TikTok has recently dominated social media and also had its fair share of controversies. With an average monthly user count of 800 million, there is certainly some money to be made here. However, just how exactly can you make money with TikTok?
Today, we will discuss several ways by which you can make money on the platform. In the end, it is up to you to choose which monetization model fits your business the best.
Grow an Account and Sell It
This is not a new business approach. On any social media platform, you can create an account for free, post content, grow your channel and then sell it. This takes a long while, but it is the easiest way to make money big time.
How is it done? The way to do it is to launch a channel that is not based on your personality. For example, there are groups that teach people how to play online slot games. Once they have amassed a huge follower or subscriber count, it is an indication of how many people can be monetized through their platform.
It is at this point that the creator can sell the channel. How much it will cost depends: you can price it for $1,000, $10,000 or even a whopping million dollars. It all depends on your follower count, engagement and niche.
Get Donations
If your TikTok channel is based on our personality, you can ask your followers to send donations to you. It is a feature that is on TikTok, so you no longer have to integrate other payment systems.
On TikTok, a user has the option to buy coins. As of now, 100 coins cost $1.39. As a content creator, your fans could send you these coins as a way of thanking you for showing valuable content. Once you receive these coins, you can swap them for “diamonds.” It is the diamonds that you turn into real dollars in the TikTok platform. You can do this via PayPal.
Donations are great for channels where you are teaching something to improve the skills of your followers or for channels where you provide real entertainment. Singers and artists do this all the time—they teach people how to sing, or they sing live and then ask the viewers to donate.
On the other hand, you can also ask people to donate if you teach them how to do woodworking projects, how to improve their skills in applying make-up, and so much more. However, it does not make sense to ask for donations if you are only showing a complied video of cat or dog tricks.
Sell Your Products
You can go live on TikTok to sell your products. If you do this, the platform gives you an option to add a shopping cart in the platform itself, which the viewers could click. If they added the product to their cart, they would pay during checkout with real cash, and this cash goes to you. The thing is that this feature is only currently available in China. Since TikTok was forced to sell its US assets to US-based companies, we do not know for sure if this feature will also come to other countries.
Earn Money from Sponsored Posts
If you are popular, you can ask sponsors to pay you to create content and then show their brand. One TikTok creator earned $2.6 million in 2020—she has 45 million followers and what happened was she landed a deal with Revlon, a make-up company.
Now, your follower count is substantial here, along with your engagement rate and your view time. Of course, companies will only spend money if your channel really produces good results. The cost of what you would charge varies. The standard practice is to charge $20 or $30 for CPM. CPM stands for “cost per thousand” impressions. What this means is that for every 1,000 people who viewed your video, you will charge $30 from the sponsor.
However, this sponsorship method also means that you cannot charge money upfront. You can only charge money once there have already been substantial views. If you want, you can also ask the sponsor for their product and use it for their show. What it means is that you get a free product, and then you create a video that highlights the product of your sponsor.
Summary
TikTok is not just a social media platform for kids. It is now a major platform for all kinds of content creators, and it may just rival YouTube in the future. If your business is based on followers, subscribers or fans, then you have to give TikTok a shot. Sign up for an account and start launching your content while it is not too late.
Leave a Reply