- TikTok’s new Creativity Program Beta is helping some creators earn tens of thousands of dollars.
- Not everyone making money has millions of followers; those with smaller followings are earning, too.
- The extra money is helping a few TikTokers rely less on brand deals and re-prioritize the app.
When Kay and Tay Dudley first saw thousands of dollars hit their bank account through TikTok’s new Creativity Program Beta in early July, they sat together in shock.
“We were so surprised. Our first real month wasn’t even over yet,” said Kay, who, with her husband, posts humorous content based on their relationship and life as parents for their 3.5 million TikTok followers.
The couple made for the month of June almost $24,000 through the program. For the month of July, their earnings jumped to a little over $87,000. Insider verified these figures with documentation the creators provided.
TikTok’s creativity program, which is still in beta, is one of the latest in a series of attempts by the social-media platform to allow creators to make money directly from the app. It rewards creators for longer content, specifically videos over 60 seconds. Apart from this effort, the company also has a Creator Fund for videos of any length, an ad-revenue-sharing program, livestream gifts, an e-commerce-affiliate feature, and a $6 million fund for augmented-related creators.
The company announced the creativity program in February as an invite-only program and expanded its parameters in May to include all US-based creators who have at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 “authentic” views on their TikTok videos in the last 30 days. Participants must also be at least 18 years old and have accounts that are in “good standing,” according to TikTok’s website.
Currently, payments are calculated and distributed based on qualified video views.
To date, influencers have been earning much larger payouts from the creativity program than some of TikTok’s earlier monetization efforts, based on Insider’s interviews with seven creators whose income we verified by viewing their earnings dashboards on the app. A TikTok spokesperson told Fortune that creators can earn up to 20 times more from the creativity program than its creator fund, for example, since it pays out more money each time a video is viewed.
Arlene Resendiz, who posts mathematics and other educational content for her 1.5 million followers, was skeptical about the creativity program at first since it required her to leave the creator fund — users can’t be in both.
“Once you choose the beta, you can’t go back,” Resendiz said. However, she earned just over $5,000 in June from the creativity program.
“I’m definitely happy that I just went for it and yeah, it’s been working out,” she said.
It’s not just creators with millions of followers who are reaping the benefits. Zachary Newman, a food creator with 480,000 followers on TikTok, made $155 in June, his first month in the program. The next month, he earned $1,300.
“I think this program has huge potential, especially for food creators, because most of our videos are education-based which means they’ll be longer,” he said. “Now, people are a lot more interested in why we’re making something and learning from it than just watching us do it.”
Increased earnings have allowed one TikTok couple to rely less on brand deals
Devin and Hunter Cordle first joined TikTok’s creator fund in 2020 when their videos started going viral. They found its minimal payments frustrating, like some other creators, so they didn’t have very high expectations when they joined the creativity program a few months ago.
“The creator fund paid nothing, so we didn’t think this would be any different,” Hunter Cordle said. “It’s a complete 180 though, with what we’re earning.”
In June, they earned a little over $6,000 through the program, and almost $23,000 the following month.
The couple hopes these kinds of payouts are consistent in the future because it would help them rely less on brand deals for income.
“We’re not feeling the pressure right now to take an extra brand deal or two because we need the money, which has really been great for our work-life balance,” he said. “Sometimes brand deals can feel a bit inauthentic to our audience, so this extra income because of the program just helps us take on less.”
Some creators are shifting their content to cash in on incentives for long-form videos
Victoria Paris gained 1 million TikTok followers in six months after she began making videos in New York during the height of the pandemic.
Since then, she’s made a sizable salary from brand deals after taking off as a TikTok influencer, Paris said. But the creativity program is taking her earnings to a new level.
Today, at nearly 2 million followers, Paris’ monthly earnings from the creativity program ranged from $9,000 to $13,000. According to Paris, the payments should amount to “a nice, clean $100,000-plus a year,” a large increase from what she earned from the creator fund.
The program is working so well that she said she’s changed the format of her content to create longer videos. Paris has even tried her hand at recording voiceovers — a technique she never thought to use before.
“My videos have never been this long before,” Paris said. “I’m making them three minutes long now. I literally have never done that, and it’s doing really well.”
The program has helped some creators re-prioritize making TikTok videos instead of posting on other platforms
A lot of creators are dealing with cross-platform fatigue as they switch between TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Threads, and other social-media apps. Recently, several TikTokers told Insider they’d shifted focus to YouTube as the company added short-form videos to its monetization program, the YouTube Partner Program.
The Cordles were planning on doing the same before they saw how much they could earn through TikTok’s creativity program.
“Honestly, it made us think about how TikTok should be our primary focus and to maybe not get distracted by what we could be posting on other apps, even though it’s really important to diversify,” Hunter Cordle said. “The money we’ve been earning has been life-changing, and we just really hope it continues.”
Read the full article here