Over the past few years, TikTok has launched a number of financial initiatives related to creator video performance. These initiatives include the Creator Fund, the Pulse ad-revenue sharing scheme, and the beta version of the Creativity scheme.
The business set aside money under the Creator Fund, which it announced in 2020, to compensate content producers for sharing their work. The fund will close in the US, France, Germany, and the UK in December 2023. Instead, users are encouraged to register for the company’s pilot version of the Creativity Program, which offers incentives for posting movies that are at least one minute long.
Although early participants in the Creativity Program have reported greater results, some inventors had criticized the Creator Fund for providing meager reimbursements.
Devin and Hunter Cordle, a pair on TikToker, received a five-figure payment from the platform in just one month, for instance.
“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.”
In terms of influencer pay, TikTok’s ad-revenue sharing scheme, Pulse, has received comparatively little of the pie. Eight producers made between a few pennies and $17 in 2022 from the scheme, depending on how much they shared each month in terms of earnings, view counts, and revenue for every 1,000 video views (RPM).
For additional details on TikTok initiatives that compensate creators based on views and other video analytics, see below:
1. Creativity Program
TikTok launched the Creativity Program, a new creator funding option, for testing at the beginning of 2023. As per the corporation, the new program aims to provide producers with “higher average gross revenue” for movies over one minute in length. Similar to the closed Creator Fund, members can only join if they have at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the last 30 days.
Since the program’s early profits have been significantly higher than those of the Creator Fund, some creators have been motivated to release lengthier movies more frequently.
2. TikTok Pulse
TikTok said in May 2022 that it was introducing a new contextual advertising offering that will allow marketers to purchase ads to run alongside “the top 4%” of content across various categories, including beauty, cuisine, and fashion. It consented to give the creator whose video aired before the in-feed advertisement half of the profits. The program is only open to creators who have at least 100,000 followers.
The business declared in May 2023 that it was also testing Pulse Premiere, a version of the tool designed for conventional media publishers.
Similar to the Creator Fund, TikTok Pulse’s early payouts were insufficient, as creators told Business Insider.
One creator reported an RPM that was closer to $3, while the majority of creators who provided BI with payment information observed Pulse RPMs in the $7 to $8 area. When compared to other ad-revenue options, such as YouTube’s partner program for long-form video, the creator RPMs on TikTok Pulse were competitive, but the views that generated money were rather low, frequently falling 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 posted videos that received tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of views, but throughout the pay period between September 30 and October 30, 2022, just eight of those views qualified for Pulse wages.
For a payment period, other producers observed a similar tendency of Pulse-monetized views significantly declining below total video views.
A company representative informed BI that not every video watch of a user’s work will result in a Pulse advertisement, even if the user’s video receives millions of views. They stated that some videos will result in more ad impressions than others due to the nature of the TikTok algorithm.
“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.
Early in 2023, YouTube launched a comparable concept for splitting ad revenue for its shorts segment. Effective RPMs of about 4 to 5 cents were earned by six producers who revealed their February 2023 payouts with BI. These creators claimed to have made hundreds of dollars for videos that received millions of views.
3. Creator Fund (shut down in December 2023)
When TikTok first announced the Creator Fund in 2020, it stated that it aimed to raise over $2 billion over the course of three years on a worldwide scale. In late 2023, the program was discontinued in the US and other nations. The amount that the business paid out from its initial commitment was never disclosed.
In essence, the fund was a large sum of money that TikTok used to compensate a selection of producers who had at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views during the course of the preceding 30-day period. TikTok informed BI that while calculating Creator Fund reimbursements, it took into account variables like video view counts, video engagement, and the location in which a video was seen.
The $2 billion goal set by TikTok was insignificant in light of YouTube’s total payments to creators. In a 2021 letter, YouTube’s CEO stated that over the course of three years, the business has paid $30 billion to media organizations, creators, and artists. In 2021, it also established a $100 million fund, intended to run through 2022, especially for its shorts feature, which is akin to TikTok.
Influencers have been compensated hundreds of millions of dollars by other platforms, such as Snapchat, to produce brief videos. Prior to pausing the program in early 2023, Instagram also paid some creators based on the quantity of views their reels received, rewarding them with “bonuses” for reaching predetermined milestones for the amount of views on their short videos. In October 2023, the company’s chief executive hinted that reel bonuses might come back in the future.
Influencers who over the past few years have disclosed publicly or through BI their Creator Fund payments have claimed to only receive pennies for each 1,000 views their videos receive.
Even with a lower RPM, content creators who have millions of views on their films might still make over $1,000. According to documents he shared with BI, Preston Seo, a personal finance influencer with 2.5 million TikTok followers, received roughly $1,664 in total compensation from the Creator Fund in the first five months of 2021.
Even though they had a ton of views, other well-known creators like Hank Green and MrBeast reported receiving little money from the Creator Fund.