TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in recent years, and it’s not hard to see why. There are over 20 million videos uploaded every day on this app alone. With such a large audience, there is a lot of money to be made.
But what is TikTok and how can we make money on TikTok?
This article explores the possible ways how to make money on TikTok. I’ve researched the best monetization strategies on TikTok so that you and I could take advantage of the platform and make money.
I’ve also rounded up a couple of TikTok success stories to fuel our motivation even more. So, if you’re ready to learn how to make money on the TikTok app, let’s get the ball rolling.
What is TikTok?
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TikTok, originally called Douyin, was first launched in China in 2016 by its creator company, ByteDance. But before TikTok, there was another rival Chinese app called Musical.ly. This app was popular among teens for its rich content of dancing and lip-synching videos.
Douyin was later renamed TikTok for better international appeal. Lip-synching videos were still very popular, so ByteDance decided to acquire Musical.ly and merge its users with TikTok. The union between these two popular apps made TikTok even more popular, not just in China, but all over the world.
According to Statista, TikTok’s biggest user base as of February 2021 are USA (65.9 million users), followed by Indonesia (22.2 million users), Russia (16.4 million users), and Japan (12.6 million users). Additionally, teens and young adults (10-29 years old) make up the biggest users of TikTok in the US.
How Does TikTok Work?
Now, let’s try to understand how this app really works because this is the foundation of how to make money through TikTok.
First of all, TikTok is a social media platform. You can sign up to create an account for free and join TikTok instantly. But unlike Facebook wherein you can share text and photo-based statuses, TikTok is all about sharing short-form videos often shot by the users’ smartphones.
These 15 to 60-second videos can be about anything under the sun: from travel, hobbies, music, lifestyle, and anything else in between. Users may post their own content, follow other users, or both. TikTok’s proprietary algorithm allows it to show you content that you might be interested in.
As a creator, you can post content along with your desired effects and filters. You can even add texts, background music, and sound effects to your videos. Once you’ve uploaded your video, you can make it more searchable by adding hashtags.
Additionally, you can connect with other TikTok users, influencers, and even brands. Growing your TikTok following is an essential part of your money-making potential in the platform. You can follow these users to check out the latest trends as well as find inspiration for your own content.
Related: 15 Inspiring Hobbies that Make Money
TikTok FAQs
How do you make money on TikTok?
There’s more than one way to make money on TikTok, and we will discuss them in detail below. But as an overview, you can make money on TikTok by being an influencer, making videos, getting fan donations, and selling your own products.
Can you make money with TikTok live?
Yes, you can make money with TikTok live. TikTok users utilize the live streaming feature of the app to share content with their followers in real-time. followers are able to tip their favorite creators with coins. The coins are sent to the creator’s PayPal account, which can then be redeemed as cash.
How many followers do you need to make money on TikTok?
Like other social media platforms, you need to reach a minimum number of followers to monetize TikTok. A social income calculator created by Lickd.co allows you to calculate how much you can earn to earn money on the platform. According to the site, if you wish to make money full-time on TikTok (and replace the average $34, 000 average annual income), you need at least 10,000 subscribers and accumulate 93.2 million yearly views.
How much money can I make on TikTok?
It depends on a number of things, such as the number of your followers and your monetization strategy. According to Forbes, the top-earning TikTok creators have millions of followers and most of them made money by selling their own merch and scoring huge brand sponsorships. Addison Rae, for instance, made over $5 million last year on TikTok alone.
How old do you have to be to make money on TikTok?
If you want to make money on TikTok through the Creator Fund, you need to be at least 18 years old.
How to get 1,000 TikTok followers?
There are many ways to increase your following on TikTok. If you want to reach your first 1,000 followers, here are some essential tips from the Social Media Examiner: post frequently and consistently, making sure to add variety to your content. It also helps to join the latest TikTok trends, create a video series and use the right hashtags.
How to Make Money on TikTok: The Basics
If you’re looking to make TikTok a source of revenue, then you should understand that it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and some work for you to fully monetize this platform. It’s essential to grow your TikTok community first as this will open up more money-making opportunities down the road.
So, if you’re looking for ways how to make money off TikTok, you should get started with the following tips:
PICK A NICHE
First, you have to decide what kind of content you’d like to create. While you can possibly create one kind of content today, and another tomorrow, you want to stick to what you’re really passionate about or highly knowledgeable in. That way, you can establish your brand among your audience and attract the right brands for monetization.
