A photographer explains how he gained 3 million TikTok followers in 3 months and was able to quit his job as an insurance actuary
- Photographer Alexander Stemplewski, 30, signed up for TikTok at the end of October and already has 3.4 million followers and more than 50 million likes on the app.
- He quit his full-time job as an insurance actuary in order to focus on TikTok, Instagram, and photography.
- Stemplewski is earning thousands of dollars from TikTok through paid song integrations and brand partnerships. He also uses the app to recruit clients for his online photography coaching business.
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Alexander Stemplewski, 30, grew his TikTok account to more than three million followers in just three months. Now he's quitting his job to work on social media and photography full-time.
Unlike many top influencers on the app, he gained popularity by photographing strangers, not himself. For Stemplewski, snapping passersby in a TikTok video style he calls "street photography" has been the key to growth on the platform.
"I'm asking a complete stranger if they'll do a spontaneous impromptu photo shoot," Stemplewski told Business Insider. "People absolutely love it on TikTok. I've seen people copy me down to the caption and song selection."
Stemplewski's profile, Alexander the Great, fits into a subgenre of TikTok photographer and videographer accounts, several of whom have made it big on the app by filming or taking photos of other popular influencers.
Photography is a popular topic on TikTok. Stemplewski's preferred hashtag, #photographyeveryday, has generated 691 million views across different user videos on the platform. TikTok videos with the hashtag #photographer have been viewed nearly a billion times.
"I knew that the organic reach on TikTok was pretty phenomenal," Stemplewski said. You can have essentially zero following and have a video reach literally millions of people just like that. I've just been producing a lot of content until I figured out what content performed really well, which was street photography."
Stemplewski said a creator manager at TikTok reached out to him once his account began taking off to help him build a following on the app.
"She's there to provide me with insights and advice on creating content for the app, as well as funnel in business opportunities," he said.
Like many TikTok users who have gained followers rapidly, Stemplewski hopes to turn his newfound fame into a full-time career. He gave his two-weeks notice at his job as an insurance actuary yesterday (Jan. 30) in order to focus on TikTok, Instagram - where he has more than 100,000 followers - and photography.
He currently earns revenue from TikTok in three different ways:
- Song integrations: Stemplewski charges for paid music integrations, where he earns a fee to include an artist's song in one of his videos. He works with the influencer marketing company, Muuser, which pays him $600 per video.
- Brand sponsorships: Stemplewski hasn't partnered with brands in the three months since he joined TikTok, but he said he's in the final stages of closing on a $5,000 sponsorship deal with a camera company to use one of its bags and tripods in his TikTok videos.
- Photography coaching: Stemplewski developed an eight-week photography coaching program, recruiting new students from his millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram. He charges $1,500 for eight one-hour Skype sessions where he teaches fans how to take and edit photos, grow an Instagram account, find models, and network with other photographers. He's trained five students so far, he said.
Stemplewski hopes that recurring income from song integrations, brand deals, and photography coaching will sustain him full time now that he's left his role as an insurance actuary.
"Mainly because of TikTok and the crazy organic reach, all these opportunities came to me out of nowhere," he said. "I was able to quit my job."
