This teacher quit his day job for TikTok. So can you make a living on social media?

Before social media creator Steve Boots was pumping out content full-time for his hundreds of thousands of followers, he was a burnt-out elementary teacher in Regina.

The wear-and-tear of the daily grind prompted him to take a leave from teaching and turn his sights to making money from streaming channels full-time.

It's a far cry from going to school, teaching and writing report cards for the content creator, who uses the last name Boots online in lieu of his actual last name, Boutilier.

"I was just so tired. I was used up, I was grumpy. My social batteries were so depleted by the end of the day," he said. 

Now he sets his own hours, breaking down news stories and happenings in short, digestible videos on platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. The past month saw him ride a roller-coaster high of being a politics creator during a Canadian election, while getting paid to do so.

"I consider what I do now still teaching in a different format," he said. "I kind of think of myself as a social studies teacher to the Canadian internet in a way."

So what does it take to be a successful content creator in Saskatchewan and support one's self through social media? The latest episode of CBC's podcast This is Saskatchewan dug into this question, with the help of creators like Boutilier. 

There's a wide range of compensation streams for creators. In Canada, none of them come from TikTok. Its Creator Fund does not pay Canadian creators.

You can, however, earn money from YouTube. Boutilier said YouTube estimates his average monthly earnings from the platform are between $1,000 to $3,000. On the higher end, there's Sierra & Rhia FAM, a family of YouTubers based in Canada that features the antics of two sisters. The channel earns them an estimated $2 million dollars a month, according to Social Blade, a website that tracks creator statistics.

It's the kind of money Boutilier used to hear lots of his middle-school students daydream about making.

"What I wish I could convey to them is that the only way you can breakthrough is by working ludicrously hard and not looking like you're working hard while you're doing it," he said.

Agencies around the globe have sprung up to help content creators make money by connecting them with brand partners.

"We facilitate partnerships in the range of a few hundred dollars to well into six figures. So it's a pretty wide spectrum," said Doug Campbell, CEO of Moose Jaw-based Creatorade.

"We've seen it to be sustainable for multiple creators that are doing this full-time today."