Lai has used the Samoyed's "playful and silly, but a little dramatic" charms to attract companies for sponsored posts.
She's been paid by a dog harness maker and even a personal finance website, earning about $150 per 10,000 followers.
Coconut's savvy business team want to limit the sponsored posts to two a month. With her followers, that means she can pocket about $5400 a post, which adds up to a staggering potential annual income just shy of $125,000.
That's about the same salary a general practitioner earns.
Coconut — well, Lai — even sells merchandise on her website with items including a poster and a calendar. A mug with a photo of Coconut running beside the Golden Gate Bridge is fetching nearly $30.
Lai said he originally created social media accounts as a fun way to document his best friend's life.
Her audience accrued naturally until a Hong Kong social media website, 9GAG, posted one of her videos and the pooch's followers shot up by 50,000.
Lai told the publication he spends a couple of hours a day editing videos, constructing posts and engaging with the hundreds of thousands of fans.
I know what you're thinking because I was thinking the same thing. My dog is obviously cuter than any other so surely I can turn a financial loss — thanks to all those trips to the vet with a gutful of sticks — into a money earner I'd otherwise need a medical doctor's degree to pocket.
But Lai says the changing Instagram algorithm makes it harder than ever to build a profitable following.
He told the San Francisco Chronicle that Instagram was still the most lucrative platform but said the video equivalent TikTok was now the easiest to grow an audience.
On the platform, you select a song to accompany your video and other users can stumble across your posts by searching for the music played.
Lai says it means you're much more likely to land in users' feeds because of this.
Coconut is clearly a handsome pooch, but her owner doesn't want his best friend taking all the credit for the lucrative income.
Lai said most of the success is due to him building a connection with the huge following.
"Videos and captioning, that's what everyone likes these days," he said. "You're giving a voice to your dog."
