TikTok surpassed 1.5 billion monthly users in 2024, and revenue increased by 23.1% compared to the previous year, making it one of the top social media apps.
NewReach’s 2023 Creator Earnings Report sheds light on the typical salary of influencers and content creators. Based on the report’s data, the average salary for TikTok influencers ranges between $15,000 and $25,000, with nearly a third of influencers receiving a full-time salary.
In a world dominated by short videos, mastering the art of monetizing TikTok could be a game changer for content creators, allowing you to earn money while doing what you love.
Some of the platform’s top users earn millions of dollars in income from their presence on TikTok. With so many ways to monetize TikTok, deciding which path to take can be difficult. In the following article, we’ll explain how to monetize TikTok.
– Is it possible to make money from TikTok?
There are many ways you can monetize TikTok. How you monetize depends on several factors, such as your audience’s engagement, the type of content you create, and the size of your following. If you have a large and active follower base, you can monetize TikTok through the Creator Fund, a program that financially compensates creators for content that receives high engagement (likes, comments, and shares). You can also receive virtual gifts from your followers, and TikTok allows you to convert these gifts into cash.
These methods require a minimum number of followers and rely on audience engagement, either through interaction or payment for products and services, making them suitable for larger accounts. You can also profit from TikTok through affiliate marketing, whether you have a new or old account, or a large or small number of followers.
Affiliate marketing is similar to getting paid for recommending products. You share a link, and when people click on the link and buy the product, you earn a percentage of the sale.
Although affiliate marketing doesn’t require a minimum number of followers, the more people watch your videos, click on your affiliate link, and make purchases, the more revenue you earn. Another option for monetizing TikTok is the TikTok Referral Program.
Once you join the program, you get paid for referring new people to TikTok. There’s no minimum follower requirement, so anyone can participate and start earning.
– Ways to make money from TikTok.
As we explained previously, there are many ways to start making money from TikTok, and we will try to explain a group of these methods.
– Creativity Program/Creative Fund.
Since July 2020, TikTok has been paying creators whose content receives a lot of likes and comments through its Creator Fund monetization program.
In November 2023, TikTok announced some changes to how the program works, depending on your location in the world, replacing the Creator Fund for users in the US, UK, Germany, and France with the Creator Program.
TikTok says the new fund allows creators in these countries to earn money for uploading videos longer than one minute. TikTok’s Creator Fund doesn’t rely on ads like other platforms; instead, your money grows alongside your channel and content. The amount also depends on factors such as views from real accounts, viewers’ regions, and more.
Since engagement with content on TikTok is dynamic and changes daily, your money also changes daily. However, not everyone is eligible to participate in the Creator Fund. You must be a resident of a supported country, have at least 10,000 followers, have at least 100,000 total authentic video views in the last 30 days prior to applying to the program, have a personal or professional account, and adhere to TikTok’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.
Earnings are based on views and other engagement metrics on TikTok. If you receive a payment, it will appear on your Creator Fund dashboard approximately three days after your video views accrue, and you can withdraw your funds 30 days after the end of the month.
– TikTok ads.
TikTok is used by approximately 67% of people aged 18 to 19, and 56% of people aged 20 to 29, making TikTok marketing a powerful advertising option for brands looking to market their products. TikTok Ads comes with simple and powerful tools to help you advertise to millions of users.
Ad formats vary by region, but they all allow you to customize targeting based on age, location, interests, and other factors. You can select one or a few formats that best suit your brand.
– The most common types of TikTok ads include:
1- Video inside the feed: It appears on the For You page of TikTok users who meet targeting criteria. Brand Takeover: This allows your ad to expand to the full screen for a few seconds and then become an in-feed video ad. There are other types of TikTok ads you can try, but note that some are only available for certain account types.
2- Partnership with sponsors and brands: Given its popularity, brands and advertisers are willing to pay large sums to creators to promote products on TikTok. Most brands communicate with creators through their agents.
One way for creators to earn money directly from advertisers is through Creator Marketplace, an official brand-creator collaboration platform on TikTok that allows creators to partner with brands for paid campaigns.
