TikTok Monetization

Our fifth minisode of the fifth season of “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere. In this minisode, Jon answers a listener question about why they’re not making any money on TikTok despite a high follower count and compares platform monetization rates.

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A transcript of the episode follows:

This week’s question comes from Shane

Hi Jon,
I have nearly 40,000 followers on TikTok. But I’m not making any money! What am I doing wrong?
Shane

Hi Shane. First of all, congrats on having almost 40,000 followers! That’s not an easy feat.

Second, you are right, it’s not easy to make money on TikTok off of a follower number alone.

I have to assume that you are not working with any brands directly on brand deals. I’m assuming in the way you frame your question that you are working only within the TikTok app monetization framework.

The startling fact is that views does not necessarily equal dollars when it comes to TikTok. In fact, based on TikTok’s payout rate, a video with 100,000 views may earn roughly $2.

That’s right, $2 for 100,000 views. Compare that to YouTube, where the standard payout for AdSense is on a sliding scale per view. That means $20 to $400 for 100,000 views on YouTube depending upon the advertiser.

So, this isn’t to say that you’ve chosen the wrong platform. But what I am saying is that you have to separate views from income and realize that the real way to make a living as an Influencer is by building brand relationships and doing brand deals.

This is where listening to previous episodes of this podcast can help! Learn from the strategies of our guests and leverage them into a paycheck.

I wish I had more specific advice than that. Unfortunately, relying on payments from on-platform ad revenue alone is not a winning strategy, regardless of platform. Instead, focus on building a personal brand and using that to build relationships with other brands to do brand deals with them.

Good luck.