The Empty Promise of TikTok’s New Creator Fund
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
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In a TikTok video posted last month, @itsselahmichelle, a creator with over 30,000 followers revealed the amount of money she made from the company’s creator fund.
$14.32.
Her complaint is a common one: payouts as part of the company’s initiative to reward users creating content on the platform are dismally low. So bad, in fact, that some creators have attempted to form a union, to become independent contracts and guarantee more stable, consistent payments.
TikTok’s response? The video-sharing company has decided to introduce a new-and-improved creator fund. The Creativity Program is attempting to revamp the original fund. Creators have to be at least 18, meet follower and video view requirements and have an account in good standing. It should be noted that TikTok itself did not state the following criteria. But according to a report from The Information, the creators must have a minimum of 100,000 followers to be eligible. TikTok is currently inviting a select few creators to test the program before launching a wide release.
The program is currently in beta testing, and it is unclear if it is meant to entirely replace the existing creator fund or simply supplement it. I’ve previously written about the flaws plaguing creator funds across multiple platforms. The primary issue is that, as apps grow more popular, more people are eligible for payouts. And since the pool of money doesn’t increase accordingly, individual payouts have to be shrunk.
If the 100,000 follower minimum is accurate, that would be an increase from the 10,000 follower requirement for the existing creator fund. And it shows that TikTok is prioritizing its big creators over it’s mid and lower-tier ones.
Much of these changes to the creator fund coincide with the platform’s ad revenue-sharing program, which only lets creators behind the top 4% of videos on the app bring in the subsequent ad revenue. These creators receive are supposed to receive 50% of the ad revenue from videos placed near theirs on the For You Page, but many have reported earnings as low as $5.
The other requirement of this new fund is that only videos over one minute long are eligible for the program. On the surface, it seems that TikTok is encouraging creators to make longer videos in its unending fight with YouTube. But consider just how many creators are re-posting their TikTok content to YouTube Shorts.
Videos on YouTube Shorts max out at 60 seconds. So for TikTok to incentivize longer videos, makes it more difficult for creators to benefit from posting their content on other platforms.
That said, I don’t think anyone is solely relying on TikTok payouts for their creator income. Still, the change shows just how crowded the creator economy has become. More importantly, it speaks to the fact that none of these platforms have thought deeply about how to compensate a growing user base. Or worse, they have thought about it and they’ve decided it’s not very important.
- LA Tech Updates: Peacock Hits 10 Million Users; TikTok's $2 Billion Creator Fund Goes After Instagram, Youtube ›
- TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook: Who's Paying What for Creator Content ›
- Content Creators Say YouTube’s New Ad Program Could Lead To a TikTok Exodus ›
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
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