Michela Allocca, 30, started posting about personal finance on Instagram in 2019 as a “creative outlet to find satisfaction outside my job,” she told Business Insider.
She kept things simple and inexpensive, using an iPhone and a ring light to record videos.
Her account, Break Your Budget, took off after she expanded to TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2021, Allocca had more than 200,000 followers and was earning more from content creation than from her day job at an investment consulting firm.
She went all in on Break Your Budget in April 2022. Since then, she’s quadrupled her former corporate income and built a seven-figure net worth, thanks to diligent saving and prudent investing.
Her income is split roughly evenly between two main revenue streams: About 50% comes from brand partnerships. The other half comes from digital products, including her expense tracker and financial independence calculator, which provide recurring monthly income. More recently, she’s added affiliate income and YouTube AdSense, which made up about 10% of her income last year.
Here’s how Allocca says creators can make money online in 2026.
1. Create original content you’d personally want to consume
Allocca focused on creating the kind of content that she personally would want as a woman navigating money in her 20s: easy-to-understand, actionable advice.
“It was so, so simple and straightforward,” she said. “And I do think that really resonated with people.”
Her advice to aspiring creators: make content that fills a gap you’ve personally experienced.
“The people who are most successful create content that fills a gap they’ve identified on their own,” she said. “They’re forging their own style and niche instead of seeing what works for someone else and trying to recreate it.”
Allocca says she approaches content as if she’s making it for herself. “If I wanted to learn more about this topic, how would I want to consume it?” she said. “That’s what I’m making — because if I want to consume it in this way, there’s going to be, hopefully, thousands of other girls who want to consume the same thing.”
2. Build products you’d want to use yourself
Digital products now account for a significant portion of Allocca’s income. She said she’s brought in over $1 million selling budgeting templates and other tools.
She attributes that success to authenticity: “I don’t sell products that I don’t use.”
That approach helps with trust and accountability.
“If I’m going to tell my audience to do something or look at something a different way or track their expenses, I’m also sharing myself doing it,” she said. “I’m not selling something I don’t actually do.”
3. Be willing to adapt as platforms and trends change
Another key to Allocca’s success is paying attention to trends and adapting accordingly.
“There’s this idea that the life cycle of a creator is two or three years before you taper off,” said Allocca, who’s noticed a pattern of creators growing quickly, then losing momentum as they shift focus to side projects and stop prioritizing content. “I’ve made a really concerted effort to keep my content front and center and the main focus of my business, so that I don’t taper off, and part of that is changing how I say things and adapting to what’s trending, and what people care about.”
For example, during the pandemic, she focused on recession fears. When the job market boomed, she pivoted to career content. As inflation rose and layoffs followed, she leaned into budgeting and cutting expenses.
“Over the last year or so, we’ve seen a huge shift to anti-consumerism and spending less, so I’ve focused my content a lot around shopping, buying better, and how to spend less and live on less,” she said. “Keeping a pulse on those trends has helped a lot with diversifying my brand, but also remaining relevant.”
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