ESTABLISH YOUR BRAND
Whether you’re looking to make money on TikTok as a personal or commercial brand, it is important to build your brand on the platform to increase your earning potential. This means you have to define your voice or persona and make sure it translates to the videos you create and post. Your brand defines your reputation, so if you want to be known as a dancer, then your content should be on dancing. If your brand is all about lifestyle, your content should reflect this too. It is also crucial to remember to give your brand its own identity, so always be true to yourself and your followers.
Even businesses are willing to step out of their shells and show their funny, silly sides on TikTok as part of brand-building. According to Forbes, businesses must strive to produce content that are light and fun, candid but without any hard-selling. Apparently, businesses that use TikTok find this strategy to work wonders in engaging their followers.
UNDERSTAND YOUR TARGET MARKET
What does your audience want to see in your audience? If you’re able to give them what they need and want, then you’re chances of making off money on TikTok increase considerably. Your audience must love you as a creator, but more importantly, love your content. How do you know what videos to create that your audience will love? Take a look at what other creators in your niche are doing that get the most engagement. You can use these ideas as inspiration.
TikTok itself advises creators to be fun but original. Use the platform’s analytics feature to figure out what your audience loves most about your content. You could also experiment on the different aspects of your content: graphics, sound elements, and length, for instance, to see which of the videos are performing well. If you want to learn how to make money from TikTok videos, then you must show your audience what they want to see.
CREATE AND POST UNIQUE CONTENT CONSISTENTLY
In TikTok, everyone is a creator. You can easily shoot a short video with the app and upload it instantly for your followers to see. But as with everything, content and quality count. Your videos shouldn’t be just ordinary ones or a copycat of other users’ content. You must make your content stand out to get the most engagement.
Here are some amazing ideas for viral TikTok content, according to Hootsuite.
Join the latest craze
Dance challenges are some of the most viral crazes on TikTok, and they also get a lot of searches. Creating content around these challenges can boost up your brand.
Create educational videos
Educational videos, especially from industry experts like doctors, are also some of the most engaging content on the platform.
Collaborate with other influencers / creators
This allows you to gain wider exposure with the influencer’s built-in following. Typically, collaborations are cross-promoted among your audiences.
Create tutorials
Share your knowledge through short tutorials. For longer content, you may create a teaser on TikTok and direct your audience to your YouTube channel.
INTERACT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
Finally, it’s not enough that your TikTok videos are getting a good amount of likes and shares. You, as the brand and creator, should also interact with your audience. For instance, you could give your audience a voice by asking them for content ideas. The comments section is another great way to keep the conversation going, so don’t forget to reach out, engage and answer questions there.
Making Money on TikTok: 7 Amazing Monetization Strategies
Are you ready to learn how to make money on TikTok? Here are seven amazing strategies that are proven and vetted by TikTok creators.
1. Flipping Tiktok Accounts
Flipping has long been popular as a side-hustle. People flip houses, flea market finds, and even websites. But how to make money on TikTok by flipping accounts?
The answer is quite easy: build a TikTok account from scratch, populate it with interesting and engaging content, and then grow the account’s following. Once the account has grown quite well, you can sell it off for a profit.
However, there are some things you have to keep in mind if you’d like to take this route. First off, personal brands don’t perform well in this strategy. Ideally, you should create an account that brands would be interested in buying. If you aren’t sure what niche would be a hit, consider looking into the most popular TikTok categories. According to Statista, these categories are entertainment, dance, pranks, fitness/sports, home renovation/DIY, beauty/skincare, fashion, cooking, life hacks, and pets.
Brands under these niches are most likely to invest in TikTok accounts with ready-made followers. They won’t have to do the groundwork anymore, and all they need to do is nurture and grow the account more.
Interested in flipping money? Here are ways on how to flip money and make quick cash!
2. Become An Influencer
Businesses have come to realize the importance of influencer marketing now that social media has become an integral part of our lives. Simply put, influencer marketing is utilizing influencers (or people who are famous on social media) to promote brands, products, and services. If you want to learn how to make money off TikTok as an influencer, then you should make sure to follow the basic tips in growing your TikTok account as mentioned above.
So how do influencers make money on TikTok?
Your role as a TikTok influencer is to create an impact on your follower’s buying decisions. You will utilize your influence so that your fans would check out the products that you’re using, and ultimately, sway them to make a purchase too. For companies, influencers help increase their sales by having an influential personality represent their brand on the platform.
