Anaita Sarkar can make $3800 in under a minute on TikTok and it happened by accident

Sydney mum of three Anaita Sarkar can rake in $3800 from a single minute-long TikTok video, but she's not a big-name influencer.

The regular Australian started making cash online after joining the video app to promote her book Sell Anything Online in 2021.

"There's so much money to be made online. It's nuts," Sarkar tells 9Honey Money.?

"But I didn't go into it thinking I want to be an influencer or a content creator. That was a really strange concept to me."

READ MORE: Argylica started a business with $1,000. Now it's worth $60 million

She already owned and ran sustainable packaging brand Hero Packaging when she wrote her digital marketing and e-commerce book as a side project.

Not wanting to fork out thousands of dollars to advertise the book online, she opted for a DIY marketing strategy and started posting videos about it on TikTok.

They weren't long and had no fancy production, it was just her chatting through simple tips from her book on camera between mum duties.

"I just kept on saying, 'Here are four tips to optimise your website', 'Here are tips to become a creator or get more TikTok views'. And that kept on increasing my followers," she says.

"People hate me when I say this, but the only way that I was able to do it was to push out three videos a day, even when my kids were sleeping, or when they're sitting next to me."

Sarkar never planned to amass a huge following, but before long she hit 50,000, then 100,000 followers by playing into the business niche on TikTok.

For a daily dose of 9Honey, subscribe to our newsletter here

Suddenly, she started getting emails from tech companies and business brands wanting to work with her.

"I got brands reaching out saying, 'Hey, you're at 100,000 followers, we'd love to pay for your content'. I was like, 'Cool, I'll take it,' but at the time I didn't know how to price myself," she admits.

READ MORE: Kate makes an extra $8,000 a month using nothing but her voice

At first, Sarkar charged just $100 per video, well below market average and what she was actually worth. It's a trap so many Aussies fall into without even knowing.

Digital content creators are driving more commerce than ever before and are an integral part of the marketing industry today.

Linktree research found creators using its service ¨C which lets users host links on a personalised landing page ¨C drive over $6 billion in sales value annually.

Shoppers spend about $12,000 every second through Linktree links and a huge portion of that cash should be going back to creators through brand deals.

But nearly 75 per cent of creators on Linktree earned under $500 in the past year, according to its 2023 Creator Report.

It's because creators just don't charge enough, but many still claim to make bank on social media.

"What I found speaking to a lot of creators, there's a lot of dishonesty online. A lot of people say that they're making a lot of money, when in fact they're not," Sarkar reveals.?

"Our self worth is often determined by the number of likes that we get, so we think to ourselves, 'I'm not getting millions of views, so I can't charge a lot of money.'"

READ MORE: Perth couple started $50 million brand from a spare room

It's certainly how she used to think, but she forced herself to start charging more when she realised how valuable her content is to big brands.

So many businesses make millions in sales by relying on influencer and digital content marketing, so why not charge appropriately for it?

Sarkar looked at how American male creators priced their services and eventually started asking for $1000 per video instead of $100. The answer was an immediate 'yes'.

Now she charges $2500 USD ($3800 AUD) for a single post to her 320,000 TikTok followers, and she could still ask for more.

"A lot of people in the business influencer space are actually charging about $5000 USD ($7,600 AUD). I just can't bring myself to do it," she admits.

"I think we value ourselves too little."

There's a pay gap in digital content creation and women and people of colour tend to make less than their white male counterparts, but Sarkar says it's usually a personal pitfall.

"It's our own mental problem, because we don't want to charge too much. We want to be nice about it, but at the end of the day, you're just losing out for yourself," she says.

"You need to charge what you're worth¡­ I think we value ourselves too little."

The best part is, you don't need to be a big influencer with millions of followers to make money creating content online.

Sarkar says all you need to do is find a niche, start making videos and stick to it for long enough that brands take notice. It certainly worked for her.

"TikTok is not a social network, it's a broadcast network. Every video that you create has the potential to get 100,000 views, a million views," she says.?

"There is absolutely a way to monetize even a small number of followers."

READ MORE: Aussie mates' bedroom side hustle banked them $40 million

Her number one tip is to set up a Linktree and plan to monetise your content early, so you can jump on the first opportunity that comes your way.

Fill your Linktree page with links to your social media accounts so followers and businesses can find them quickly, as well as money-making streams - like Sarkar's link to buy her book.

"If you can set those things up and have them ready to go, then all you need to focus on is creating the content," she says.?

Keep at it for long enough and anyone could make $3800 for a TikTok like Sarkar one day.