The two Brians work with a handful of creators who have amassed millions of fans on TikTok, such as Alyssa McKay, IAmJordi, and Hannah Montoya. They prefer to keep their roster small, focusing on a few creators they believe can succeed in areas of entertainment beyond social media. "I just don't think that you can really break people into mainstream, globally, if you're working with too many people," Nelson said.

The Network Effect helps its creators tap into in-app monetization opportunities, such as TikTok's new creativity program that pays users for longer videos. The company also works with creators on non-social media projects, including co-launching a clothing brand with McKay and supporting her work on a scripted podcast called "The Royals of Malibu."

McKay now makes “millions” of dollars posting content across various media platforms. She has 10 million followers on TikTok; her YouTube channel has 1.4 million subscribers. Her Snapchat account — where she’s her most authentic self, not a carefully crafted character — attracts a staggering 2.5 billion views a month. There, she chronicles basically every waking moment on her page, posting between 150 and 250 verité videos a day, with ads spliced in between.

Her stardom has blazed beyond social media, too. McKay voices the main character in the fiction podcast “The Royals of Malibu,” based on the 2016 YA romance “Paper Princess.” (She’s also an executive producer on the series.)

If you’ve seen Hannah Montoya‘s videos, you probably know her as fast-talking, quick-witted, wined-up New Jersey aunt Jackie. Jackie–with her hallmark Jersey accent–is Montoya’s flagship character. The one that sent Montoya viral overnight, and in the past three years, has helped her build an audience of 5 million followers across TikTok and YouTube.

We know 5 million makes us a little late marking Montoya as a millionaire, but we’re making up for that a bit by celebrating her achievement with a different kind of millionaire. The sort that lives in Malibu.

Montoya and McKay are both repped by The Network Effect, and became fast friends. McKay ended up coaching Montoya for a Malibu audition, and she was cast in a part for Season 2.

Last week Snap expanded that mid-roll program to more creators who can receive a share of revenue from ads running against their Snapchat Stories. TikTok and YouTube Shorts have similarly stood up ad revenue-sharing programs for short-form video creators in the past year, but neither platform has yet had much to show for how much money creators can make directly from their platforms. With 2 million followers and an average 2.5 billion monthly views on the platform, McKay is showing the story may be different on Snapchat.

“I definitely make the most on Snapchat. There’s revenue streams of course from YouTube and the TikTok Creator Fund, but Snapchat definitely has been the lion’s share of my revenue this past year,” she said.

Alyssa McKay, 22, is a creator who believes in staying in touch with her fans often. Say, multiple times an hour. 

Her TikTok account now has 10 million followers, but she’s mostly focused on posting disappearing Snapchat Stories about her daily life, such as her morning routine. McKay posts about 100 times per day on Snapchat, where she’s racked up 2 million subscribers and about 2.5 billion (with a b) views per month. 

“I never miss a day. A lot of people on Snapchat still aren’t vlogging. It’s mostly selfies or whatever. But I really talk with my audience and engage with them. It’s different from what they typically see,” McKay said. “I’ve been posting so much. Some days I post like 150 times and I have to slow down.” 

All creators don't like TikTok's branded mission money. They can negotiate and ensure that they are compensated for their work if they have amassed millions of followers.

Brian Mandler, co- founder of The Network Effect, said that they wouldn't allow their people to do that.

The program requires talent to create content for a campaign without a guarantee of being selected or paid. Charley Button is a talent manager at Select Management Group. Top creators who are in high demand get offers without having to apply. It's hard for branded missions to compete with a standard branded content deal.

The 23-year-old doesn't just post on the app to connect with her roughly 2 million subscribers. Uploading Snapchat stories can be lucrative for influencers like McKay since Snap Inc., the app's owner, began in early 2022 sharing revenue from mid-roll ads on stories with users. McKay said that since joining the program — available to verified users called Snap Stars — she's earned "well over a million dollars," a figure confirmed by a source familiar with the matter. Compared to YouTube videos, or even content for short-video platforms like TikTok, Snapchat stories require less effort to produce.

Alyssa McKay used to work part-time at a frozen yogurt store in Portland, Oregon, making minimum wage to cover her college tuition. Now the 22-year-old earns more than US$100,000 (RM440,450) a year on the short-video platform TikTok.

Brands like Coach, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video pay up to reach her nine million followers, mostly teenage and pre-teen girls who wouldn’t dream of visiting Facebook.

“TikTok definitely 100% changed my life,” says McKay, who recently moved into her first apartment with her wiener dog.

"We've done the due diligence," Mandler said. "We always joke and say we are likely some of the only adults in the room when it comes to this world of short-form."

"It's really like part-life coach, part-business advisor, and part-friend," Nelson added of their approach. "Every day we chip away at our clients' long-term goals while we're managing them on the day-to-day, cultivating relationships at the platforms, and helping them hone their crafts."

Brian Mandler and Brian Nelson, co-founders of the Network Effect agency, which led the Shorts experiment with clients McKay, Feeney and Montoya, say building out a sizable YouTube subscriber base is the “gold standard” for creators aiming to make a living.

“Madison Avenue, at large, really understands the value of a YouTube following and understands the value of a YouTube view,” Mandler, a former Google and YouTube executive, says. “There is only benefit to having a really large YouTube following.”

“There is this new generation of creators that are now starting to see success on YouTube … there is an insatiable appetite to build audiences. This new creator ecosystem, there is a long-term safety with YouTube that not only keeps them coming back, but also excites them in building an audience,” Mandler says.

“They did a great job to make sure that the creator community understood what was going on and their position, that they were full-steam ahead,” Brian Mandler, the co-founder of The Network Effect agency, said. The agency’s other co-founder, Brian Nelson, said that if anything, the company continued to grow despite the uncertainty of its future in the U.S. “If you really look at what was happening, then and now, they have not skipped a beat,” Nelson said. “They just kept developing; they kept moving on.”

“When we worked with creators five, six years ago, everybody hated the hashtags,” said Brian Nelson, who works with Feeney and other influencers through his marketing agency, the Network Effect. “In the millennial age group, the latter millennials thought it was corny. That was what I was getting from everyone; those are the exact words. Like, an eye roll.”