- "Love Island USA" contestants can earn significant income through brand deals after the show.
- Influencers from the reality TV series gain a platform quickly, unlike many social media creators.
Contestants on the reality show "Love Island USA" enter the villa as regular 9-to-5ers and leave as public figures with a slew of new money-making opportunities.
But not all of them can successfully cash in on their 15 minutes of fame before the next pop culture moment happens. Business Insider spoke to three talent agencies to discover how chaotic and lucrative the first month back in the real world can be after appearing on the show, in which (if you've somehow managed to escape watching even one of the several franchises) people compete to find love and woo the public enough to be awarded a cash prize.
Successful influencers can earn well over five figures on one brand deal and rake in some people's annual salary in a single month.
Yet social media is saturated with influencers and content creators, and the ones who earn enough money to quit their day jobs aren't as common as one might think, Jonathan Chanti, president and chief growth officer at Viral Nation Talent Agency, told BI.
"Love Island" contestants have a unique position, however. By going on the dating show, which is filmed for six weeks and aired in real time, they can be given a platform equal in size to one a popular influencer took months or years to grow.
"Some of our girls, straight out of the villa, are making $20,000 to $30,000 in a month off of, let's say, five videos," Kennedy Meehan, founder of the Azure Agency, said.
She added, "And that's on the lower end."
Leah Kateb, who finished in second place on season six of "Love Island USA," has 3.5 million Instagram followers. When the first episode aired, she had less than 20,000.
Since the show, Kateb's TikTok videos get no less than one million views.
Ericka Mendoza, who manages "Love Island USA" season 5 winners Hannah Wright and Marco Donatelli at Slash MGMT, told BI that being a successful influencer after the show is all about understanding your personal brand.
"It's our job as managers to help them navigate their sudden fame, " Mendoza said. "The transition is all about alignment."
Once a contestant gets a manager, the first step is figuring out their interests, and how they want to be perceived online, Mendoza said. For Wright and Donatelli, that meant a mix of couple content, fitness, and beauty.
Wright is an ambassador for Kay Jewelers, and she's worked with Google Maps, NARS Cosmetics, and more.
But Viral Nation senior talent agent Toni Rose Goulden warned that the first two to three weeks are "the most important part" for contestants hoping to score those kinds of deals — and then hopefully build on them.
"Everyone's going to have their peak," Goulden said, "and then everyone going to kind of forget about you."
Perhaps, then, the hardest part of leaving the 24/7 scrutiny in the villa over six weeks is actually keeping yourself in the public eye for a lot longer.