Gabriella Gomez is all-in on TikTok Dwell.
Gomez, a former marketer for manufacturers comparable to Ok-Swiss and Beats By Dre, give up her job to develop into a full-time content material creator in 2022. Since then, she’s constructed a social following of roughly 345,000 on TikTok, boasting about 500,000 complete followers throughout platforms.
TikTok Dwell has been a key driver of Gomez’s progress. On August 1, 2024, she reached 100,000 followers on the platform, crossing the edge to qualify for TikTok’s “Dwell Professional” creator community, which supplies livestreaming creators additional advantages together with a particular profile badge and one-on-one tech assist. One 12 months later, Gomez’s TikTok following has exploded by over 229,000. At her peak viewership, she is the US’ most-watched TikTok Dwell creator, with over 2,000 concurrent viewers.
Gomez’s potential to make use of stay gifting to monetize her every day TikTok livestreams — she informed Digiday that she averaged 250 hours of livestreaming monthly between September 2024 and Might 2025 — has allowed her to keep away from counting on sponsorship income, the lifeblood of many different creators. She estimated that stay gifting at the moment accounts for 90 p.c of her general income, pointing to the information platform Tikleap, which says that she has earned over $766,000 by way of TikTok’s stay gifting function since June 2024, with common earnings of $1,025 per day in stay presents Between July 1 and July 31 of this 12 months. In distinction, she mentioned that direct advert income from TikTok has a “minimal affect” on her general earnings.
TikTok has been pushing livestreaming in 2025, with the corporate holding a collection of digital and in-person workshops to coach creators and companies concerning the strengths of stay gifting as a income stream.
To be taught extra about Gomez’s method to TikTok Dwell — and why model offers symbolize lower than 10 p.c of her income — Digiday spoke to the creator for an annotated Q&A.
This dialog has been edited and condensed for size and readability.
On her choice to prioritize platform income over model offers
Gomez: “I haven’t dabbled into [sponsorships], actually, however now that I’ve obtained a 12 months of Dwell Professional and have hit sure benchmarks so far as following goes, I’ve a case to confidently method manufacturers. I didn’t need to go to my model networks with no heavy-hitting method, with numbers and stats and knowledge. I used to be going to be pulling on relationships that I respect, and I’d by no means draw on these relationships with no correct enterprise method.”
Digiday: Gomez has been a TikTok Dwell Professional for over a 12 months, and has been livestreaming every day on TikTok for over 18 months. Though she’s in rising her sponsorship enterprise — charging sponsors between $1,500 and over $6,000 per activation, with particular charges depending on the character of the livestream and post-live utilization rights — the truth that she is simply now constructing that income stream is telling. Gomez’s expertise reveals how the profitable nature of TikTok’s stay gifting can discourage creators from leaning extra closely into sponsorship offers.
On the connection between livestreaming and follower progress on TikTok
Gomez: “Followers and livestreams don’t essentially go hand in hand. You possibly can have 27 million followers and have 20 individuals in your livestream — they’re completely separate. So far as followers go, I’m nonetheless gaining at a gentle tempo. There was no viral second, so far as my livestreams go. It was sluggish and regular progress, and I’ll take that each one day over a fast flash within the pan.”
Digiday: Gomez’s expertise reveals how TikTok Dwell creators are incentivized to deal with totally different efficiency metrics than the platform’s short-form video creators. Customary metrics like follower depend and video viewership usually are not significantly related to her work. Though her most-watched video has reached 1.1 million views on TikTok, this quantity pales compared to viral movies posted by short-form video creators with comparable followings; TikToker Kaylee Marina, for instance, has an identical follower depend of about 340,000 however has had over a dozen movies attain over 1 million views. Gomez’s power is in her potential to succeed in a devoted core fanbase for an prolonged interval: she usually goes stay for as much as 12 hours, sustaining a mean concurrent viewer depend of round 200 all through the streams.
On how TikTok Dwell disincentivizes multi-streaming
Gomez: “So far as TikTok goes, it’s constructed so that you’re centered and engaged with the chat. When you’re diverting your focus, or if you happen to’re saying names that aren’t within the chat, it’s going to be very complicated. That’s why I reply to each remark that is available in. I’ve seen some creators go stay on a number of platforms, they usually’re diverting consideration. They’ve two telephones, so their eye contact is over there and their TikTok channel is over right here. You would possibly get some looky-loos who are available in, and so their numbers are inflated, however is that engagement good? Most likely not.”
Digiday: Though multi-streaming — going stay concurrently throughout a number of platforms — has develop into an more and more frequent observe for livestreaming creators on platforms like Twitch, Kick and YouTube, Gomez’s reply reveals how the very best practices of TikTok Dwell differ considerably from these of rival livestreaming platforms, largely as a result of their divergent approaches to monetization. Twitch and Kick creators make most of their cash by way of subscriptions and model offers, utilizing the inflated metrics that include multi-streaming as an added incentive for potential sponsors. Alternatively, TikTok Dwell creators who’re centered on stay gifting over subscriptions or sponsorships are extra instantly incentivized to work together with particular person followers to maintain the {dollars} flowing in, with metrics that would assist them signal model offers as a secondary concern.
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