I quit my retail job last year, and now I attend exclusive red carpets and get paid up to $10,000 to promote movies

• Amanda Castrillo is a 26-year-old who quit her retail job last year to pursue a career in content creation. 
• Castrillo gets paid up to $10,000 per promotional post on TikTok and landed her dream job at Paramount. 
• This is her story as told to Insider's Samantha Delouya. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amanda Castrillo, a 26-year-old content creator with more than 300,000 followers on TikTok. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was never super into social media, but when I was furloughed from my retail job for 3 months during the pandemic, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I started posting on TikTok.