How much money can I make on TikTok as an influencer, you might ask.
Tiktok influencers earn a lucrative income. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, nano-influencers, or those that have 1K to 10K followers make at least $10 per sponsored post, mid-tier influencers (50K to 500K followers) make around $500 to $5,000 per post, and mega influencer (1 million followers or more) earn around $10,000 per post.
However, brands do not just focus on your follower count alone. What really matters is the level of engagement. It’s more crucial that you have a highly engaged following because these are the people who are more likely to trust your product recommendations and make a purchase.
So, a successful TikTok influencer strategy should help you earn money through your “influence,” while brands gain larger exposure and potentially make more sales from your followers.
Take motherhood.on.purpose, a TikTok creator who teaches moms about systems and mindsets. She landed a campaign with Admire My Skin and personally used the product Ultra Potent Brightening Serum in her video. The goal of the campaign was to show that the product was effective in decreasing dark spots through a before and after format. Her followers get a 20% discount if they purchase using her promo code.
I think this campaign hit the nail right on the head as testimonials like these are effective in influencing people’s buying decisions. Also, brands love working with micro-influencers like motherhood.on.purpose because they tend to have more targeted and engaged followers reach niche audiences. So, if you’re just starting out in TikTok as an influencer, focus more on engaging your followers with quality content and create a solid and loyal tribe.
Want to become an influencer but don’t know where to start? Here’s an amazing course by the Influencer Marketing Hub called Learn How to Make Money as an Influencer on Tiktok. It walks you from the basics on TikTok, crafting your persona, building your persona to actually making money on TikTok as an influencer.
3. Sell Your Merchandise
Got products to sell? TikTok can maximize your business’s exposure and make more sales if you play the field right. You can even use TikTok to sell feet pictures!
You see, according to the US Chamber, TikTok is a wonderful platform to sell and promote your products. It gives off a different vibe than that off Instagram or Facebook in that TikTok is more fun, engaging and creative. As TikTok’s users are mostly the younger generation, businesses promoting and selling their products on this platform must learn how to translate these qualities into their content.
So, if you’re selling a product, you can totally take advantage of TikTok. What’s great about using this platform is that you don’t need to have a lot of followers to start selling.
How do you make money on TikTok by selling products?
One important trick in using TikTok for commerce is to create valuable content without getting too sales-y. You don’t need to put your product in front, rather focus on the experience that your product brings. Therefore, don’t create overly commercialized videos that scream you’re only here to sell.
According to Jungle Scout, here are some of the best ways to sell products on TikTok:
- Accumulate user-generated content (UGC) with branded hashtags – use strategic hashtags to attract your audience to purchase your products. encourage them to post their experience using your product with the branded hashtag. This is an amazing way to get your products in front of so many people and give them an idea of why your product is worth buying.
- Create engaging content – make your content fun and entertaining. Don’t make the product the focus of the content, but its value and experience. For instance, if you are selling makeup products, you can do a before and after video or a tutorial video, instead of just plainly talking about the product.
- Collaborate with influencers – as I’ve already mentioned earlier, influencer marketing is a massive hit nowadays. You can tap influencers in your niche to promote your products to their audiences. Influencers have the capacity to make a “commercial” content more organic because they can give it a human touch.
Perhaps one of the best examples of creators who make good money selling products is Addison Rae Easterling. Addison is one of the most followed TikTokers today with almost 91 million followers. According to the New York Times Magazine, Addison initially posts her dance videos on TikTok. As the pandemic hit, her videos began to viral, ultimately catching the attention of Ipsy, a US beauty subscription service. Ipsy offered Addison her own line of makeup products called Item Beauty, which she now sells and promotes on TikTok.
Want to succeed in selling online on TikTok? Take advantage of this free course by Oberlo on how to use TikTok to get sales!
Related: 18 New Ways For Females to Make Money Online (I Love #7!)
4. How To Make Money on TikTok Live: Earn Tips From Fans
Live streaming is a popular feature among social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. And guess what, TikTok has one too! But did you know that you can make money on TikTok live?
Yes, you sure can!
With TikTok’s Livestream feature, your fans and followers can reward you with gifts if they are happy with your content. Fans can send you gifts that correspond to a specific number of coins. For instance, a panda costs 5 coins, a sun cream 50 points and a drama queen costs 5,000 coins. Fans need to purchase these coins with real cash using Apple Pay, debit, or credit card. Once the coins are in their accounts, they can send you gifts when you go live. Fans must be at least 18 years old to purchase TikTok coins.
