San Francisco Man’s Samoyed Set to Earn Over $80,000 a Year on Instagram

On the outside, she looks like a typical cheerful, fluffy dog but Coconut is one heck of a celebrity both online and in San Francisco. She has a strong following on both Instagram and TikTok with over 360,000 followers and 389,200 fans, respectively.

Coconut, who Lai describes as “playful and silly, but a little dramatic” and the “queen of San Francisco,” has worked with several companies from a dog harness maker to a personal finance website, reported SFGate.

According to Lai, he only started monetizing this year and plans to limit them to two posts per month. But even at that pace, Coconut is still set to rake in some serious cash, making roughly $3,500 a post and a potential gross annual income of $84,000, the report added.

Lai got Coconut from a breeder in Toronto in 2015. He then started her account with the sole purpose of documenting his pet’s life just for fun. But as time went on, the account’s follower count started to grow, before eventually exploding in 2017 when 9Gag posted a video of Coconut.

The exposure gave Coconut’s account a major boost of 50,000 new followers and after hitting the 200,000 mark, Lai started making sponsored content.

While Instagram is Lai’s most profitable platform, he has said that the short-video sharing app TikTok is a better place to build a following. He explained that the key is to take advantage of how important the music is to the core audience of TikTok.

Adding tags of the music featured in the video will reportedly help the user’s chances of their video landing on people’s feed. And the more popular the song is, the better the chances.

Even though this bit of information will come in handy, Lai said that building a personal connection with the fans will go a long way.

“Videos and captioning, that’s what everyone likes these days,” he told SFGate. “You’re giving a voice to your dog.”

Thanks to the DoggoLingo, popularized by Twitter account WeRateDogs, Coconut has established an intimate connection between her and her fans.

“It’s strange because people think they know her. We can’t walk down the street,” Lai said.

Despite her incredible appearance, Coconut is not actually very high maintenance. According to Lai, he hasn’t bathed her in four months and only requires daily brushing. However, the only form of luxury she indulges in is a homemade mix of ground meat, rice, and vegetables, mixed with kibble, according to the report.

Follow Coconut Rice Bear for more cuteness overload videos and pictures.

Images via Instagram / coconutricebear