viral and we can make anyone famous, we can help anyone financially. Just the way the algorithm works it's pretty beautiful.”
“It's been a huge turning point for so many people,” Larson says. “I feel like TikTok has given regular people the ability to go viral and grow their businesses or get eyes on whatever they're trying to get eyes on.”
“The way that people communicate is just different now, and that is on social media and I don't think there's anything wrong with that just because it's different from how it was before,” she continues “I just think a lot of people are discounting how much TikTok has done, especially like for the US economy.”