Markell Washington says he went six months without a paycheck: 'maybe I'm not relevant any

Connor McCrory Mon, July 27, 2026 at 6:56 AM UTC

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Millions of followers doesn't guarantee a paycheck.

Andy Bachman has spent years watching creators learn that lesson the hard way. Markell Washington was one of them.

During the July 20 episode of Creators Inc., Washington recalled booking two brand deals in February 2023 before spending the next six months waiting for another.

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"The rest of that half of that year, I didn't make a single dime," the 28-year-old said.

"I was like, okay, maybe I'm not relevant anymore. It's time to get to investing, really trying to pivot into something else."

That kind of drought isn't unusual. Roughly 69% of creators count brand deals as their primary source of income, which works fine until the deals stop coming.

What rescued Washington's year was a project that never launched. Meta approached him in 2023 about becoming one of its celebrity AI personas, a rollout that eventually included Charli D'Amelio, Tom Brady, Snoop Dogg, Dwayne Johnson and Kendall Jenner.

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"They offered me $200,000, and then my manager countered," he recalled. "She was like, no, let's do 300. And I was like, oh my god, girl, we being greedy. They already going to give us that."

Meta agreed to the $300,000 and tacked on another $50,000. The company paid all of it upfront, then scrapped the program after users complained about who was getting access.

"They let us keep the money," Washington said. "It was supposed to be through a year contract and it never came back around."

Stories like that are exactly why Bachman says creators need more than sponsorships. "Creators are all sitting on gold mines," he said. "They just don't know how to mine the gold and tap into it."

That idea eventually became BuzzStar, Bachman's live fan-call platform, where creators earn directly from fans instead of waiting for the next brand deal.

One creator, he said, made $40,000 during his first hour on the app after supporters began bidding against one another for video calls.

Washington didn't need much convincing. "I would pay a certain amount to talk to Megan," he joked, referring to Megan Thee Stallion. "No, make it Beyoncé."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”