How do content creators make money on TikTok?

If you’re an aspiring influencer or are just very active on social media, then more than likely you already have a TikTok. Even if you don’t, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard your friends or family talk about it. They’ve probably even tried to persuade you to join them in a video to try out a new dance routine or come up with a comedy skit.

Regardless of how you first heard about it, there’s no denying that TikTok is talked about more nowadays than Facebook, and thanks to the app’s popularity, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Just like its social media predecessors, TikTok started as a fun way for teenagers to post 15-second videos that usually involved comedy skits and dance routines. Over the past few years, however, the platform has grown to include users of all ages and has turned into a social marketing tool with a reach in the millions. Thanks to that, many TikTok stars have reached levels of fame and financial stability that have prompted entrepreneurs and aspiring artists to hop on the bandwagon in the hopes of achieving similar results. 

The users who are creating content on TikTok are luckily seeing lots of views and are easily going viral overnight, opening the door for many of them to monetize their channels in various ways. Naturally, this has put everyone in a frenzy to stake their claim on this new gold mine and make some money.

Alas, as with everything in life, not every marketing strategy that you use is guaranteed to make money on the platform, and for some people it could take years of tinkering to find the best way to monetize your space. Of course, if you’re interested in figuring out how to monetize your account, there are plenty of “influencer gurus” out there who are eager to help the next generation of TikTokers reach their financial goals.

One such guru is Elise Darma, a content marketer who offers resources on how to grow your business on various platforms like Instagram and YouTube. If you’re a content creator looking to make some money on TikTok, Darma currently runs a website and a YouTube channel that offers classes to help you reach your monetization goals. So far, she’s pinpointed six different ways that you can make money on the platform.

1. Growing accounts and selling them

According to Darma, the first way people are making money on TikTok is by growing accounts and then selling them. Basically, you start by choosing a niche that you’re interested in and creating entertaining content that will ideally go viral and attract a following, which then ideally translates into customers for your product. Even if you don’t have anything to sell, using this practice will help you reach out to brands in your niche’s industry, and if you can sell your TikTok profile to them, there’s a good chance that you can make some money that way.

You could also sell your products on TikTok Live. Simply put, you can launch and/or sell products while you’re live streaming and even hold an auction. This practice is perfect for creators who just want to grow a following around a certain topic and build a community while providing the potential to sell that account to brands looking to reach your established following.

2. Donations

Donations are another great way to monetize your channel. Just like Twitch, you can also go live and collect donations from viewers. In terms of monetization, the format will usually go as follows: TikTok users can go into your profile and purchase something called coins. For the low price of $1.39, you usually get about a hundred coins. When a creator goes live, their followers can actually send them coins as a way of giving thanks for all of their hard work in creating the content. A creator can then take that coin and turn it into a diamond, which can then be converted into cash via PayPal.

3. Manage influencer campaigns

Just like Instagram, managing a campaign for an influencer can be just lucrative as having a channel of your own. In this situation, you’re basically the middleman or broker between a TikTok creator and a brand who wants to work with them. Just for being a coordinator, you can charge a decent service fee to manage these campaigns. If you build your resume up enough to manage multiple campaigns, then eventually all of those service fees are going to add up to a reasonable income that you can add to your wallet.

4. TikTok’s ad platform

The other way you can make money on TikTok is by making use of its ad platform. Similar to Facebook and Instagram ads, you’re basically running paid traffic to attract followers to your channel, which will hopefully lead them to purchase products from your business. Keep in mind that like any other advertising campaigns on TikTok, this will require money to launch, so you may want to create a large enough budget first to allow for flexibility when you’re experimenting with this to find what will work for you.

5. Management services

Another way to make money on TikTok is by offering management services to creators on the app. Though it may not seem like it as you view them from the other side of the camera, there are some creators on TikTok who gain millions of followers very quickly and are overwhelmed when they seemingly become business owners overnight.

This is a good time to step in and offer your services to help them with their content and creative strategies while also managing the offers and deals that come their way. If you have any experience in management, marketing, or both, management services is certainly a worthwhile endeavor to think about if you’re trying to make some money on TikTok.

6. Consulting

Once you become a pro at using TikTok and fully understand how to turn a video with a hundred views into a viral hit with 100,000 views, then you can start offering consulting services. This method is all about site authority. You’re basically leveraging your expertise on the platform to help people who want to be TikTok famous by providing strategies that will get their videos seen by millions of people. This is why it’s absolutely necessary to have the background and experience required to be truly knowledgeable before offering this as a service in the first place.

Once you prove your worth, consulting a TikTok creator can be one of the easiest ways to get paid reasonably well. If you help users procure deals and influence agreements, you can even negotiate a percentage or a cut of that deal just for being the consultant and helping them go viral on TikTok. 

If you’d like more tips and tricks on how to build your business on social media, you can follow Elise Darma on TikTok at @EliseDarma. Don’t forget to loop us into all of the fabulous content you create!

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