Making lots of dough on social media

Teenage Tumblr sensation Jess Miller aka Pizza. Photo: Darrian Traynor

In a Melbourne cinema there's a young woman who goes about her business – the business of popping popcorn and selling tickets.

She's like any other teenager: earning some money while taking a break from her university studies. 

But, at 18, Jess Miller has lived a whole other life. It was a life lived on the internet, where she gained 1 million followers on social media site Tumblr and earned so much money she could buy all the popcorn, make-up and clothes her young heart desired.

Since she was 13, Miller cultivated followers on Tumblr from her unadorned bedroom in Croydon.

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She was known as Pizza and, through various canny marketing strategies, became the biggest star of the teenage comedy scene on the micro-blogging site.

She posted jokes and reposted other people's jokes (most of which she now describes as "stupid"). 

She now dreams of a job in social media but, until this point, has been an unknown internet star hiding in plain sight in Melbourne's outer suburbs.

As her follower count climbed towards a million Miller started to make some serious money – more than her real estate mother earned. 

She went a little crazy with online shopping for a while – "Like, one day I bought six jumpers. I don't need six jumpers".

But then she stopped and put it in a savings account for later. 

Which is good, because nothing last forever, not even when you have a million followers on Tumblr.

The full story in Good Weekend.

Source: Making lots of dough on social media