Khabane “Khaby” Lame, a Senegalese-born TikToker and social media personality, is expected to earn around $10 million this year, with the majority of his earnings coming from endorsement deals thanks to his international fame.
The figures for his estimated earnings this year, which were recently published by Fortune, the U.S. multinational business magazine, follow a lucrative contract with a Hollywood studio that will pay him $750,000 for a single clip.
Lame who has 149.6 million TikTok followers and is the most-followed content creator on the social media platform, earns most of his money from brand deals in the form of online content that is linked to his TikTok account.
Germany-based Hugo Boss recently paid the Senegalese-born Italian social media influencer $450,000 to walk the runway at their Milan Fashion Week show and upload a video of himself doing so to his TikTok account.
With the global fame that many people aspire to, it is easy to see how Lame, who makes wordless videos mocking overly complicated life hacks, can earn incomes that only a small percentage of the world’s population can match.
These earnings and international fame propelled him to the top of the 2022 Forbes Under 30 Europe Art & Culture list, which features celebrities, creatives, and social media content creators who are shaping the future of fashion and arts in Europe.
Lame has grown to become a global influencer to reckon with since posting his first video on TikTok in March 2020 after losing his job working at an Italian factory. In June, Binance, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, signed a deal with him as a global brand ambassador, in which he will use his signature style to create content for the company.
With all these endorsements, the 22-year-old star, who earned a total of $10 million in 2021, according to Forbes, has his sights set on even bigger business goals, as he now spends three hours a day learning English in order to master the language and land major roles in Hollywood films.
