- Chris Guerra creates comedy content on TikTok and Instagram for a combined 800,000 followers.
- He recently decided to drop his management company when he realized he could self-manage.
- Here’s the tech stack he uses to edit his videos and manage his workflow.
Before actor and comedian Chris Guerra posted his first video on TikTok in 2021, he was skeptical.
“I thought it was for 13-year-olds,” he told Insider. “As an actor, you’re constantly trying to sell yourself as a brand, like you do on TikTok. But I didn’t go on TikTok because I literally assumed it was for kids.”
But one day, he had a funny interaction on Facebook Marketplace after putting an item for sale, and his wife suggested he tried making a TikTok video reenacting it. That video went viral overnight, and changed Guerra’s mind.
Two years later, he’s amassed almost 800,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram with videos of “Facebook Marketplace Nightmares,” where he reenacts real conversations users have had while negotiating transactions on Facebook. These days, Guerra collects screenshots of interactions from his followers, and makes videos based on those submissions.
Guerra makes $5,000 to $6,000 a month from subscriptions and tips from his most dedicated followers, brand partnerships, and platform bonuses (Insider verified this information with documentation Guerra provided). He still works has jobs a web developer, filmmaker, and improv teacher, but social media is his largest source of income, he said, and he’s built a dedicated community of followers.
Guerra also said he worked with a management company that cost him thousands of dollars a month for about four months this year, to help him land collaborations with brands. But in July, he realized he could rely on some key apps and tools he was already using, and start managing his workflow and brand deals by himself.
Here’s the tech stack Guerra uses to edit and repurpose content, manage his workflow, and keep track of brand partnerships.
1. Videoleap
For edits on his short-form videos, Guerra uses Videoleap, an editing app for mobile phones that costs $8 a month and provides pre-edited templates to make TikToks and Instagram reels.
As an actor and filmmaker, Guerra had experience using the video-editing tool Adobe Premiere Pro, which he also sometimes uses.
2. Linktree
Guerra uses Linktree for his link-in-bio on TikTok and Instagram, and uses it to link out to his other social profiles, as well as to a form for his audience members to submit their Facebook Marketplace experiences, and some press articles he’s been featured on, among other things.
Linktree has a free plan, but Guerra pays $7 a month for it to access more features like customized buttons, more integrations with different monetization tools, and scheduling of links.
3. Jotform
Jotform is how Guerra sources the content he uses to make his videos.
The platform provides forms and templates for different kinds of documents. Guerra used Jotform to make a form for his audience to submit their Facebook Marketplace experiences.
Guerra paid $30 a month to use the platform for several months, but after he realized how much he was using it and organically promoting it on his profile, he reached out to the company, and now has a promotional contract with Jotform that pays him $3,500 a month.
“Not enough influencers reach out to brands that they’re already using,” Guerra said. “It’s a huge opportunity. Look at what you’re wearing in your videos. You’re wearing clothes. Go reach out to those brands. You are wearing hats. You’re wearing earrings. You have a blue screen behind you. What’s that company? Go reach out to them.”
By using a form system to collect Facebook Marketplace experiences, Guerra is also able to capture the emails of users who submit them, and have a database of his “power users” he could leverage in the future.
“If TikTok ever goes down, I can contact them and say, ‘Hey guys, I’m moving to this other app,'” he said. “One day I’m going to contact them and see if they want to donate to help me make a film.”
Guerra also uses Jotform to create contracts and invoices that he sends brands for paid partnerships. The invoices have an integration with Stripe and Paypal, so the brands can send payments directly.
4. BigVu
BigVu is a teleprompter and caption-generating app. It allows Guerra to input the script of the video he’s filming without having to learn it all by heart. This helps Guerra when he reenacts scenes that are very long or complicated.
5. Captions.ai
As the name suggests, Captions.ai is an AI platform that automatically generates captions based on the audio of a video.
“Captions are huge,” Guerra said. “Every creator really should use captions, because people watch in bed at night with their volume off.”
6. Repurpose.io
Through Repurpose, Guerra can automatically download videos from TikTok without the watermark and upload them on multiple social-media platforms without doing the manual work of reposting it himself. It also integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, and podcasting platforms.
This tool is on the pricier side, costing $15 a month for the most basic plan, and Guerra only uses it occasionally, paying the subscription fee for a month when he knows he’ll be shooting and publishing a lot of content.
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