In October 2020, Amelia Samson's partner ended their tumultuous eight-year relationship. She was heartbroken, but COVID restrictions in her hometown of Seattle meant she couldn't turn to her previous breakup coping mechanisms: going to bars and kissing strangers.She turned to TikTok, hoping to find reassuring videos about other people getting over heartbreak, but she couldn't find the step-by-step healing journeys she wanted to see, she told Business Insider.So, the night after the split, Samson made a minute-long video in which she tearfully spoke about the breakup and how she wanted to help other people by documenting what she hoped would be her healing journey.She shared it on TikTok at 2 a.m. and went to bed. When she woke up the next day, the video had 40,000 views.Samson was shocked by the number of views and the support from commenters. Feeling validated, she posted more videos, in which she described crying a lot and struggling to eat. Two days later, she had 10,000 followers. Amelia Samson wasn't expecting to launch an influencing side hustle when she posted a TikTok of her crying the night after a breakup. Amelia Samson Samson said that she worried that the videos might upset her ex, but making them gave her sadness purpose and helped her process the breakup."There was never a part of me that thought it could turn into something bigger," she said. "I just thought I'd find a few new internet friends." Five years later, Samson, 31, has almost 580,000 TikTok followers. Her account is a thriving side hustle to her career as a media manager, bringing in anywhere from $100 to $3,000 a month thanks to brand deals and TikTok's creator rewards program.Samson's success was unexpected, but it's now common knowledge among influencers and their reps that there'sAt first, sharing her lowest moments with strangers online was "kind of mortifying," Samson said, but she now thinks it was the secret to her unexpected success."That's been an interesting trend I've noticed — authenticity is what people are really looking for on TikTok," she added. Samson said that authenticity is key for success on TikTok. Amelia Samson It's part of a digital shift that's been happening over the past decade, from heavily edited YouTube videos and filtered Instagram posts to off-the-cuff TikToks and casual photo "dumps." While "boyfriend tag" videos and soft launches were previously mainstays of relationship content, people now want to see romance's raw, messy sides, too.Cameron Ajdari, a cofounder of the LA-based talent management firm Currents Management, said viewers want to find community and real people they can relate to online.And what could be more authentic and relatable than heartbreak?Breakups can be a gold mine for content and brand dealsFor established influencers in public relationships, there can be downsides to not sharing details of a breakup online. Because audiences expect authenticity, fans may lose trust in a creator they feel is suddenly hiding things from them, said Presley Chambers, the director of talent at the San Diego-based influencer brand management firm Neon Rose.In turn, transparency can be rewarding. Chambers said popular influencers tend to see spikes in engagement after splits, as viewers often check creators' profiles for updates, or algorithms promote their older posts in response to the interest.So, a breakup is the perfect time to post about brand deals and turn inevitable lifestyle changes into "storytelling moments," she said. Maybe a heartbroken creator joins the gym, downloads a dating app, or moves post-breakup — these could all be pitched to brands for sponsorship deals, Chambers said.And those deals can be very lucrative. On FYPM, a database of user-submitted brand deals from verified (but anonymous) influencers, the dating app Hinge is listed as paying influencers anywhere from $400 for single branded posts to $12,000 for multiple-post campaigns, while the fitnesswear brand Gymshark is said to have paid about $33,000 for a series of sponsored posts by an influencer with 10 million followers in January 2021. Hinge declined to comment for this story, and Gymshark did not respond to requests for comment. Bridgette Vong started her TikTok influencer journey making content about her breakup, before turning it into a full time job. Bridgette Vong Like Samson, Bridgette Vong, 26, wasn't an established influencer before she turnedonline interest in her breakup into profit. She had been making gym-focused content to motivate herself, which would get only a few hundred views, but when she shared a TikTok of her final goodbye with her partner of five years in 2022, it went viral.She kept posting videos documenting her move to a new apartment and discussing the breakdown of the relationship — and the views kept coming. When she started to get over the breakup after a few months, she pivoted to making dating vlogs and "get ready with me" TikToks, as well as videos about credit card debt and her life in Toronto.Now, she's a full-time influencer, having left her previous job in marketing, and has paid off $15,000 in credit card debt thanks, in part, to her five-figure brand deals. Vong said that posting about her breakup was the best thing that ever happened to her. Bridgette Vong "Posting about the breakup was possibly the best thing that ever happened to me," she said. "I think there is a lot of power in being authentic. That's what resonates with people."Erin-Jane Roodt, a 24-year-old in London who's the CEO and cofounder