Millions are turning social media content creation into a profitable career

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- Social media started with many of us sharing our thoughts, daily activities and more with our friends. And now it has evolved into some people sharing anything and everything online.  It's called creating content and a growing number of people are now turning it into a career. Leah Philpott is a a content creator and a married mom of two, you might have seen her before on Tik Tok or Instagram. She's among the millions of people turning social media into a career.

Leah Philpott says "So I started cooking on Instagram for plenty of years, and then I eventually moved my content to TikTok." It's a fairly new career where many people are making money by creating content, but it is not as simple as you may think. Leah Philpott says "It's not just wake up, record your video, post your video, and you're going to automatically go viral. You know. There's brain power that goes into it. You need to financially be into it."

After just one year on TikTok, she has nearly 700,000 followers. She shares her recipes and real life experiences as a stay at home mom. Leah Philpott says "I feel like I try to be as natural as possible. I made it fit in my lifestyle rather than me fitting in on the internet." A content creator consultant says content creators are the new small business owners. Avi Gandhi says "There are dozens of different ways to make money and hundreds of companies that enable this now. And it's only increasing. Every small business economy in the creator economy are intersecting as never before. Creators will either have content as their product, right? And so they are a business where their content, is monetized through brand partnerships or advertising or small businesses now are becoming content creators."

This is what she says to people who say this is not a real profession: "I think it's it's definitely not true, because. I've had plenty of jobs in my life, and this job is like basically bringing me financial freedom" said Leah Philpott. The creator economy is expected to double in size from 250 billion dollars to 480 billion by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs.