At 2 a.m., a ring light still glows in My's rented room in Ho Chi Minh City. The 22-year-old is checking her earnings from affiliate links. A week of filming and posting videos has produced an estimated commission of 18,225 dong, about 70 cents. Three months earlier, she had seen creators claiming to earn tens or hundreds of millions of dong from affiliate links. Her 8 million dong office salary suddenly felt like proof that she was falling behind.
She used a credit card to buy lights, a microphone, and sample products, spending more than 5 million dong. Yet stricter platform algorithms mean her videos get only a few dozen views each. Thu Huong, 28, joined online groups promising mothers easy income and spent over 8 million dong on appliances to review. She livestreamed twice a day, but attracted few viewers and closed no orders. After three months, her commissions totaled less than 600,000 dong. The two women are among hundreds of thousands of young people drawn in by videos promising passive income.