Creator Marketplace allows brands to search for creators and view your account, follower count, audience demographics, basic engagement metrics, and more. Potential earnings are difficult to predict, although popular creators earn between $500 and $20,000 per video.
However, keep in mind that TikTok doesn’t allow you to receive payments from brands through its platform. You must receive payments directly from the brands.
3- Collaborate with other content creators: TikTok collaborations involve partnering with other creators to create and promote content. This helps generate revenue while increasing your audience’s reach and engagement. If the content resonates with the creators’ audiences, they may be more likely to click the follow button.
You can collaborate with other creators to create videos on TikTok, which allows you to get to know their followers, increasing your visibility and helping you reach new audiences. The more likes and shares you receive, the more the Creator Fund pays out.
4- Affiliate marketing: You can promote various products or services and earn a commission for each sale or transaction that occurs through your unique link, a method known as affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a strategy that involves promoting products and services for brands in exchange for some kind of commission if someone signs up or makes a purchase.
Most often, the commission is in the form of cash, as a percentage of the cost. Other times, it may be a discount on the next purchase or a free month of your subscription. Depending on the affiliate program, you can earn a percentage of the product sold or a fixed amount for each purchase made through your unique link.
You can use a bio linking tool, like Linktree, to create a landing page to promote multiple affiliate links at once.
5- Collecting tips: If you have loyal followers who love your content, they can show their appreciation by tipping you whenever they want. The benefit of this monetization option is convenience. If you qualify, your audience can pay you directly through your account at any time. TikTok automatically sends your tips to your bank account every week.
However, keep in mind that you must have at least 100,000 followers to be eligible for this feature. Once this feature is enabled, TikTok adds a tip link to your account. Users can click on it to view past tips and leave tips. You can also place an invitation asking viewers to leave tips if they like your content.
6- Live broadcast gifts: Live Gifts allow creators to earn diamonds (virtual credit) based on the reception of their live streams, with one diamond worth $0.05. When you activate Live Gifts and start your live stream, your audience can send virtual gifts that appear on-screen in various forms, such as stickers and animations.
With Gifts, viewers can express their appreciation for your content in real time, and TikTok rewards eligible creators with payments for the value of their Gifts. At the end of your live session, you’ll see the total number of Diamonds accumulated in your live summary. You can redeem these Diamonds for cash or virtual rewards from TikTok. Many TikTok creators have shared how they can use live streaming to earn money.
One content creator earns between $20 and $300 each time he broadcasts live, and another earns $34,000 in just one month of live streaming.
7- Video gifts: Similar to livestream giveaways, video giveaways are another way for viewers to interact with and show appreciation for your content. With video giveaways, you can collect diamonds through your videos and receive TikTok cash or virtual rewards in exchange.
To activate the video gifts option, you must have at least 10,000 followers, your account must be at least 30 days old, and you must have posted a public video within the last 30 days.
Videos that include Stitch, Duet, ads, sponsored content, promotional posts, and content that violates TikTok’s Community Guidelines are not eligible for video giveaways.
8- Live broadcast subscription: Last year, TikTok launched Live Subscription, a monthly subscription service for live streamers to increase their earnings and offer additional benefits to loyal followers.
Followers can pay to sign up for a monthly subscription service to access exclusive benefits, including exclusive content, subscriber badges, custom emojis, subscriber-only live broadcasts, chats, and videos.
There is currently no fixed subscription fee, but subscribers can expect to pay between $5 and $25. TikTok pays creators through revenue sharing, so how much you earn depends on the number of subscribers you have.
To qualify, you must have at least 1,000 followers and have broadcasted live for at least 30 minutes in the last 28 days.
9- TikTok referral rewards: TikTok Rewards is a referral program that lets you earn money by referring your friends and family to the platform. As long as you have a TikTok account and meet the age requirements, you can start referring users and earn money. Users from certain countries can invite up to 100 new users per day, but other countries have no limit.
However, keep in mind that to be eligible for the reward, any user you refer must not have downloaded the TikTok app or created an account in the past.
10- TikTok Store: You can monetize your TikTok channel by selling products through a dedicated store that displays and sells products to the TikTok community directly within the app. Through the TikTok store, you can tag your products in videos and live broadcasts to increase sales.
