TikTok has released a variety of tools to help creators make money through its app.
It’s paid users directly via its Creativity Program, Pulse ads, and, previously, its Creator Fund.
Here’s a breakdown of how much creators are earning for views from its various programs.
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TikTok can be a powerful platform for creators looking to build an audience. But can its users actually make money?
That question has been top of mind for many influencers who have taken off on the app. Some turn to brand deals as a way to earn a living. Others grab revenue from fans through TikTok’s livestream gifting or subscription features, or its new e-commerce affiliate program within TikTok Shop. Creators whose content doesn’t make sense for those formats sometimes look outside TikTok, joining platforms like YouTube and Patreon, or launching newsletters or other business lines.
But the most straightforward way for creators to earn from social media, outside of brand deals, is getting a cut of revenue based on video performance and views generated, an approach popularized by other social entertainment apps like YouTube and Facebook.
TikTok has introduced several payment programs over the last few years tied to creator video performance, including its Creator Fund, Pulse ad-revenue sharing program, and its Creativity Program beta.
The Creator Fund, announced in 2020, was a pool of money the company set aside to reward creators for posting content. The company in December 2023 sunset the fund in the US, France, Germany, and the UK, encouraging users to instead apply for its Creativity Program beta which incentivizes users to post videos that last at least one minute. The fund is still active in Italy and Spain.
While some creators had criticized the Creator Fund for offering paltry payouts, early participants in the Creativity Program have found better results.
TikToker couple Devin and Hunter Cordle earned a five-figure payout from the program in a single month, for example.
“The Creator Fund paid nothing, so we didn’t think this would be any different,” Hunter Cordle said of the Creativity Program. “It’s a complete 180 though, with what we’re earning.”
Read more about how creators like the Cordles are earning from TikTok’s Creativity Program
TikTok’s ad-revenue sharing program, Pulse, has been a relatively small piece of the pie when it comes to influencer earnings. Eight creators who shared their monthly earnings, view counts, and revenue for every 1,000 video views (RPM) from the program in 2022 earned anywhere from a few pennies to $17.
Read more about how much TikTokers are earning from the Pulse ads program
Here is more information on TikTok programs that pay creators based on views and other video metrics:
1. Creativity Program
In early 2023, TikTok began testing a new creator funding option it’s calling the Creativity Program. The new program is designed to pay creators “higher average gross revenue” for videos that are longer than one minute, according to the company. Like the sunsetted Creator Fund, users must have at least 10,000 followers and have achieved 100,000 video views in the past 30 days to join.
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Initial earnings from the program have been far more lucrative than the Creator Fund, inspiring some creators to post longer videos more often.
Read how much seven creators say TikTok’s Creativity Program is paying per month
2. TikTok Pulse
In May 2022, TikTok announced it was launching a new contextual advertising product in which brands could buy ads alongside “the top 4%” of content in different categories like fashion, cooking, and beauty. It agreed to split half of the revenue with the creator whose video appeared before the in-feed ad. Only creators with at least 100,000 followers qualify for the program.
Read more about how TikTok Pulse compares to other ad revenue-sharing programs for creators
The company announced in May 2023 that it was also testing a version of the Pulse program for traditional media publishers called Pulse Premiere.
As with the Creator Fund, initial payments from TikTok Pulse were underwhelming, creators told Business Insider.
Read how much gaming and lifestyle creators have earned from Pulse
While most of the creators who shared payment data with BI saw Pulse RPMs in the $7 to $8 range, one creator reported an RPM closer to $3. The creator RPMs were competitive on TikTok Pulse when compared to other ad-revenue solutions like YouTube’s partner program for long-form video, but the revenue-generating views were comparatively low, often dipping below 1,000 views.
“I was super excited to join it, but I’m six cents richer today,” Betts Waller, a gaming creator who has around 397,000 followers on his TikTok account Forrest Dump, told BI.
Waller only had eight video views qualify for Pulse earnings over the pay period between September 30 and October 30, 2022, despite posting videos that garnered tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of views.
Other creators saw a similar pattern of Pulse-monetized views falling far below total video-view counts for a payment period.
A company spokesperson told BI that even if a user’s video generates millions of views, it doesn’t mean that each video view is followed by a Pulse ad. Due to the nature of the TikTok algorithm, some videos will contribute to more ad impressions than others, they said.
“We’re continuing to work on improving Pulse so that we can better support our creators and advertisers, and look forward to expanding our monetization opportunities,” they said.
YouTube rolled out a similar ad-revenue-sharing program for its shorts feature in early 2023. Six creators who shared their February 2023 payouts with BI reported earning hundreds of dollars for videos that garnered millions of views, amounting to effective RPMs of around 4 to 5 cents.
Read more about how YouTube shorts’ ad-revenue sharing compares to TikTok Pulse
3. Creator Fund (shut down in December 2023)
TikTok launched its Creator Fund in 2020, writing that it expected the fund to reach over $2 billion globally over a three-year period. The program shut down in the US and other countries in late 2023. The company never shared how much it paid out from its original pledge.
The fund was essentially a big pot of money TikTok used to pay a subset of creators with at least 10,000 followers who had generated 100,000 video views in the previous 30-day period. TikTok told BI it considered factors like video view counts, video engagement, and the location in which a video was seen, when determining Creator Fund payouts.
Read how much six creators have earned through the Creator Fund
TikTok’s $2 billion target was small compared to YouTube’s overall creator payouts. YouTube’s CEO wrote in 2021 that the company had paid $30 billion to creators, artists, and media companies over a three-year time frame. It also set up a $100 million fund in 2021, meant to last through 2022, specifically for its TikTok-like feature, shorts.
Other platforms like Snapchat have paid influencers hundreds of millions of dollars to incentivize them to create short videos. Instagram also previously paid some creators based on the number of views their reels generate, offering “bonuses” for hitting certain short-video view thresholds, though it paused that initiative in early 2023. The company’s top exec teased in October 2023 that the reels bonuses may return down the road.
Influencers who revealed their Creator Fund payments publicly or with BI over the last few years had reported earning just a few cents for every 1,000 views their videos generate.
For creators with millions of views on videos, a lower RPM could still add up to more than $1,000 in earnings. Personal-finance influencer Preston Seo, who now has 2.5 million TikTok followers, earned a total of about $1,664 from the Creator Fund during the first five months of 2021, according to documentation he shared with BI.
Other top creators, such as MrBeast and Hank Green, reported low Creator Fund payouts despite generating huge view counts.
Read more about how much creators were earning through the Creator Fund:
