There is a particular kind of excitement that comes with livestream selling.
You sit in front of a camera, put a product beside you, talk to a few hundred—or, if the algorithm is feeling generous, a few thousand—people, and somehow somebody on the other side of the screen decides that they absolutely need six boxes of whatever you are selling.
Then the numbers start appearing.
Orders. Sales. GMV. Commissions. Followers. Views.
And suddenly, livestreaming does not look like a silly person talking to a phone in their bedroom anymore. It looks like a business.
And a potentially very lucrative one.
I have been creating content and livestreaming for about three years now, and one thing I have noticed is how often livestreaming is presented as though we have stumbled upon some magical secret passage to financial freedom.
You hear stories about people who started with nothing and are now making thousands a day. You hear about creators who went from barely anyone watching them to becoming household names. You hear about the person who streamed consistently, cracked the algorithm, found the right products, built the right audience and suddenly—boom—money.
And I am not saying these stories are untrue. They happen.
Livestream selling can absolutely make money. Some people have built serious businesses from it. Some have turned their personalities, communication skills and communities into very real commercial opportunities.
But sometimes I wonder whether, when we tell these success stories, we only count the things that appear on the screen.
We count the sales. We count the followers. We count the views. We count the money.
But what about the things that don't show up on the dashboard?
Sleep. Time. Relationships. Mental exhaustion. Physical exhaustion.
And, in my case, my voice.
When I first started livestreaming on TikTok, I remember attending a talk given by a very well-known streamer. She was sharing her story of how she made it big. And one particular detail stayed with me.
She talked about how, during her first serious attempt at livestreaming, she had apparently streamed for 24 hours a day for three consecutive days. Twenty-four hours. For three days.
I remember listening to that and thinking, "Wow." At the time, there was a part of me that found it impressive.
Because that is how success stories are usually constructed. Somebody works harder than everyone else. Somebody refuses to sleep. Somebody keeps going when everybody else stops. Somebody sacrifices everything for the dream.
And then they make it. We hear the sacrifice and immediately look at the result. What we don't always ask is whether the sacrifice should have been necessary in the first place.
I remember looking at this particular streamer while she was speaking. And what struck me wasn't even what she was saying. It was her voice. It sounded incredibly coarse. Not the kind of sexy, smoky voice that people deliberately cultivate. This sounded tired. And it didn't seem like the sort of hoarseness that was going away.
Now, obviously, I cannot diagnose somebody simply by listening to them speak. I am not a doctor, and I certainly don't know what happened to her voice medically. But as someone who has spent years teaching drama, working with voices and paying an unreasonable amount of attention to how people speak, I remember thinking, "That cannot possibly be good for you."
And this is where the conversation becomes slightly uncomfortable.
Because what if the very thing we are celebrating as evidence of commitment is actually evidence that something has gone too far?
I learnt this lesson rather personally.
When I first started livestreaming, I was also teaching drama classes. So my days were already filled with talking, demonstrating, projecting, giving instructions, facilitating activities and, occasionally, attempting to convince a room full of children that the chair in front of them was not actually a chair but a magical portal to another dimension. Then came livestreaming at night. And then came durian livestreams.
If you have never done a durian livestream, let me save you the romanticised version. You are not sitting elegantly under soft lighting discussing the subtle notes of Musang King while contemplating the mysteries of existence. You are talking. And talking. And talking. Then somebody asks a question. So you answer. Then somebody asks the same question again. So you answer again. Then somebody wants you to shout out their order. Then someone wants you to repeat the price. Then there is a promotion. Then there is a countdown. Then someone says, "Bro, louder!" So you become louder. Then you do it again. And again. And again.
Eventually, your voice starts feeling less like an instrument and more like a piece of office equipment that has been running continuously since Monday. For me, the result was not particularly glamorous. My voice became so coarse that, for about three months, I sounded as though I had been battling some terrible illness.
I wasn't. My voice was simply exhausted.
And the interesting thing was that it didn't just affect how I sounded. It affected how I communicated. My speech became less clear. I had to consciously enunciate more. I had to put extra effort into making sure people could understand what I was saying. As somebody who teaches communication and drama, that was particularly ironic. Imagine teaching people how to use their voices effectively while your own voice is quietly saying, "Mate, perhaps we should have a meeting about workload."
It was funny. Until it wasn't.
Because your voice is not just something that exists for livestreaming. It is part of your work. It is part of your body. And if your livelihood depends on your ability to speak, entertain, explain, persuade and connect with people, then your voice is literally one of your tools of trade.
TikTok's own seller guidance acknowledges just how central the voice is to livestream selling. The platform's Singapore guidance describes the host's voice as the "main character" of the audio experience and advises hosts to avoid sudden shouting and other practices that make speech difficult to hear.
Which makes sense.
Because livestream selling is fundamentally built around human interaction.
