How UAE Creators Are Turning Their Passion Into Livelihoods on TikTok 

For these creators, TikTok gave a passion an audience before it had followers, and that audience went on to become a livelihood. – Sandeep G, Partner, Redseer 

Chahrazad was a banker who had a passion for baking. She forged a strong connection with her audience on TikTok by making complex baking routines seem easy in bite-sized tutorials. That connection led her to learn video editing, social media management, and digital marketing.  

By 2022, she had her own bakery, a bestselling cookbook, Bake & Sprinkle, and a feature on Fatafeat. Today she has 4.7 Mn followers, has pursued professional certifications at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and is exploring expansion into Saudi Arabia. 

Chahrazad’s story is where TikTok’s role in the UAE’s creator economy is clearest. Its discovery lets a passion find an audience before it has followers, and the trust that audience builds can carry a livelihood and, for some, a business. 
 

1. A passion finds an audience, and the audience starts to pay 

For more than one in four UAE creators, TikTok is what got them started: in Redseer’s analysis, 28% cited it as the main reason they began creating content. 

Miled and Melissa show what that start can turn into. They were passionate travellers who were initially hesitant about the platform, until one of their early videos reached 100K views overnight while they had only 100 followers (April 2020). TikTok’s discovery then carried them to 1.4 Mn followers. As the audience grew, so did the income: Miled moved into content full-time while Melissa kept her own career, and the two now report hiring videographers, editors and finance subcontractors. A passion for travel became a livelihood, and then a small team of people who are paid because of it. 

They are not the only ones. In the same analysis, 37% of creators say TikTok brings in a significant share of their earnings. On TikTok LIVE, 3 Mn+ creators went live in the UAE in 2025, and about 75% of them earned income from it, according to TikTok internal data. 

2. Trust is what makes that audience valuable 

Behind these stories sits trust. According to Redseer’s analysis, users in the UAE are more likely to follow creators than business accounts or celebrities, and brands and public bodies have started to borrow that trust. 

Department of Culture and Tourism, Abu Dhabi’s creator-style summer campaign drew 25 Mn+ two-second video views at 50% lower cost per view than its traditional assets. Safe at 3AM, which aimed to demystify safety concerns for solo female travellers and residents, had a fitness trainer and streamer live-stream a marathon across Dubai at night, and reportedly reached 2.2 Mn impressions. 

3. Creators open a door to business, in both directions 

Some creators carry that trust straight into a business of their own. Sahar Suleiman, a wellness creator, moved from posting content to paid consultations and now generates 20-30 paid leads a month through TikTok LIVE. 

The door also opens from the other side: Amna Motors, a workshop run by a female mechanic, uses TikTok LIVE as a direct customer-acquisition channel and has built trust through transparency. 

Businesses are found through creators as well, with 47% of SMBs saying TikTok made it easier to reach audiences through them. FIX Chocolate’s daily orders rose about 70x after one creator’s video of its bar went viral, a video that has since passed 140 Mn views. 

Redseer Advisory 

• Brands and SMBs: users follow creators (67%) more than business accounts (55%) or celebrities (51%), and 47% of SMBs say TikTok has made it easier to reach audiences through creators, so creator partnerships belong in discovery plans. 
   
• Tourism and public bodies: creator-style formats delivered 50% lower cost per view for DCT Abu Dhabi and carried #SaferTogether across 10 nationalities, so creator-native storytelling belongs in destination and public-information campaigns. 
   
• Policymakers: Redseer recommends sustained, ongoing dialogue on the creator economy, through training and workshops, creator bootcamps and public-facing campaigns, so the pathway stays open to more people. 

For creators like Chahrazad, Miled and Melissa, a passion found its audience on TikTok, and the trust that audience built is what turned it into a profession.