of Epowar, a personal safety app, profited from her breakup differently. She made a TikTok in 2023 about being so sad the night after her partner of three years broke up with her that she ate the biggest chocolate from her Advent calendar weeks before Christmas.The video resonated far beyond the friends who followed her, so she kept posting daily updates as she processed the breakup.Roodt, who has more than 42,000 followers, has made only about $720 from TikTok, but her breakup content caught the eye of an investor, who saw it and learned she was also looking to raise funds for her business after clicking through to the startup's TikTok profile."It was a positive surprise that being authentic hadn't ruined my professional reputation. It taught me the importance of being real," she said, adding that she's now exploring monetizing her platform through brand deals. Erin-Jane Roodt's TikTok about her emotional state after a breakup went viral, and attracted the attention of an investor for her startup, Epowar. Erin-Jane Roodt Not all breakups are good for businessSharing their most vulnerable, authentic life moments can also backfire for influencers.In July 2023, Nick Champa and his husband announced on TikTok that they were divorcing after seven years together. He described them as the "biggest gay couple" on the platform at the time, and their split went viral.Likes on his TikTok videos increased to 4.4 million in the week after he posted his breakup announcement video, according to data from Social Blade that Champa confirmed. The week before, his videos had received a total of 300,000 likes.The ex-couple's combined 26 million follower count on their respective TikToks, once a source of income and pride, quickly became a source of pain."You can't ever escape the breakup because 26 million people are asking questions," the 29-year-old content creator and actor in Los Angeles said. Nick Champa used to make videos with his then-husband. Nick Champa Sadi Fox, a therapist in New York with a doctorate in psychology who specializes in psychotherapy for influencers, said it's "so much harder" for influencers to go through breakups because their audience is watching them grieve. Followers can sometimes expect drama where there may be none, or a level of intimacy that the influencer doesn't actually owe them, she added.And as freelancers, influencers may feel they have to continue creating content during a breakup so that their income doesn't dry up, Fox said."Not many influencers get to break up cleanly," Fox said.Breakup content needs to fit into a creator's brand to be profitableAfter a breakup, content creators can struggle if they no longer fit into the niche they've carved out for themselves.Ajdari, the talent manager, said that some fans are interested in creators themselves, while others are interested in the type of content creators make. For the latter, breakups can necessitate a big change."If you found an audience focused on relationship content, but all of a sudden you're not in a relationship anymore, it's very hard for you to continue to engage with that same community. You have to think about creating new content, and that's not an easy thing to do," Adjari said.The toll can be mental as well as financial. "The worst thing to happen to an influencer is to have to reinvent their brand completely," Fox, the therapist, said. "They might perceive a decrease in followers as a rejection of them and their personal identity."This was the case for Champa. "It was just a massive loss in every capacity. I lost a partner as well as an identity and a sense of security," he said.He said his viewers were invested in his relationship, or at least the "curated version" they saw online. Some viewers seemed to resent him for posting videos about his life post-breakup that were so different from his previous content, and he lost followers. Champa also felt brands started to pull away as he was no longer in a marketable couple. @nickychampa it’s getting old ♬ original sound - 💫🌙STAR_LIGHTZ🌙💫 Champa said the hate began to affect his mental health. Instead of pivoting, he ultimately decided to stop making content to focus on his acting career."I would post periodically, and it would look like I was having a good time, but in reality, I was crying myself to sleep every night," he said. "I got so much hate. The comments, and the follower loss, and the negative public persona were traumatizing."Samson, on the other hand, had followers who were invested in her and, like Vong, managed to transition out of breakup content. She switched to dating app critiques and then to comedy in January 2021. Her viewers mostly seem to enjoy her new content, she said, enough to give her the engagement to attract $10,000 brand deals.She doesn't think that the breakup itself was lucrative, though."The lucrative aspect is connecting with people. And there's nothing more connectable than going through something painful," she said."It didn't feel like I was exploiting my own pain for profit," she said. "But I don't think that I would have gotten to where I am now if it weren't for the people rooting for me since the breakup."Without prior established influencing careers, Samson, Roodt, and Vong didn't have as much to lose as Champa — no followers, brand deals, nor senses of identity wrapped up in others' short attention spans.Instead, they had everything to gain: a business, a supportive community, thousands of sympathetic eyes, and a sense of purpose to their grief.