A young influencer is making millions on TikTok,
catching the eye of celebrities and Hollywood agents. Here's how she did it.
When Alix Earle first launched her TikTok account with an eye toward making a name for herself as
an influencer, she was one of millions of other young people chasing that same dream. At first,
she made little headway when it came to breaking away and making herself stand out from the vast
competition in the social media arena. Then, she made a bold decision by posting an unfiltered
video of herself in the midst of a severe acne outbreak, with the idea that perhaps somebody else
going through a similar situation would feel a bit better by knowing that she was going through her
own skin struggle. Suddenly, she watched in awe as she began attracting followers like never before.
"If I can post that online for millions of people to see,
then you can leave your house, you can go to class, you can go to the grocery store."
Earle then began receiving Accutane treatments, and posted regular updates of how her skin
was improving — posts that continued to gain increasingly more followers for her account.
Prior to her break-through on TikTok, there was a lot of trial and error as
she experimented with what worked and what didn't. She told Rolling Stone,
"I tried a lot of the TikTok dances. I quickly learned that wasn't for me."
Earle ultimately decided to focus on filming herself putting on makeup,
walking her viewers through the various techniques she'd come to adopt while sharing the tricks and
tips she'd picked up along the way, at the same time teasing the event for which she
was getting ready. As a result, reported the The Wall Street Journal, she became one of the
leading personalities in what's come to be known as the "Get Ready with Me" sub-genre of TikTok.
"Get ready with me: Night three in Mykonos."
In May 2023, Alix Earle devoted her various social media feeds
to chronicling a multi-week trip to Europe with a gang of female friends,
in celebration of their graduation from college. That excursion brought them to various countries.
When they arrived in Italy, however, they encountered a pretty significant problem.
"We're stranded in Italy. The house we were supposed to stay at doesn't exist.
Our car service canceled. It's midnight. We literally don't know where to go."
According to Earle, she'd booked accommodations for herself and her
pals via an online travel-booking site, only to discover upon arrival that they'd
been scammed. Despite the late hour, she and her fellow travelers made the best of it,
and eventually found an alternative option. In a subsequent TikTok video, she wrote in the caption,
"We found a place to stay the night after our 'scenic villa in Italy' didn't exist."
In a followup post, Earle revealed their misadventures were even more pronounced
than previously revealed. Not only had they been hoodwinked about the nonexistent villa,
but they all left the airport and forgot to pick up their luggage when their flight
arrived in Naples. Thankfully, they were able to talk their way into retrieving their suitcases.
Alix Earle has always been open about the fact that she paid for breast implants.
She celebrated the first anniversary of her breast-augmentation surgery in
a TikTok video marking what she jokingly described as her "boobaversary." She said
that from the start, she wanted to be open about the procedure.
"If you're paying to get something done, wouldn't you want people to notice?"
During her interview on the Howard Stern Show, Earle insisted that having the
surgery and trying to hide it from her fans wasn't even an option for her. The reason,
she explained, was because she'd seen various others on social media insist
they'd had no work done when it was obvious to anyone watching that they clearly did.
As she explained, her breast augmentation was
something about which she was neither proud nor embarrassed.
"I mean, it's just something that's a personal choice. I
think if there's something you want to do for yourself, then do it."
According to Insider, Alix Earle is the daughter of a wealthy New Jersey construction magnate.
Her dad, Thomas "TJ" Earle, is CEO of Earle, a construction firm specializing in building
roads founded by her grandfather, Walter R. Earle, back in 1968. According to the Athens Post, the
company boasts annual revenues of more than $24 million. Earle is described as a family business,
and that's apparently true for the case for Alix; on her LinkedIn page, she noted that
she's been a marketing intern at the company since 2020. The company has diversified with
a variety of holdings, some expected and some decidedly not so. According to its website,
in addition to owning various industrial and warehouse properties in New Jersey,
the company also owns a New Jersey-based solar energy farm, a few high-tech patents and,
surprisingly, a frozen custard outlet in the heart of the Jersey Shore.
While Alix was certainly born into immense wealth, these days she's making her own money — and lots
of it. A TikTok video posted by social media marketing manager Jessica Sloann estimated that
Alix is paid in the area of between $40,000 and $70,000 for a brand partnership. If she were to
post just one branded video per month, that would translate into a half-million dollars per year.
Long before Alix Earle gained fame as a social media influencer, Earle's dad was the one making
headlines when, back in 2008, it was reported he'd been cheating on his wife with Ashley Dupré. If
Dupré's name rings a bell, it's because she was the sex worker who'd been caught with
then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, with the scandal ultimately resulting in his resignation.
In 2012, Page Six reported that Dupré and TJ were engaged — and expecting a
baby. Earle's attorney, Mitchell Ansell, insisted there was nothing scandalous,
or even scandal-adjacent, about the couple's relationship. He said in a statement,
"TJ and his wife divorced over a year ago. They divorced amicably. She has moved on,
and he has moved on. There's nothing scandalous. No one's running around."
