TikTok success leads Aussie dad to quit full-time job: ‘Never in a million years’

An Aussie dad has revealed how he quit his full-time job and now spends most of his days creating TikToks. Robbo Roper, better known as the Aussie Mortgage Guy, previously worked as a mortgage broker and said his new career is "absolutely" more lucrative.

Roper has amassed nearly half a million followers on TikTok since joining the platform a few years ago. The 36-year-old dad of two, who shares home loan insights, tips and tricks for first-home buyer hopefuls, said he never expected for his account to blow up like it has.

“I honestly did not think that even 100 people would want to follow me talking about stamp duty exemptions, first home guarantees and credit cards,” Roper told Yahoo Finance. “But before I knew it, I had 10,000 followers. Now it sits somewhere around 470,000 odd people.”

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After roughly six months of posting on the platform, Roper said it got to the point where he was “inundated” with people seeking his help and he found he wasn’t able to keep up with the demand.

“I was generating so much interest for my business without having spent any money on advertising as well, it was all organic,” he said.

“It was at that point where I thought there really is an opportunity here to become the guy that people rely on when new information is dropped.”

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This realisation led Roper to quit his mortgage broker job to focus on creating content full-time. He aims to create “educational, entertaining and inspiring” content that actually helps Aussies buy their first homes.

“It’s coming from someone who has been through it himself, who’s bought properties and understands the pain that you feel when you are like a deer in the headlights, completely, bewildered by this unknown journey that you've got to go through, especially for people who don’t have family themselves,” Roper said.

New job more lucrative

Roper said his new job is more lucrative than his mortgage brokering gig. He earns money by connecting homebuyers with a pool of between 100 to 200 mortgage brokers and he receives a portion of commissions if the person takes out a home loan.

He also educates other mortgage brokers and those in the real estate industry about how to make content themselves on TikTok and other social media platforms, along with acting as a keynote speaker.

Australia does not have a TikTok Creator Fund like some other countries, meaning creators can’t earn as much for viral videos as they could overseas.

TikTok created the remuneration program in the US, UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain in 2020. It allows creators to make money based on how videos perform on the platform such as views, shares and likes.

Yahoo Finance has spoken to some TikTokers who have called for the platform to bring the monetisation system Down Under and have argued it’s hard to make content full-time when they aren’t paid for it.

Consistency is key

For other Aussies hoping to grow their TikTok following, Roper said the key to his success has been his consistency.

“In the beginning, I set myself some really small, achievable targets. So my very first target was creating one video a day for 14 days,” he said.

“I had no idea that most of my day now would be creating TikTok content. I had no idea that’s where my business would go in three years' time. Never in a million years would I have thought that.”

Roper said the more he posted online, the better he got and he could see which videos were working and which ones "crashed and burned".

He told people not to compare themselves to other creators and to “lean in” to their uniqueness.

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