TikTok is the latest social media app that first launched in China before it expanded to North America. And yes, it is very popular.
If you’re a TikTok user, then you should know that there’s a way for creators to make money off of TikTok.
A lot of people have this misconception that you need to have millions of followers to actually earn money on TikTok. But in this article, we will negate that misconception and I’ll discuss 5 ways on how to make money off of TikTok even if you have just a few thousand followers, which include going live, via the TikTok creator fund, paid sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and selling your own products.
Related: How To Make Money on YouTube
Table of Contents
Make Money on Tiktok by Live Streaming
Live streaming on TikTok is a great way to make money.
The way this works is that when you go live, meaning you are broadcasting in real-time, your viewers have the option to send you gifts, which are redeemable to cash.
When you check your ‘LIVE gifts’ dashboard on TikTok, you will see how many diamonds you received from your viewers. 1 TikTok diamond is equivalent to 5 cents. So when you receive 100 diamonds, you have $50 to withdraw. However, TikTok gets 50% of your earnings, so for that 100 diamonds, your take-home pay is $25.
Sounds interesting, right?
You have to note though that in order to live stream on TikTok, you have to have at least 10,000 followers. And if your account is below that number, you have to wait until your account reaches this milestone before this option gets enabled.
This first opportunity to monetize your TikTok account is highly recommended to people who love going live and talking to people in real-time. In addition to earning a decent amount of money, going live on TikTok is actually a great way to build an existing relationship with your followers as well as attract new people onto your platform.
Make Money on Tiktok With the Tiktok Creator Fund
TikTok has set up an account called the TikTok Creator Fund where users can submit their work and if they are approved, they will be paid each month.
Basically, TikTok has created this 231 million Euro Fund to support the platform’s content creators. Once you are accepted into this earning opportunity, you’ll then get paid for your videos based on multiple factors such as video views.
Oh, wait. TikTok is pretty strict when it comes to this. You need to meet a FEW criteria to be able to be eligible for the TikTok creator fund. One of those is you need to be from these regions — US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, or Italy.
Another depressing news about the creator fund is that I heard a LOT of TikTokers who are just getting cents for a few thousand views. In fact, according to this source, you can earn between 2 and 4 cents per 1,000 views.
Now, this is not an easy process, either. There’s lots of competition but if you manage to get your content approved, then you’ll be making money by submitting videos on TikTok – which means you can make money without even going live.
My one tip to get the most out of this monetization option is to continuously create new videos that have the potential to go viral.
Make Money on Tiktok via Paid Sponsorships
Paid sponsorships are an easy way to make extra money on TikTok. When you partner with a business or company, you can make money off of their products and services.
So basically, with sponsorships, brands may approach you in order to make some sponsored content for them. They might want you to create an ad around their product, review their product, or something like that in a video and they will pay you a certain amount for that video.
So, how do you find paid sponsorships?
There are various ways to find them. Some people post about paid sponsorships on their profile page while others search for them via the explore page. You can directly message the brand you want to collaborate with or if a brand is really interested to partner with you, you’ll definitely just receive a message from them.
For example, if you create content around the fashion industry, you can contact certain fashion stores or clothing brands for you to promote one or a few of their products in exchange for some cash.
Now, the best part is that all TikTok users have the opportunity to take advantage of this monetization opportunity.
All you have to do is go into your settings and then navigate to “monetization” where you’ll have the option to turn your account into a TikTok sponsored account. You’ll also be able to select which categories you want associated with your account — like fashion, entertainment, beauty, etc.— so advertisers can find your account easily.
Make Money on Tiktok via Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money on different social media platforms, which of course include TikTok.
How this works is that you will need to promote affiliate links of products that you use yourself or you recommend. When someone buys from your affiliate links, you can then get a certain amount of commissions from that sale.
There are a LOT of websites where you can get affiliate links that you can promote such as Rakuten Global Market, Amazon, or Ebates — these sites will give commission for any purchases made through them!
You’ll have to research which companies offer affiliates beforehand but once you do that it’s just a matter of getting visitors from TikTok to come straight to your site where they’ll be able to buy what they saw on their feed.
Now, it’s very important to keep in mind that whenever you promote a product, a service, or a course, it must be something that you passionately care about, you use for yourself, and that you think will really benefit your audience.
That way, it will be a win-win for you, your audience, and the brand.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money on TikTok because it’s not going through the TikTok platform, which means that there are no restrictions on what you can promote. The only restriction is that you cannot promote anything illegal or anything with terrorist content.
Make Money on Tiktok by Selling Your Own Products
As a TikTok user, you can also make money by selling your own products and or services, such as merch, courses, and the like.
There are many benefits to this, one being that you can take advantage of the platform’s huge marketing potential. When people “like” your product on TikTok, their friends who follow them will see that they’ve liked it. As a result, these followers may also want to purchase your product.
You can also use posts to promote your store and gain followers at the same time. For example, if you’re a clothing brand with a brick-and-mortar store in New York City, you could use TikTok to show off your new inventory from last season or even live from inside your store during a sale. This would help generate more business gains for both yourself and the app.
So, can you really earn money on Tiktok?
Yes, you can definitely make money on Tiktok. In fact, there are multiple ways on how do TikTokers make money inside the platform. These 5 ways on how to get paid on TikTok are just some of the opportunities you can do right now.
How You Can Make More Money With Tiktok Videos
Now that you have ideas on how to monetize your TikTok account, here are 5 Tips on how to make more money with TikTok videos.
Use More Than One Monetization Stream
It’s very obvious that when you monetize your TikTok account using all the 5 ways discussed above, you’ll have higher chances of earning more.
Publish More Viral Content
Since your main goal is to generate more revenue from TikTok, you need to get noticed. To do so, you should publish more content and make it as viral as possible.
One way to do this is to create videos that are similar to the videos that already have millions of views on the platform.
For example, this totouchanemo’s video on Kid Laroi’s song ‘Stay’ has now over 350M views which got him popular, and now he has 9M TikTok followers. What he did was just to create similar content to maxtaylorlifts video.
Nurture a Huge Following
While there are many ways to monetize your TikTok account, the most lucrative is by building up a huge following.
The amount of money you can make per video will vary based on how many followers you have, but the more followers you have the more revenue potential there is per video.
Promote Content To Other Social Media Platforms
TikTok is not the only social media platform out there. Your videos can be useful for other platforms as well.
If you create a video on TikTok, don’t forget to promote it on other platforms, like Facebook or Twitter. You can also share it with your friends and family on WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
You may not get as many likes or shares on these other platforms as you do on TikTok but this is still a good way to get more views and reach people who may not follow you on TikTok.
Engage With Your Followers
As a TikTok influencer besides creating content for your followers, it is also important to actively engage with your audience. This means you will need to listen to them, produce content they love, answer their questions by live-streaming or interacting in the comment section.
Final Thoughts:
That’s basically the ways on how to make money on TikTok as well as the tips on how to make more money out of the platform.
While these might not apply to you especially if you are just starting to grow your TikTok following, I believe the insights here can still be applicable for other social media accounts such as Instagram and YouTube.
So yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to comment below.