In 2013 Earle and Dupré tied the knot, with the nuptials held in Paris. Since then,
Dupré has held the role of Alix's stepmother. Interestingly, Alix has chosen not to publicly
comment on her stepmom's role in one of the most infamous sex scandals in American politics.
Just as Alix Earle's star was on the rise as a social media star, she began making headlines of
her own — not for her TikToks, but for her romance with professional baseball player
Tyler Wade. It all began in September 2022, when Earle posted a video on TikTok in which
she was putting on makeup in preparation to attend a baseball game. She said in the video,
"As of a few hours ago, I have a boyfriend."
That beau was eventually revealed to be Wade, who played five seasons as left
fielder for the New York Yankees before going on to the Oakland Athletics. Wade
made some appearances in Earle's social media videos — until he didn't. In a
TikTok live she shared just three months later, she revealed it was over, saying,
"We haven't been together for a hot minute. I've just been hiding it from
you guys because I didn't feel like dealing with it right now."
She added that they had been fighting,
and said in a subsequent video posted on someone else's TikTok account,
"No I did not get back together with Tyler. I'm single."
As fans of Alix Earle's social media accounts have likely ascertained,
she's part of a large and very close friend group, forged during her years attending the
University of Miami. Of those friends, one of her closest is Xandra Pohl, whom she met when
they were both about to start freshman year. As it turns out, Pohl is something of a social
media phenomenon in her own right, given that her TikTok account boasts a cool million followers,
and her Instagram has more than 300,000. Pohl said in an interview with E! News,
"We've been best friends since before freshman year even started. It's just
been such a crazy experience going through it together and having a best friend that's been
there with me all the way through it and I've been there with her."
Following a path that Earle had blazed has been educational for Pohl, who revealed that
their close relationship has extended to their respective social media ventures. Pohl went on,
"It's been amazing just to have that kind of support. She's my best friend,
that girl knows everything, it's great."
Anyone doubting the power of TikTok as a fame-making force only needs to examine
Earle's brief trajectory. She was invited to New York Fashion Week in February 2023;
naturally, she posted a photo of herself on Instagram. Later that same month,
she also took in the Super Bowl, sharing her experiences on TikTok. As part of the game,
she was invited to Sports Illustrated's Super Bowl bash.
Meanwhile, she's also appeared in a makeup-tutorial TikTok post alongside
Selena Gomez and attended NBC's Miley Cyrus-hosted New Year's Eve celebration,
for which she shared a special TikTok video as she did her makeup.
"Why am I invited to this? I don't know."
She also hit the red carpet at an OBB Media event in Los Angeles. It was during the latter that she
had the opportunity to mix and mingle with such celebs as Hailey Bieber , even posing alongside
Justin Bieber's spouse for photographers on the red carpet while wearing complementary
black outfits. Alix Earle has proven
to be such a successful partner for the companies whose products she pitches,
there's actually been a term created to explain it: the Alix Earle effect. That particular term,
noted The Hollywood Reporter, encompasses not only how rapidly she rose to fame,
but also how quickly the items she promotes on her social media platforms sell out.
As Fox News pointed out, Earle has lent her phenomenal selling skills to such products
as meal-delivery app GrubHub, White Fox Boutique and Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty.
Data provided to the outlet from social-media marketing firm Ubiquitous indicated that a
single TikTok video from Earle can result in Google searches for a product jumping by a
full 100 percent. According to Ubiquitous, of 33 products that Earle had showcased in her videos,
10 of these had eventually sold out, while most of the others had sold out almost immediately
after her videos went live. That power was also evident in the Google Trends 100-scale
index, where each of those products experienced massive search increases.
Jeremy Boudinet, senior director of growth at Ubiquitous, said,
"Her style of content exemplifies everything that makes influencer marketing work so well.
One member of our team remarked that it feels like you're watching a cool big
sister get ready on FaceTime. When she makes product recommendations,
it feels like hearing about something from a friend."
Alix Earle's skyrocketing fame did not go unnoticed by Hollywood. In March 2023,
The Hollywood Reporter reported that she'd signed on with one of the entertainment
industry's biggest talent agencies, United Talent Agency. In a joint statement, the agency said,
"Alix has taken social media by storm, and we look forward to
introducing her relatable content to more audiences across new platforms."
Those platforms will look at placing Earle in a whole other context beyond
social media — don't be surprised to see her starring in, say, a reality TV show
at some point. In another statement, this time shared on Instagram, the agency said,
"UTA will help the beauty, fashion and lifestyle
phenomenon expand her business across audio, ventures, television and more."
In whatever she does to expand her horizons, expect Earle to remain fully committed to the same
degree of originality that brought her to this point in the first place. She told Rolling Stone,
"When sounds are trending, it's easy for everyone to do the voice-over,
and do the sound or do the dance. But I think when you're using your own voice and your own
thoughts or whatever story you're telling, that's obviously just original to you. So it's not going
to be saturated by everyone else following the trend, because it's your experience."