How much can you make on TikTok Live?
That really depends.
As the creator, your goal is to create an interesting and engaging live stream for your viewers to entice them to “donate” to you. These donations will accumulate into your account and are converted into diamonds. Each diamond costs 50 cents, so if you have 100 diamonds, you would have $50. You need at least $100 before you can transfer the money towards your PayPal account. Also, TikTok keeps 50% of your earnings.
It is worth noting though that not every creator is qualified to get gifts during live streams. But to increase your odds of qualifying, you must strive to create engaging and high-quality content, post content consistently, and grow your following.
5. Get Paid To Make Tiktok Videos Through The Tiktok Creator Fund
If you’d like to make money on TikTok in a straightforward way simply as a creator, then might as well join the TikTok Creator Fund. If you’re interested in how to make money on TikTok creator fund, you must first check if you qualify for the program.
- 18 years old and above
- You have at least 100,000 followers
- Accumulated a minimum of 100,000 video views for the past 30 days
So, if you just like to create content and engage with your followers, this monetization strategy is the best for you. According to Bustle, TikTok initially planned to distribute $200 million to all qualified creators. But after hearing the enthusiasm within the TikTok community, the platform promised to pay out $1 billion for the next three years.
TikTok did not provide a clear-cut solution on how much creators can earn with the Fund, but it emphasized a number of crucial factors like the number of views, level of engagement, and the location of the views or followers. So, if you’d like to make cash here and there on TikTok, make sure to give your content a little bit more love and effort, and you might just be rewarded for it.
As you know, you need very powerful and engaging content to become a hit on TikTok. The TikTok Masterclass to craft viral content by decoding every TikTok feature to get the most out of the app.
6. Become a Tiktok Consultant
Have you studied TikTok in-depth? Can you call yourself a TikTok expert? If you do, might as well get paid for it.
You see, a lot of people and brands are still learning the ropes, and many of them are willing to spend money just to understand TikTok a lot better. So, they hire a TikTok consultant to give them guidance as they navigate the platform and use it to their advantage.
One of the people who have successfully crafted a reputation as a TikTok consultant is Sean Young of seansaucetv. Sean used to be famous on the now-defunct Vine. He joined TikTok, created and posted more of his “pranks” videos, and amassed over 1 million followers. Sean’s success was quickly noticed by brands aspiring to make it big on TikTok, so they employed him as a TikTok consultant. According to VOX, Sean makes $10,000 a month from this job working only four hours a day. How amazing it would be to have people pay for your TikTok genius, right?
7. Affiliate Marketing
You’re probably wondering: how to make money on TikTok with affiliate marketing? Is that even possible?
If you are an affiliate marketer, you’d want to explore each and every platform to maximize the exposure of your affiliate links and encourage more sales. And TikTok happens to be a good platform for this.
However, affiliate networking on TikTok is a little tricky as the platform is still new. But according to Authority Hacker, here are important tips to wing your affiliate marketing game on TikTok:
- Upgrade to a business account
- Adding the shortened affiliate link at the description
- Giving out links to your promo/discount codes
- Redirecting potential customers to other social media accounts where they may access your affiliate links
One of the creators who have found success in using TikTok for affiliate marketing is Teresa Caruso. She calls herself the Amazon favorites girl because she loves posting her Amazon finds on TikTok. But she goes the extra mile because she also posts the affiliate links of those products on her blog and other social media accounts. She’s become so famous with such content that her Amazon finds are included in products that sold out on Amazon because of TikTok.
Looking to increase your sales as an affiliate marketer on TikTok? Udemy’s Affiliate Marketing: Tik Tok Ads Hacks to Boost Your Sales is the very course you need to get you on the right track.
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Final Thoughts
There may ways to make money on TikTok, so if you’re looking to make extra money from home, you could explore one or more of these options. TikTok may still be young compared to its other social media counterparts, but it’s already ripe with so many opportunities. But like I always say, your content must be grounded on what’s relevant, valuable, and engaging your audience.
And as a creator, you must also engage with your audience by hearing them out, responding to their comments, and thanking them for their support. By being authentic to yourself and your followers, plus giving your content some TLC, you could indeed make money on TikTok.
Have you made money on TikTok? Which of these monetization strategies has worked for you? Let’s connect in the comments.
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