Anyone can be a celebrity now. Cameo wants people to get paid for their fame.

In the past, joining Cameo was a sign that your 15 minutes of fame had arrived — or that the clock was running out. Now the platform, which allows people to pay for customized video messages from celebrities, aims to stop the clock.

Since the company was founded in 2017, the very definition of celebrity has changed. Thanks to algorithmically charged social media platforms that can catapult random people to enormous internet fame in days and reignite dwindling fan communities, there are countless opportunities to build an audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re a politician, an actor, an astrologer or a puppeteer.

Some of the most popular people on the site include disgraced former Rep. George Santos and beloved Office cast member Brian Baumgartner, but there are tens of thousands of other people earning money on Cameo. The company recognized that fame has been democratized.

In May 2023, Cameo launched a pilot program called CameoX that allows anyone to enroll themselves in the platform, breaking from its previous model of referrals and applications that had to be approved by staff. The company announced in December 2024 that 31,000 self-enrolled creators have fulfilled more than 155,000 requests, earning millions of dollars.

CEO Steven Galanis told Yahoo Entertainment that people can stay famous for longer than ever before because of how easy it is to build an audience online, but social media platforms have limited funds and models to support them.

“There’s more fame in the world today than there was yesterday, and there’ll be more famous people tomorrow than there are now,” he said. “The underlying business models that support fame are not growing exponentially, but the amount of talent is.”

Galanis recalled a time years ago when he was tagged in a photo from a social media star with thousands of followers — he received so many notifications from people interacting with it that his phone overheated in his pocket. Still, the money that the creator was making wasn’t enough for him to live off of.

According to Galanis, there are four ways that people can capitalize on fame: endorsements, physical goods, subscriptions and digital goods. Cameo offers the last through video messages. Creators get to set the prices for their videos, and ultimately decide if they want to make one $1 million video or 1 million $1 videos — or any number in between.

Stars like Charlie Sheen, Mischa Barton and Lance Bass, who were at times some of the biggest celebrities in the world, have found success on Cameo. Galanis said Hall of Fame athletes tend to do better than current ones, and people on old shows like The O.C. and One Tree Hill tend to do better than of-the-moment Netflix stars.

“We’ve helped a lot of people whose residual checks weren’t coming anymore,” he added, speaking broadly about Cameo’s selection of nostalgia-inspiring celebrities. “Maybe they weren’t getting gigs, but fans still loved them.”

Though society might traditionally consider a celebrity to be someone who’s widely recognized like Taylor Swift or Dwayne Johnson, there are countless people who mean a lot to audiences that are willing to pay to hear from them personally. Whether their fame is conventional or unconventional, those customized messages can be really endearing.

“Every time you get a Cameo from somebody, you like them more than you liked them before,” Galanis said. “It has a positive multiplier effect.”

Jamie Shannon, a puppeteer, sits at a unique intersection of Cameo’s target talent. He’s both a nostalgic figure and a viral sensation. In 1999, he began making a Canadian children’s program called Nanalan’ starring Mona, a green puppet with pigtails. Mona’s popularity has surged and dwindled over the years, but she recently saw a huge nostalgic comeback in late 2023 after Shannon began sharing clips on TikTok.

Shannon said he reached out to Cameo about joining the platform every six months for years but wasn’t accepted until CameoX allowed him to self-enroll. He became the platform’s No. 1 new earner in the last year, earning around $600,000 making personalized videos with Mona.

“I do mostly birthday messages, then pep talks after that. Some requests that I get are really heavy, like, ‘My dog just died’ or ‘My mom just died.’ Mona, I think, really gives people a sense of peace and happiness,” he said. “Weddings too. Grooms will send the bride a Mona video for the morning of their wedding. I sing a little song, and I’m just like, ‘Wow, these are the most important days of people’s lives.’”

He said it takes him about three to five minutes to research and prepare to make a Cameo, then about two minutes to record it. He makes them in batches of three at a time.

“I will say, my puppeteering has never been so good,” Shannon added. “I get to practice every single day.”

Galanis said that Cameo creators, especially comedians, tell him all the time that making these videos makes them better at their craft because they get “more shots on goal.” The same goes for tarot card readers, astrologers and other people who have a marketable digital talent but aren’t conventionally famous.

Gilbert Gottfried, who died in 2022, still holds the title as the No. 2 all-time requested Cameo creator. Galanis said the amount of Cameo footage he produced exceeds his time spent on Saturday Night Live and in movies.

By supporting beloved individuals at any level of virality or notoriety, Cameo has opened up a new branch in the creator economy — and now, creators can choose whenever they’re ready for that journey to start. The company isn’t particular about how famous its talent is because there’s a market for anyone who means something to other people.

“We don’t want to change perception, we just want to support people in every part of their fame arc,” Galanis said.