How to Make Money on TikTok in 2024 (6 Ways)

If you’re a creator, you deserve to get paid for your work. Earning passive income and starting your path towards financial freedom are important steps for turning your passion into a career. Fortunately, platforms like TikTok have become incredibly popular across the world, and provide plenty of opportunities for content creators to monetize their videos and advertise their small businesseses.

TikTok is exploding. The app currently has over 1.9 billion registered users and is expected to reach over 2.2 billion users by 2027. Nearly 20% of people 18 and older worldwide use TikTok, with nearly half of Gen Zers preferring TikTok and Instagram as a search engine over Google.

If you’re looking for market share, that is simply too many eyeballs to ignore. And lucky for you, there are many ways to monetize TikTok. In this article, we’ll explore how to earn money on TikTok and provide some creative ideas for how to monetize your presence on TikTok.

Become a TikTok influencer

One of the most popular ways to make money on TikTok is to become a TikTok influencer. If you already have a large following on Instagram, Facebook or Instagram, advertise your TikTok handle to them and associate any brands you want to work with. But if you’re just beginning in the influencer world, spend time on the basics and learn how to be a social media influencer. Choose your niche, work on your brand, get familiar with TikTok analytics, and engage with other influencers.

Most importantly, though, create new content regularly. TikTok is not like YouTube, where old content can get revisited and viewed millions of times. Things need to go viral immediately, requiring you to be on top of your output as an influencer. With a clear strategy, understanding the TikTok dimensions, and a high level of output, you can increase your follower base and grab brands that want to work with you.

Publish sponsored posts

Seeking out brands and working with them through sponsored posts is a terrific way to grow your network and make money on TikTok. It starts with having an established persona as an influencer, which is an absolute first step in becoming a content creator on TikTok. Are you an outdoors person? Are you more into fashion? Do you document your life as a parent? Each of these different personas can be used to attract brands that are looking for eyeballs. So create your own media kit and go after sponsorships to make money on TikTok.

You can start working with smaller brands that have less advertising budget. Starting with a reasonable base rate is important, since you don’t want to undersell your talents. 

Once you work your way into higher levels of followers, you can reach out to bigger brands. If you’d like bigger brands to come to you, check out the TikTok Creator Fund. You need at least 10,000 followers and 10,000 video views in the last 30 days, and you need to be at least 18 years old. You get $0.04 per 1,000 views, so if you don’t have an insane level of views, expect this to bring a moderate passive income. Regardless, when you start making money on TikTok, it is consistency of output that your followers and brands are looking for. User engagement will be the key to making money on TikTok through sponsorships.

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TikTok programs

Depending on your skillset, you can now sign up for a number of TikTok programs to earn extra income.

Effect Creator Rewards

Augmented reality effects (learn more about augmented reality here) are a large part of what makes creating and interacting with video content on TikTok so fun. For a long time, effects creators have been able to flex their creativity, design, publish, and share high-quality AR effects for TikTok. These effects have sparked trends, shaped culture, and inspired people to keep creating content for the platform. Now, these third-party creators have the chance to be financially rewarded for their work.

The Effect Creator Rewards program is a new $6-million fund for creators, limited to certain regions. It offers creators payment for their effects based on the community’s engagement. So if a creator develops an effect that becomes popular, they can earn revenue on it.

Creators collect rewards based on either total qualified videos published, or unique public videos from eligible regions that used their effect within the first 90 days. When an effect reaches 100,000 unique public video publishers, the creator will start collecting rewards. They will continue to collect rewards for every additional qualified video published until the end of the 90-day period, or until they reach the maximum reward. The reward amount may vary based on several factors, including the region where the videos were published.

For every effect that’s used in 500k unique videos within 90 days of being published, the creator will collect $700 USD. For every 100K videos posted after that within the same 90 days, they can earn another $140 USD.

The maximum payout a single effect can earn is $14,000 USD. The maximum monthly payout a single creator can collect is $50,000 USD.

Creator Rewards Program

TikTok has been on a bit of a journey in regards to how it financially rewards creators. First, there was the Creator Fund, but that was limited to the US, UK, Germany and France. We then had the Creativity Program Beta, which has now left beta and become the Creator Rewards Program.

To join the program, creators must be at least 18 years old, have at least 10K followers, have a minimum of 100K views in the last 30 days, and have a personal account in good standing in a region where the program is available (currently the US, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and the UK). TikTok plans to bring the program to more regions in the future.

The TikTok Creator Rewards Program promises up to 20 times more earnings than the original Creator Fund. Rather than the measly $0.04 per 1,000 views mentioned above, this program offers a generous increase, with earnings ranging from $4 to $8 per 1,000 views.

The Creator Rewards Program will continue to reward high-quality, original content that is over one minute long, using an optimized rewards formula focused on four core metrics: originality, play duration, search value, and audience engagement.

• Originality refers to quality content unique to the creator, showcasing their point of view or creative thought process in a way that resonates with their community.
• Play duration accounts for both watch time and finish rate. The new formula rewards accounts with clear and engaging content rather than favoring accounts with an excessive number of videos.
• Audience engagement includes likes, comments and shares, all contributing to a creators’ content value within the program.
• Search value is a metric assigned to content based on popular search terms. Content that aligns with in-demand search topics increases its value for searchers. To find inspiration for content that resonates with audiences on TikTok, creators can use the recently announced Creator Search Insights tool to better understand what topics are popular in Search.

Sell your own products

If you’re an entrepreneur and are asking yourself, “Can I make money on TikTok?” the answer is, of course, yes! In fact, this platform is an excellent way to share your very own products and services with your followers. TikTok recently partnered with Shopify, and a new shopping tab allows users to promote their products through the platform. You can create a business account and redirect users to your Shopify page for purchases. This is a fantastic way to generate business and make money off of TikTok.

The other bonus of the platform is that you can use the video format to advertise your products or services directly to your followers. Maybe you have a fitness business and want to post videos of others trying your workout programs. Maybe you sell home improvement gear and use videos to demonstrate your product’s before-and-after effect. Or maybe you offer informational courses and want to direct your followers to purchase video lectures or learning materials. Incorporate some of the best TikTok music (be careful of the TikTok music licensing parameters), be creative, and you’ll be well on your way to monetizing TikTok.

Collect donations

You may be surprised to know that you can make money by collecting donations on TikTok. TikTok has a feature called Coins, which your followers can purchase and then gift to you during live streams. Pricing start at $1.39 for 100 coins, and they can be given directly to you or used to buy gifts on your behalf. This allows your followers to show their appreciation for your content.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing allows you to promote different products that you’re passionate about and think can benefit your audience. Use a unique referral link, and you will earn commission while helping vendors make sales. This will also help you make connections with merchants, and can potentially lead to greater sponsorship relationships down the road.

Use Artlist to soundtrack your money-making creations

You’ll need high-quality content, music, sound effects and more to attract viewers and stand out from the crowd. Artlist has a wide variety of royalty-free assets and video templates ready to download. And they might just give your videos the edge they need to succeed.

Wrapping up: how to make money on TikTok

TikTok is an exciting platform that has been a net positive for content creators and followers alike. By capitalizing on the wave of viewers running to use the app, you can get closer to financial freedom as a freelance creative.

You can become a TikTok influencer, and with a clear marketing strategy and steady stream of videos, grow your base of followers. This will enable you to pursue sponsorships, affiliate marketing commissions, or donations directly from your followers. If you’re an entrepreneur, use the service to sell your own products or services, either directly or through promotions.

Either way, TikTok is a terrific platform for creatives who want to monetize their talents, generate income, and reach their full commercial potential.