When it comes to monetizing your audience, TikTok pays anything between $0.02 and $0.04 per 1000 views. That means a TikToker can earn between $20-$40 per million views from TikTok’s creator fund. To put that into perspective, the most viewed TikTok video, Zach King likely earned significantly less than $44,000-$88,000 for 2.2 billion views from the creator fund alone. When compared to a platform like YouTube, earnings from TikTok are significantly lower. Most YouTubers earn between $1 and $5 per 1000 views, as opposed to the 2-4 cents earned by TikTokers for the same number of views.
What are the criteria for monetizing TikTok videos?
To receive money from the TikTok creator fund, you need to fulfill certain prerequisites. First of all, you need to be 18 years of age. Secondly, your channel needs to have had 100,000 views in the past 30 days for you to apply for monetization. Then, you need at least 1000 followers on TikTok. If you want to monetize your live streams or receive TikTok gifts from your fans, you need to have spent at least 30 minutes live in the past 30 days. If you qualify for monetization, you can apply to the TikTok creator fund from the app itself.
What determines the payment made by TikTok per view?
- Geographic location
- Engagement rate
- Content genre
- Account health
- Number of followers
- Follower demographic
All these things matter because TikTok depends on ad revenue. If your content caters to demographics that are likely to use TikTok for advertising, chances are TikTok will be ready to pay you a little more. Nonetheless, payment rates from TikTok creator funds are peanuts compared to YouTube.
Is making videos on TikTok worthwhile?
Let’s do the math here. Let’s say you qualify for monetization and you have 5 videos that have 2 million views on average. That’s 10 million total views. You belong to the influencer category, and you are considered a viral creator. Your earnings from the TikTok creator fund would be between $200-$400.
Does that mean it’s a waste of time? No. Because there are other ways of earning from TikTok. If you have a few million followers and create content across relevant niches, you can get brand deals. That means you can promote products through your videos and charge for that.
How can you earn more money from TikTok?
Brand deals are the one phrase answer to this question. Any TikToker who has made anything of themselves has done that through brand deals. You focus on building an audience, go viral, become an influencer with real influence – we are talking 10 million followers at least – and brands will start trying to benefit from your popularity. That is when you can charge $100,000 – $500,000 per video promoting a specific brand. You can also go on a pay-per-view basis and charge a few cents per view, which still makes a lot of money. That aside, you can get gifts from your fans, which you can redeem later.
TikTok has launched the TikTok Pulse program, where brands can buy ad space alongside videos with a lot of views. TikTok decided to share this revenue with the creators of those videos. The earnings from TikTok Pulse are slightly higher than those from the TikTok creator fund, but it’s peanuts nonetheless.
Here’s a table of TikTokers who made it big
| Name | Followers on TikTok | Earnings |
| Charlie D’Amelio | 156.1 million | $23.5 million |
| Dixie D’Amelio | 34.6 million | $10 million |
| Addison Rae | 88.3 million | $15 million |
| Bella Poarch | 93 million | $5 million |
| Josh Richards | 25.1 million | $6 million |
Now, all this money wasn’t earned from brand deals alone. The most popular influencers have launched their brands and started selling their physical products, online courses, or digital products using their popularity on TikTok.
So, you must look at TikTok as a means to an end and not the end itself. It is a place where you can connect with millions of people on a rather personal level. The platform allows you to say very basic, day-to-day things to a very large crowd. If you are smart, you should be able to leverage this reach in one way or the other.
Why does YouTube pay so much more than TikTok?
The reason is quite plain. YouTube caters to different demographics, and people on YouTube are evidently older than people on TikTok. Therefore, companies and brands are eager to spend more on YouTube ads than they are on TikTok ads. Moreover, the average video size on YouTube is much larger than the average video on TikTok, so there’s more space to stick an ad into when it comes to YouTube videos.
Then again, smaller videos mean less time spent on a single video. It gives you a chance to maximize on the quantitative side and build an empire rather quickly.
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