This woman from Almeria has 22 million followers and TikTok pays her less than the minimum wage

It is likely that, even if you do not have Instagram, you know some of the celebrities that make up the select club in Spain that has more than 20 million followers. They are very few: Sergio Ramos, former Real Madrid player (48 M), Ester Expósito, actress and star of the Elite series (28.8 M), Georgina Rodríguez, model and partner of Cristiano Ronaldo (28.4 M) and Úrsula Corberó, actress in La Casa de Papel (24 M).

However, if you don't have TikTok, it's more difficult for you to know who Julia Menú García is. This 31-year-old from Almeria has recently reached 22 million followers, becoming the second most popular person on TikTok in Spain, just behind singer Naim Darrechi. Most of Julia Menú's fans are the initial base of this platform that was created five years ago: teenagers and girls. "My daughter saw this girl on TikTok and said: 'Look how beautiful, mom'," explained a mother on her YouTube channel in 2019. "Well, I know her." "How are you going to know her?" the girl replied. "It's like you meet Lady Gaga."

The success of Julia, who in three years has gone from working in a flamenco cooperative in Almería to being the queen of TikTok in Spain, is a good portrait of this social network that in September exceeded 1,000 million users and aspires to dethrone Instagram. On the one hand, Julia exemplifies how TikTok empowers anyone to rise to the pinnacle of internet fame with a mobile phone and a little sass and grace. But it also questions what is rewarded on the Internet or how viralization is monetized and represents the efforts of TikTok 'influencers' to transfer their success to other, more lucrative platforms.

"TikTok has changed my life," says Julia in a telephone conversation with El Confidencial in the first interview she has given to a national media outlet in Spain. "I'm still the same, whether I have a follower or 22 million followers, it hasn't gone to my head because I know what it's like to work hard and earn little."

Julia remembers the first TikTok she uploaded in her life: August 4, 2018. It went well and since then she has not stopped posting videos on this social network. Not a single day. When her parents saw that their daughter was planning to give up everything to dedicate herself to being an 'influencer', they tried to discourage her from continuing to work in the cooperative. Other friends told her she was crazy. Now, three years later, when Julia Menú returns home to Roquetas de Mar, there are days when she meets mothers who have come from all over Spain to ask for autographs or photos for their daughters.

"At first I was chased by groups of little girls and I didn't know what to do, but I soon learned to handle it as well as possible," Julia points out. "Many girls found out where I lived and began to record with their mobile phones, making TikTok videos. 'Julia, Julia!', they shouted. 'We are your fans, we love you and we have brought you gifts.'"

Every day I started to be followed by thousands of accounts from India or from far away countries. In a week I got six million followers

This 'influencer' began in 2019 to make transition tutorials on TikTok —changing scenes to make the videos more fluid— that added up to 30 or 40 million views. "Every day thousands of accounts from India or very distant countries began to follow me. In a week I got six million followers, it was crazy," she says. Its culmination moment comes at the end of 2019 and at the beginning of 2020, when each TikTok of his had an average of three or four million views.

But what does he do to have so many followers? In his profile he combines small gags, lip-syncing (playback), dances, serious monologues about his fertility problems, and jokes with his partner —who is also a tiktoker and has more than 9 million followers. If you have never seen a TikTok video, you may find the humorous tone of Julia's videos jarring or you may not understand it. But that is also TikTok, a mixed bag where there are all kinds of videos that share one goal: to retain your attention. Many of Julia's TikToks are simple easy humor (her partner puts a sticker on her car that says "ask me if I drive badly"; she puts a lot of salt in the paella or they both ironize about sexual relations), attacks of sincerity or simple universal morals.

In her most viewed post in the history of TikTok, for example, the 'influencer' leaves a supermarket with her purchase and ignores a young man begging for alms, but instantly her wallet and the boy drop, instead If he keeps the money, he returns it. She, as compensation, buys him food. It might seem amateurish, but it's the content that triumphs on TikTok: it goes viral fast across the planet because everyone understands it. It had more than 70 million views.

In other videos, she tries to "make people aware" of the problem of gender violence and disguises herself as a victim in front of her abusive husband — made up with bruises. "A lot of women write to me thanking me for talking about this problem. We also treat women's psychological abuse of men, eh". She has received criticism for trivializing machismo and her partner even more, but Julia considers that they are effective. After all, all social networks have their own tone and this is the style that has made Menú García one of the top 60 accounts with the most followers on TikTok on the entire planet.

@kcvinweho thing is, not many people know of conversion disorder, let alone how to treat it.

— Nuclear Ranter Sat Sep 21 23:48:31 +0000 2013

However, no matter how many fans Julia Menú García has, her 22 million followers are not comparable to those of other social networks like Instagram. For a simple reason: on TikTok, the views of your videos matter much more than your followers. In fact, when you enter this social network you have two tabs: "following" and "for you", where a platform algorithm shows you the short videos that best suit your preferences. And TikTok gives preference to this tab because profiles you don't know are more likely to surprise you and keep you hooked on the phone.

