After 12 years in the field of sales, the 35-year-old decided on the occasion of a video to follow her passion full time.
When her video Mandy Helwege on TikTok went viral in November, she knew what she had to do: quit her job.
After 12 years in the field of sales, the 35-year-old decided on the occasion of this video to follow her passion full time. Three years ago, Helwege had created Seeing Double Edits, a business where she photoshopped pet photos next to their newer versions, promoting it on Instagram, an activity that began to bring her a few thousand dollars a year. And then he realized if he did it full time, then it would be a huge business and not thanks to the popularity of TikTok.
@seeingdoubleedits #glowup #transformation #transformationtuesday #digitalartist #dogartist #dogtok #fyp #foryou #dogsofttiktok ♬ original sound – mertsanimes
Today, the video she uploaded on TikTok has more than 2.4 million views and the Seeing Double Edits Instagram account has more than 40,500 followers. But the most important thing is this: last year’s $4,000 from Seeing Double Edits became $100,000 by June 2022.
“Virtuality is both a blessing and a curse. It takes a lot of time and energy to create five new pieces every day,” he says.
It all started from a spur of the moment idea on her Instagram account called Great Dane. When Helwege posted the first photoshopped photo of her dog, friends flocked and she gradually began to build a following on Instagram.
“He was so surprised when it went viral, because I posted the photo with quite a caveat: if I can get 25 orders from it, that will be cool. But I ended up with hundreds of direct messages on Instagram, taking orders,” says Helwege.
Because many of the people who placed orders then refused to pay for the hours Helwege put in, she set up a reservation system – $10 for next month’s orders, $20 for this month’s orders – and began to limit orders, initially at 150 per month from 350 that he initially accepted.
Today, Helwege pays about $55 a month to host her website and run Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom on her PC. And with each piece now starting at $125, he pulls in twice the monthly commission he pays for each two- to five-hour project.
Relatively low prices also help Helwege stand out from other Instagram art businesses: Seeing Double Edits represents only a small part of the online art market, worth $13.3 billion in 2021, according to a recent report by investment bank UBS, and of the art exhibition company Art Basel.
View the news feed and get the latest news.
