What it's like being part of the tight-knit group of 'Snapchat Stars' making six figures on the app

When 671 people in banana suits packed into a concert venue in Austin, Texas at this year's SXSW technology festival, it broke the world record for most people dressed as fruit in one location.

"And we're breaking the most Snapchatter's at one event!" 26-year-old Cyrene Quiamco cheered into her smartphone camera, as a group of banana-clad social media stars hooted and bounced behind her.

The clip, of course, showed up in @CyreneQ's Snapchat Story as she took her followers behind the scenes of the bash which tripled as a startup launch party, corporate publicity stunt, and Quiamco's birthday celebration. Even hundreds of miles from her friends and family in Arkansas, she felt surrounded by some of her closest allies and confidantes.

"The Snapchat community is incredibly tight," she tells Business Insider. "People drove 22 hours to be there. We're so close because we grew from each other."

Quiamco is part of an elite handful of Snapchatters who make their living on the disappearing photo service.

Quitting the day job

Once dismissed as a sexting app, Snapchat has swelled into a messaging and digital video powerhouse valued at $16 billion. The app's young audiences and its opt-in, in-the-moment experiences has major brands such as Burger King and Walmart partnering with creators like Quiamco.

Snapchat stars get paid to temporarily take over a brand's official account on the app, or to create original programming and interactive campaigns, which the brands sponsor.

Quiamco makes between $10,000 and $30,000 per project on average and booked an income in the low six-figures last year, even though she only focused on Snapchat part time. That potential convinced her to quit her 9-to-5 gig as a graphic designer for Verizon in October.

When she's not collaborating (or having banana-suited dance parties) with other Snapchatters in real life, she stays connected to a core community through a secret Facebook Group where fellow Snapchat stars swap tips, advice, and the occasional gripe.

One topic that riled many of the Group's roughly 30 members was a recent interview with the CEO of social media events company DigiTour who said on stage that "there are no Snapchat stars." Sure, there are the DJ Khaleds and Kylie Jenners - already famous people who amassed enormous followings - but she said that digital celebrities won't come from the app.

Unsurprisingly, the group of artists and storytellers who had built their own huge followings on the social network bristled at the statement and Quiamco quickly fired off a response on her own Snapchat-centric website.

Not easy to go viral

But even in that post she concedes that Snapchat's platform really does make it nearly impossible to grow an organic audience. With no user suggestion page, no content discovery portal outside of Snapchat's Discover hub for publishers, and no easy way to share Snaps, users like CyreneQ can't exactly go "viral."

The Snapchat app itself makes money by inserting ads into media brand's Discover stories, letting brands sponsor "Live" feeds, and charging for custom geofilters or $750,000-a-pop branded Lenses. Snapchat sees itself as a messaging tool between friends combined with a storytelling platform, but there's none of the influencer-company alliance that you see on YouTube or Vine because it's not relying on their content to bring in ad dollars.

Even Snapchat's biggest native stars haven't had anything beyond the most cursory official contact with the company, if that.

But despite the downsides, the high-barrier to discover-ability is also part of what makes people like Quiacamo so valuable to brands. Getting big on Snapchat requires creativity and authenticity and users essentially build their followings by word-of-mouth. So those audiences are likely to be rabidly dedicated, staying engaged through a star's sponsored content and willing to follow as they ping across corporate accounts.

And because it's really hard to get popular, those who have gotten their names out there have become a kind of exclusive squad, consisting of less than a dozen native creators who can actually make a living from the app.

As the service swells into a behemoth, we talked to a handful of top Snapchat creators who are actually getting paid and asked them how they got started and what the life of a full-time Snapchat star is really like: