{"id":825831,"date":"2026-05-27T16:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/825831\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T16:00:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:00:30","slug":"they-made-stupid-money-online-then-they-quit-for-9-to-5-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/825831\/","title":{"rendered":"They made ‘stupid money’ online. Then they quit for 9-to-5 jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of us at one point or another fantasize about quitting our nine-to-five jobs, working for ourselves and leaving behind the world of Slack notifications and Zoom meetings. Chelsey Brown<\/a>, 33, lived it. When she quit her job to become a full-time content creator on TikTok and Instagram, she once made $60,000 in one month. Another month, she made $32,000 from\u00a0a single brand deal. \u201cI was making stupid money,\u201d she remembers.<\/p>\n

But despite the financial rewards, she eventually burned out on selling her life online. She decided to quit and go back to a nine-to-five job.<\/p>\n

For a while it seemed that the dream of the 21st century was to make a living as a social media influencer. A 2019 Morning Consult survey found that 86% of young people<\/a> aspired to careers as influencers, although that enthusiasm has since noticeably cooled \u2014 a recent Yahoo\/YouGov survey found that only 5% of those under 30 still <\/a>expressed the same ambition. Still, in a country where young people are feeling pessimistic about the job market<\/a> and struggling with the high cost of living<\/a>, influencing can seem like a get-out-of-jail-free card. All you have to do is post \u2014 and you can make more money than you\u2019ve ever imagined.<\/p>\n

But for some full-time content creators, there are too many drawbacks \u2014 so much so that quitting influencing to go back to the daily grind has become its own genre<\/a> of content<\/a>. Several who made the switch spoke to Yahoo about returning to more traditional work.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons Brown decided to go back to a more conventional job was that she started to feel guilty about the ethics of being an influencer. Remember that brand deal where she made $32,000? That was in return for promoting a product she didn\u2019t even like. \u201cI couldn\u2019t keep on promoting things that my followers were buying and that I wasn’t actually keeping,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s like, a huge f***ing lie.\u201d According to Brown, she always felt uneasy with this side of being an influencer. \u201cIt always felt wrong \u2026 but I did it because of the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around the time that she decided to go back to a regular job, Brown remembers that she went to the trash room in her New York City apartment building, where another influencer also lived. She remembers seeing mounds of unopened products the influencer received for free in the garbage. She also knew other content creators\u00a0 \u2014 some of whom were her friends \u2014 who would sell the products they received free. \u201cIt does kind of annoy me when I go into their homes and they\u2019re reselling things on Facebook Marketplace that they got sent from brands,\u201d she says, \u201cinstead of donating them.\u201d Brown also became worried about her own role in what she sees as an overconsumption crisis.<\/p>\n

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It always felt wrong \u2026 but I did it because of the money.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Though she\u2019s mostly happy with her decision to leave full-time content creation (Brown first did freelance interior design and now runs her own business), there are things she misses from her past life. \u201cIt\u2019s the money,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was so nice to have stupid money. When there are difficulties with cash flow \u2026 I think, what if I had just stayed? But it wouldn\u2019t be ethical, and it wouldn\u2019t be fulfilling. It\u2019s only for a second, and then you kind of snap out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Hannah Warling<\/a>, 28, quit being a full-time influencer, she had over a million followers on TikTok. Warling first started posting back in 2020, and within a month she had 100,000 followers who tuned in to see her lifestyle, fashion and beauty content. Though it seemed like she was living the dream, the reality was different from what she expected. \u201cI\u2019m a really extroverted person, and what I ended up finding was that most of my time was honestly spent alone,\u201d she says. \u201cI would be in my apartment shooting content, editing content. As much as it could be a dream job \u2026 for me, because of my extreme extroversion, it wasn\u2019t really a good fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warling found the work monotonous and that it was difficult to take risks as an influencer, when viewers expect to see a certain kind of content. She was creating the same types of videos over and over again. \u201cIf you\u2019re relying on content creation for your full-time job, it\u2019s a lot harder to break away from the formats that you\u2019ve created because you rely on that for income and for brand deals.\u201d<\/p>\n