You cannot simply put the product there and disappear. The audience expects you to be present. You need to respond. You need to demonstrate. You need to answer questions. You need to maintain energy. TikTok's own Singapore guidance says livestreams rely on sustained verbal interaction and recommends hosts use the pause function when stepping away. And there is the contradiction. The very thing that makes livestreaming commercially powerful—the sense that you are constantly there, constantly available, constantly engaging—is also the thing that can make it exhausting.
There is always another stream. Another campaign. Another mega sale. Another payday. Another brand. Another product. Another night when you tell yourself, "Just one more session." And this is where I think we need to have a slightly more honest conversation about the phrase "work hard."
Because livestreaming has created a strange relationship between endurance and success. The longer you stay on, the more committed you appear. The more exhausted you look, the more people may interpret it as dedication. The fact that you are still there at 3am becomes a badge of honour.
You didn't sleep? Wah. Hardcore.
You streamed eight hours? Power.
You streamed twelve? Respect.
You streamed twenty-four? Legend.
But perhaps we should occasionally ask a different question.
Why are we so impressed when someone has clearly pushed themselves beyond what their body can comfortably sustain?
There is a story we tell about entrepreneurs that says successful people are willing to sacrifice more than everyone else. And there is some truth in that. Building anything requires effort. There are periods when you work late. There are periods when you have to say no to other things. There are seasons of intense work. But there is a difference between working hard and making exhaustion part of your business model.
One is effort. The other is attrition. And I think livestream selling sometimes makes that line particularly blurry. Because unlike a traditional shop, the shop does not close at 10pm. Your audience is always somewhere. The platform is always running. The next campaign is always coming. And somebody else is always streaming.
That last part is particularly dangerous.
Because the moment you see another creator streaming for six hours, you start wondering whether you should be streaming for six hours too. Then somebody streams for eight. Then ten. Then twelve. Then you hear that someone else made $20,000 during one session.
Suddenly your perfectly respectable $800 feels like failure.
This is where social media gets particularly good at messing with our perception of reality. We see somebody's revenue but not their expenses. We see their sales but not their tax obligations. We see their commission but not their unpaid preparation time. We see their followers but not their exhaustion. We see the moment they announce, "I made X amount today!" We don't see what the rest of their week looked like. And sometimes, we don't even know whether the number being presented is actual take-home income or gross sales value.
This matters because there are people entering livestream selling now because they have heard that this is the next big thing. And I understand why. If you are looking at it from the outside, the appeal is obvious. You don't necessarily need a physical shop. You can start with a phone. You can build an audience. You can sell products. You can work from almost anywhere. And if you are good at talking to people, entertaining them and building trust, there is a genuine opportunity there.
But "you can" and "you will" are two very different sentences.
There are also people who are exceptionally successful at this.
China, for example, has developed livestream commerce into a massive industry, and the scale of some livestream sellers is difficult to comprehend from our little Singapore bubble.
But even there, the human cost sometimes becomes impossible to ignore.
In March 2026, Chinese livestream seller Wang Yefei, known online as "Sister Wang Zha", collapsed during a sales livestream in Shanxi. She was 39. Reports said she had built a following of around 130,000 through livestreaming women's fashion and regularly worked long hours. She had also reportedly experienced recurring headaches before the incident. She later died from a brainstem haemorrhage.
Now, I want to be very careful here. It would be irresponsible to say, "She died because she livestreamed." The available reporting does not establish that. A brainstem haemorrhage is a medical event, and we should not turn somebody's death into a convenient morality tale about hustle culture simply because the circumstances happen to fit the argument we are trying to make.
But we can still acknowledge what the story makes visible. A person was working. A person was experiencing health symptoms. A person was still on camera. And suddenly, the thing that was supposed to be a normal working day became something much more serious.
That should make us pause.
Not because livestreaming is inherently dangerous. But because no job should become so normalised that people feel they have to ignore warning signs just to stay competitive.
Closer to home, Singapore's livestream industry has also started putting some of these realities into the public conversation. In May 2026, The Straits Times profiled livestream seller Elaine Heng, who had transitioned into livestreaming and was streaming almost every day across platforms including TikTok and Shopee. She spoke about becoming hoarse after talking extensively during a particularly intense period of livestreaming.
And that story felt familiar to me. Because sometimes the warning sign isn't dramatic. Nobody collapses. Nobody gets carried away in an ambulance. Nobody announces that something has gone terribly wrong. Sometimes your body simply starts behaving differently. Your voice becomes rougher. You are tired all the time. Your sleep gets messed up. You become irritable. You start dreading the next stream. You find yourself unable to switch off because even when the livestream ends, you are still thinking about the next one.
And because none of these things look dramatic enough for a TikTok thumbnail, we tell ourselves that everything is fine. This is perhaps the biggest thing I want people to take away from all this.
