Entrepreneur: Rebecca Rogers

Biz: Mrs. Rogers

Tilt: Humorous stories about teaching and life

Scene: YouTube (1.94M), TikTok (2.6M), Instagram (146K), Facebook

Snack Bites: 

  • Rebecca started on TikTok to bring a smile to her students’ faces during the pandemic-forced distance learning.
  • A year later, her school system gave her a choice – the classroom or the content business. For many reasons, she opted for content.
  • She already earned more than triple her $42K teacher’s salary through TikTok sponsorships.

Why We Stan: Rebecca uses humor to help the teaching industry feel seen and heard. She also recognized when she left the classroom, she had to tell her stories differently. Even with the shift, viewers continue to watch. 

The Story of Rebecca Rogers

Rebecca Rogers had a simple goal when she launched her TikTok channel: Make the students in her classes smile.

It was 2020 and the pandemic-forced era of virtual learning. She saw her students were sad. As she tells Insider, she thought she would bring some humor and asked what they thought about her joining TikTok. Her students jumped in – creating her handle and suggesting trends she should participate in. 

Within six months, the social studies teacher had 1M followers of her content that tells teacher stories and classroom experiences with a humorous spin.

In 2021, her principal forced her to choose – to be a content creator or a teacher. Rebecca explains she had told the principal about the TikTok (and later YouTube Shorts) early on and had their support. But the principal eventually said they didn’t want her doing it.

Rebecca Rogers did TikTok videos to bond with her students. A million followers later, her school district gave her a choice: Be a content creator or a teacher. #Stan #CreatorEconomy Share on X

“After some frustrating back-and-forth, I put in my 30 days’ notice during a Zoom call with my principal and HR, then I applied for monetization on the rest of my platforms and decided to call it a day,” she tells Insider.

Rebecca says at the time, she was already earning more than triple her $42K teacher’s salary through TikTok sponsorships.

Making content a full-time business

In an interview with tubefilter, Rebecca explains her original content tilt and how she pivoted her content once she was no longer working in a classroom: “I really wanted teachers to just feel seen, to know that they weren’t alone with all the craziness and weird feelings and experiences that they might have.”

Mrs. Rogers (aka Rebecca Rogers) made 3x her teacher's salary ($42K) through @TikTok sponsorships before she went full time into her content business via @Insider. #Stan #ContentEntrepreneur Share on X

Once she was out of the classroom, she didn’t think it was right to position her content from her perspective as a teacher because she didn’t know what it was like on the frontlines anymore. Rebecca continues to advocate for teachers and share their stories. Still, she’s also expanded to incorporate her quirks and experiences with ADHD, anxiety, and whatever she experiences daily.

Rebecca says she spends two or three days a week on filming tasks, including research, emails, etc. She uses the other two or three days to find sounds. “Right now, I literally have 20-something sounds just to record over the next week or two that I think that I can relate to either cat-obsessed people, or millennials that don’t want kids, or people with ADHD, or anxiety, or something that other people will just resonate with and feel seen and just put together all the skits that I need to record and all the nitty pretty, and all the long-form content,” she tells tubefilter.

Three weekly series sit under the Mrs. Rogers umbrella brand – two are funny skits, such as this video.

And the third series tells stories about real things that happen in schools, such as this one:

She also created a podcast, eventually acquired by Bored Teachers (she still hosts it). In the Insider interview, Rebecca breaks down her monthly income:

  • $2K to $3K from the podcast
  • $800 a month from TikTok Creator Fund
  • $5K to $10K a month from TikTok content sponsorships
  • $3K to $5K from YouTube
  • $3K from Instagram

Rebecca shares this advice for other content entrepreneurs: “I genuinely believe that it’s very possible for anyone to make content. I think that a lot of people get in their own way because they’re afraid. There’s a lot of anxiety that I think of … Just don’t get in your own way, go for it.”

About the author

Ann regularly combines words and strategy for B2B, B2C, and nonprofits, continuing to live up to her high school nickname, Editor Ann. An IABC Communicator of the Year and founder of G Force Communication, Ann coaches and trains professionals in all things content. Connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.