It doesn't matter how many followers you have. Do you know how to create original content? Are you a virality machine? Here are the keys to fame

Surveys insist that a considerable percentage of children dream of being 'influencers' or youtubers to imitate their idols. And, in that sense, TikTok is the perfect setting to achieve it. While Instagram, YouTube or Twitter reward those who already have famous status, TikTok's algorithm focuses on your ability to keep users' attention. It doesn't matter how many followers you have. Do you know how to create original content? Are you a virality machine? Here are the keys to fame.

At the beginning of 2020, the social network, owned by the Chinese giant Byte Dance, had 500 million users. A year and a half later, it already has a billion users, making it the most downloaded application on the planet. Many experts expect that, at some point, it will surpass Instagram. However, despite the global growth of TikTok and the increase in followers (+8 million since October 2020), Julia Menú's videos are paradoxically seen less and less.

"I think it's times, but there are several things that could have influenced it," says Julia when asked about her drop in views on TikTok. "You can have as many followers as you want, but if your content isn't viral it won't reach it," she admits. Some of his latest videos, for example, have less than 100,000 views, 0.5% of all his followers. "Whether you like it or not, Tik Tok works like this," he resigns.

She attributes it, among other reasons, to the fact that she now makes more content in Spanish (before many of her videos were silent) and to the supposed change in the algorithm that occurred after the creation of the TikTok Creators Fund, a recent program on the platform to "reward and support the best talent on our platform" (and also fend off the onslaught of competition from Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat). TikTok never promised that its users would become millionaires with this fund (although it assures that it has reserved 2,000 million dollars for the next three years), but the expectations of many did not match the money they have finally earned.

TikTok pays her less than the minimum wage

A few months ago, a TikTok user claimed that Julia Menú was charging around 1,200 euros per month for the monetization program of this social network. Despite the fact that the number was ridiculously low for the number of followers she had, Julia came out to deny it: the amount that TikTok had paid her for her work on the platform in June, she said in a video, only amounted to 700. And since it is part of the monetization program, it has achieved a total of 18,000 euros. "It's nothing compared to what you can earn on other platforms," ​​he said then.

"I wanted to clarify that the money they were giving me was less. I tell you one thing: if you only have income through TikTok, you cannot dedicate yourself to it... with 700 euros it is impossible", Menú García now affirms. "I almost prefer that this fund did not exist, because some say that it ends up affecting your virality and views, but I don't know...".

The real deal in being a star on TikTok is in the influencers' agreements with the brands. In the spring, Amazon created a product page called "latest to go viral" thanks to the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt (a hashtag that has more than 5 billion views). In addition, TikTok is already imitating other large technology companies to present the social network as a gigantic shopping center where you don't have to leave the application to buy the products of your favorite 'influencers'.

"Fortunately, I do not depend on money from TikTok and I am involved in YouTube, Instagram, agencies or collaborations with brands," says Menú García, who prefers not to reveal his income but assures that, although She is not a "millionaire", she can live very well. On Instagram he already has more than half a million followers. And there, for example, upload more suggestive and adult content than on TikTok or YouTube.

From Kids to Adults (and How to Keep Your Audience)

Just before the pandemic, in early 2020, the top TikTok accounts received a message from the platform: start creating adult content . At first, there were more children on TikTok, but the technology companies reluctantly ended up asking for at least 13 years of age to register. "In addition, after the quarantine, many adult people who were not there before got in," says Julia Menú.

The reasoning behind TikTok's strategy was simple: if they wanted to continue growing and fattening the number of users, they had to stop being perceived as a social network exclusively for children. "I did not radically remove it, because I had a lot of children's followers, but I started mixing and tried to divert a lot of children to YouTube, where I only do children's content. And there I continue trying to balance it."

Soon after, he began to find success on YouTube, a platform where he has fewer followers but is relatively more lucrative. On this social network, Julia Menú recounts the adventures of the TikTok sisters, in which she herself plays the role of several girls and adolescents inspired by the stories she lived with her seven brothers in their house in Almería. "At the beginning TikTok only left you 59 seconds and my stories about the sisters lasted up to seven minutes. Instead of dividing it into seven, it occurred to me to transfer it to YouTube," he says.

The success of the channel, where she has more than a million followers, has led her to publish a book entitled 'The Sisters of TikTok', which is now in its fifth edition and is intended for children. Now the task for Julia is twofold: to return to having millions of views on TikTok and to continue transferring followers to Instagram and YouTube, two social networks where it is easier to monetize viralization and the weight of followers.

It doesn't seem like an easy task. She, for the moment, has an assured financial stability. And, although he considers the job "stressful" because he does not stop working "24/7", he is happy with the life he leads right now. Asked about her future, however, Julia Menú García is clear about it. "This bargain on social networks is going to end one day," he concludes. "And when that day comes, I'll dedicate myself to something else without problem."