When content creation had been just her hobby, it was more fun. \u201cIt was something that I got to do in my free time, something I could experiment with. I could explore; I could be creative. And then once content becomes your full-time job, it becomes a job, right? And it\u2019s not as much fun because it\u2019s what you do day in and day out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warling realized that she actually enjoyed structured environments and work that involves collaborating with other people. After leaving full-time content creation, she worked in a series of marketing and social media roles, including as the marketing director for Amalfi Jets. She is currently pursuing a master\u2019s degree in digital media management at the University of Southern California. Her influencing work, she says, gave her a leg up in the job search because she was able to prove her own success. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like the proof is in the pudding, right? I can show that I can grow something from zero to 100 and that I\u2019ve owned the entire workflow as well from inception to execution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angele Christin, an associate professor of communication at Stanford University, is not surprised by former full-time influencers returning to nine-to-five jobs. \u201cPeople [have] a lot of dissatisfaction with contemporary capitalistic structures \u2026 so social media careers [became] an escape where it was like, I don\u2019t have to deal with a stupid boss or a boring job,\u201d Christin says. \u201cWell, turns out when you are actually turning [content creation] into your living, it\u2019s just an extremely hard job for a range of reasons.\u201d Those reasons include the difficulty of sustaining virality and online popularity, the feeling of never being \u201coff work\u201d when your entire job is posting about your life and cobbling together enough brand deals and platform payments to make a living month after month.<\/p>\n

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The reality of working day in and day out for a platform is not that different from working for a ride-hailing platform or a delivery platform.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Though it\u2019s easy to idealize influencing, Christin likens it to being a gig worker. \u201cThe reality of working day in and day out for a platform is not that different from working for a ride-hailing platform or a delivery platform,\u201d she says. \u201cInfluencers are extremely creative people, but structurally what they do is not different from what other [gig workers] are doing. You see the same exhaustion, the same lack of control over schedule, the same frustrations with algorithmic opacity and the same kind of precarity.\u201d Influencers are commonly also the target of online harassment. \u201cPeople just get really burnt out,\u201d Christin says. \u201cAt the end of the day, the precarity and the uncertainty and the abuse just become too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

The intensity of the parasocial relationships that viewers form with their favorite content creators can also be a factor in those creators hanging up their ring lights and getting back on LinkedIn. At one point, Paige Delaney, 33, had 200,000 subscribers on YouTube and would regularly pull in $5,000 to $6,000 a month in revenue \u2014 enough to be able to go to school full-time without having to find other work. Delaney made content about being an American studying in London; once, she had an entire series on her apartment search. \u201cPeople were upset that I didn\u2019t tell them the name of the place I chose,\u201d Delaney says. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m not telling you where I live.\u2019\u201d Another time, when she posted about dating, she was called a cheater because she hadn\u2019t updated her audience when she and her former partner had broken up. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize that was a thing, but I had to share,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

It can also be difficult, she says, to constantly find things worth sharing. \u201cEspecially when you\u2019re a lifestyle content creator, you are making content about your everyday life,\u201d she says. \u201cIt becomes a struggle to always try to find something interesting to share or talk about.\u201d After living in London for five years, she was running out of ideas that fit into her niche \u2014 the American fish out of water in a new country. She tried to pivot and mix it up, but her videos weren\u2019t doing as well. It got to the point where she wasn\u2019t making enough money to justify the work she was putting into YouTube.<\/p>\n

When she moved back to the United States, she got a full-time job in marketing. Though she misses the freedom of her life as a content creator, she finds solace in knowing exactly how much money she\u2019s going to make every month. She also misses the community that she built on YouTube, though sometimes they still find her. Recently, Delaney was getting on a train when a stranger approached her. \u201cShe just had this excited reaction like, I watched all of your videos in England. I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m seeing you in person. So even though I don\u2019t do that anymore, it\u2019s a connection that you make with people that honestly lasts forever.\u201d<\/p>\n