– There are 3 ways to sell through the TikTok store:
- Live Shopping: TikTok users can shop directly from a live video by tapping on pinned products or browsing the shopping cart icon while the video is playing.
- Shoppable videos: Users can shop directly from a video in their News Feed by clicking on the product link and cart icon.
- Product Display: Users can shop directly from your account and gain access to in-app purchases. The benefit of this option is that it doesn’t divert your followers away from your account to partner shopping apps or websites when purchasing your products, keeping attention focused on your content.
TikTok provides tools to track performance, visits, customer reviews, and transaction data through TikTok Store data dashboards so you can identify patterns and trends and avoid unpopular content.
12- Exclusive content: TikTok launched a new feature in June 2023 called “TikTok Series,” a subscription-based way to create premium content. Series can range in cost from $1 to $190 and can consist of up to 80 videos, with video lengths of up to 20 minutes each. You can use a Premium Series to share educational or entertainment content. You can also create multiple series, generating additional revenue through premium content.
You can set a price based on what you think your content is realistically worth and start promoting. Interested creators can apply for access to this new feature, but there are other criteria they must also meet: their account must be at least 30 days old, have at least 10,000 followers, have posted three or more public videos in the last 30 days, and have at least 1,000 views in the last 30 days.
Creators with fewer than 10,000 followers may still be eligible if they can provide a link to premium content they’ve successfully sold across other platforms.
– How to maximize profits from TikTok.
There are many ways to maximize your profits on TikTok, but they all rely on high-quality content, as trends come and go quickly on TikTok. To stay ahead of the curve, you need to create unique videos that capture users’ attention and encourage them to interact with and share your content.
You can’t use TikTok to make money without a loyal audience that engages with you. This means engaging with your audience by commenting on videos, sending hearts, following, and being active on TikTok daily.
High-quality content is essential to becoming a top TikTok creator, and it’s also a way to monetize TikTok, as major brands and advertisers prefer to sponsor creators with high engagement (likes and comments) on their videos.
High-quality content also makes you stand out from other active users and helps influencers build personal relationships with their audiences.
A common question about how to make money from TikTok is, “How much does TikTok pay per thousand views?”
The Creator Fund pays between $0.02 and $0.03 per 1,000 eligible views (views over 5 seconds) on TikTok of 60 seconds or more, so a video with 10,000 views should generate between $20 and $30.
However, the Creator Fund shouldn’t be your only way to monetize. Don’t rely on monetizing video views alone. Collect tips, sell your products, become a partner, and much more.
– How much do TikTok influencers earn?
It’s difficult to answer this question, as there are many different levels of influencers, and the amount of money each level can bring in varies greatly. According to the Influencer Marketing Center,
– Possible divisions could look like this:
- Micro-influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers): $5 to $25 per post.
- Micro-influencers (10,000 to 50,000 followers): $25 to $125 per post.
- Mid-level influencers (between 50,000 and 500,000 followers): $125 to $1,250 per post.
- Top influencers (500,000 to 1 million followers): $1,250 to $2,500 per post.
- Top influencers (over 1 million followers): over $2,500 per post.
– How many followers do I need to start live streaming?
You need at least 1,000 followers to start a live stream on TikTok, so start creating content and engaging with users to reach 1,000 followers and earn money from live videos.
– How many followers do I need to make money on TikTok?
For some of the above benefits, you must reach a minimum number of followers. Creator Fund requires at least 10,000 followers to join, while you need 1,000 followers to receive virtual gifts. You must have at least 100,000 followers to receive tips and gifts from other types of videos.
– How do you get money on TikTok?
Once you meet TikTok’s payment criteria, you should see your funds in your Creator Fund dashboard about 3 days after your videos receive views.
Once you have earned at least $10, you can withdraw your earnings within 30 days of the month in which you earned them. You can send the funds to your preferred payment method.
Ultimately, making money on TikTok isn’t difficult, but it does require commitment, creativity, and building an engaged audience. As TikTok continues to evolve and grow in popularity, the opportunities for making money on the platform increase.
Whether through collaborating with brands, selling products, or even receiving support from TikTok itself, aspiring creators can leverage this platform to turn their passion into a source of income.