I am not anti-livestreaming.
Far from it.
I still livestream.
I still see the value in it.
I still think it is an incredible medium.
There is something genuinely fascinating about being able to sit in front of a camera and communicate directly with another human being, while also turning that interaction into commerce.
As a content creator, I understand the appeal. As a performer, I understand the appeal. As someone who teaches communication, I understand the appeal. And as someone who has actually been paid to stand there for hours trying to convince people that yes, this particular box of durians really is worth buying, I definitely understand the appeal. But I also understand the other side. The side where you finish a livestream and realise your voice is gone. The side where you look at the clock and realise that you have to teach in the morning. The side where your body is exhausted but your brain is still buzzing because you have spent four hours responding to comments, watching sales numbers, remembering product information and trying to maintain the energy of someone who apparently had eight hours of sleep and a healthy relationship with caffeine. The side nobody puts into the success montage.
Maybe that is the part we need to talk about more. Not to scare people away. Not to tell people that livestream selling is bad. But to encourage people to enter the industry with their eyes open.
If you want to livestream, learn the craft. Learn how the platforms work. Learn how commissions work. Learn what GMV actually means. Learn how contracts work. Learn what the expectations are from merchants and agencies. Learn how much preparation happens before you turn the camera on. Learn how much time you are actually spending working. And perhaps most importantly, learn what your own limits are. Because your body did not sign the contract with the merchant. You did.
And your body will probably be the one paying the bill if you ignore every warning sign along the way.
There is a strange irony in all of this. Live- selling is supposed to be about connection. You are connecting with audiences. You are building communities. You are creating trust. You are making commerce feel human.
But sometimes, in the pursuit of connecting with everyone else, we disconnect from ourselves. We stop listening to our own bodies because the audience is still there.We keep talking because the orders are still coming. We keep going because the numbers are still moving. And eventually we forget that the person in front of the camera is also a person.
Not a sales machine. Not an algorithmic hostage. Not a human ring light. A person.
Three years into my own livestreaming journey, I think I am much less fascinated by the question, "How much can you make?" It is still a valid question, of course.
But I am increasingly interested in another one. "How much does it cost you to make it?" And I don't just mean money. What does it cost your time? Your sleep? Your relationships? Your creativity? Your voice? Your ability to enjoy the thing that you once loved doing?
Because if you make a million dollars but destroy yourself getting there, we probably need to have a more complicated conversation about what exactly constitutes success.
Perhaps the more sustainable question is not, "How hard can I push myself?" Maybe it is, "How long can I realistically keep doing this?"
That is a very different mindset. And perhaps it is a less sexy one. It doesn't make for a particularly exciting motivational speech. Nobody is going to stand on a stage and shout, "Guys! I discovered the secret to success! I slept eight hours!"
But maybe they should.
Because there is nothing particularly inspirational about burning yourself out and then calling the ashes ambition. Livestreaming is still relatively new as a mainstream form of commerce. We are still figuring out what it means to work inside this strange intersection of entertainment, advertising, sales and social media. So perhaps we should also be figuring out what healthy participation looks like. The novelty will eventually wear off. The buzzwords will change. TikTok will change.
Another platform will become the next big thing. Another creator will tell us about their secret formula. Another course will promise to teach us how to make six figures from our phones. And another person will inevitably stand on a stage and tell us how they streamed for an absurd number of hours and became successful.
Listen to them. Learn from them. Take what is useful.
But don't forget to ask what happened between the beginning of their story and the success they are showing you. What did they sacrifice? What did they lose? What did they learn the hard way?
And perhaps most importantly, what part of their journey is actually repeatable, and what part was simply the particular combination of timing, platform, audience, product, personality and luck that happened to work for them?
Because there is a difference between inspiration and instruction. Someone else's extraordinary story does not automatically become your blueprint. If you want to enter livestream selling, enter it. Give it a shot. Talk to people. Sell things. Make mistakes. Figure out what you are good at. Maybe you will discover that you are actually very good at it. Maybe you will make money. Maybe you will build something bigger than you expected. But don't go into it cold simply because somebody on your feed told you that livestream selling is the easiest way to make millions.
Understand the field you are stepping into. Understand the economics. Understand the workload. Understand the platform. Understand your audience.
And, please, understand yourself.
Because there is a world of difference between making it big and making it sustainably. I learnt that the hard way. For three months, my voice sounded like I had spent my entire life smoking in an alley behind a karaoke bar, when in reality I had simply spent too many hours talking into a phone. It eventually got better.
But it taught me something that no livestream course ever did.
Sometimes the most important metric isn't how much you sold. Sometimes it is whether you still have enough of yourself left after the livestream ends. And if you don't, perhaps the question isn't how you can stream harder.
Perhaps the question is whether there is a better way to do it.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
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