How to make money on TikTok — that is the subject of this lesson. How, and how much, do the best-known tiktokers earn, and above all, can you really make money on TikTok? The app keeps growing and pulls in more and more of Generation Z — and now brands, which are watching it with real interest.
If this lesson of the TikTok Academy caught your eye, it is probably because you want to understand how you can make money on this platform, or whether it could become a marketing channel for you.
Let’s not waste any more time and get straight into this new lesson.
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What is TikTok?
TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps, where users (also called musers) can create and share short 15-second videos known as TikTok lives (or “live moments“), or join clips into stories of up to 60 seconds.
TikTok belongs to the tech company ByteDance, which in 2017 bought the lip sync app Musical.ly and folded its features into TikTok. The app, known as “Douyin” in China, has reached 800 million monthly active users. It is now available on Android and iOS across 150 markets and in 75 languages.
Free image from Pixabay
How does TikTok make money?
Before working out how you can earn on TikTok, let’s see how TikTok makes money — how will it turn a profit and keep growing?
TikTok does not yet have an efficient money-making system like YouTube’s, yet it has grown very fast. According to the mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the app has passed a billion installs, 663 million of them in 2018 alone.
The online magazine Digiday reported in two posts that in January 2019 the app began a test that should lead it to offer advertising, and another the following month on in-app e-commerce.
So the app is looking for a way to make money.
Some brands in the USA have started using TikTok ads, while the second project is still at an early stage. Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, already sells ad space that can cost as much as 150 thousand dollars.
For now TikTok earns mainly from in-app coin purchases made by its users. People can buy 100 virtual coins for 0.99 dollars, up to 10 thousand for 99.99 dollars, and then gift them to the creators they follow.
Part goes to the creators, a percentage to Apple and 50% to TikTok.
Want your TikTok profile to take off?
Want to land collaborations on TikTok?
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Want to make money on TikTok?
Want to turn your TikTok around?
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How to make money on TikTok
TikTok currently does not pay or offer incentives to its most popular creators, so there are no direct ways to earn on TikTok. There are, however, several “alternative” routes, which you will find in this article.
Gifts
This is a reward system for creators, tiktokers and influencers with at least 1,000 followers (who can therefore “Go Live“), built on a virtual currency, coins. In short, app users buy coins, keep them in their online wallet and use them to buy custom emoji that they gift to their favourite musers during a live stream.
Musers can cash in the coins they receive at any time, up to a maximum of $1,000 a day. Users can buy 100 virtual coins for 0.99 dollars, up to 10 thousand coins for 99.99 dollars. A share of the purchase price (around 50%) goes to the muser, while the rest is split — in different proportions depending on the platform — between Google/Apple and TikTok.
Free to use image from Google Images
Brand collaborations and influencer marketing
As on other social platforms, if you are popular and have plenty of followers, brands will come looking for you and pay thousands of euros for a promotional video lasting a few minutes.
As people fill your posts with “hearts” (the equivalent of likes) and positive comments, and more and more of them become your fans, brands start taking an interest and asking you to work together. The brands most interested in these collaborations are the ones whose target audience is 13 to 25 year olds.
For the collaboration, and therefore the marketing campaign, to work, the products the influencer promotes have to line up with what the audience might actually want. Young people watch their favourite tiktokers for what they do and say, not to hear advertising messages. But through the products influencers use or wear in the videos, brands do get noticed.
Tiktokers, for their part, earn thousands of euros or dollars for these collaborations (in the USA the top tiktokers can make anywhere from 50 to 150 thousand dollars for a brand partnership).
Appearing at events and brand sponsorships
How well known a muser or influencer is also depends on the reputation they have built on the platform, which brands then use to appear through them at events, contests and shows such as Beautycon or Comicon. If a tiktoker has built a good reputation as a musician, a brand might offer to sponsor a live performance.
Selling products
Marketers can turn a very popular muser into a brand tied to products that can be sold through an online store. A large follower base is the ideal customer pool for a business.
Remember, though, that people do not follow you on TikTok to watch product ads. So when you upload promotional videos to your TikTok profile, make them appealing. One way to hold their interest is to show, where you can, how you actually make your products.
If making products turns out to be too difficult, there is always affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing you can put other brands’ products in front of your followers, and if they buy one or more of them, you earn a percentage of the sale.
Promotion on other social networks
Influencers usually have profiles beyond TikTok, and it is not unusual for those to have large followings too.
Alongside Instagram, many run a successful YouTube channel. That reach across platforms gives them plenty of chances to promote products through video on different networks. The same goes for promoting “live moments” on the app alongside YouTube advertising.
Either way, cross-promotion across social platforms widens the audience and the market.
Free image from Pixabay
How much do tiktokers earn in Italy?
Like their counterparts elsewhere, Italian tiktokers earn eye-watering sums. So who are the leading Italian tiktokers and what do they make? According to Money.it, first among them is Elisa Maino, a sixteen-year-old from Rovereto whose Musical.ly videos already had more than a million followers when she was 14.
Asked in an interview how much she earns, she said:
I don’t know — my parents put the money I earn aside to secure my education. But this used to be a hobby and now it looks more like a job.
Even without the numbers, her earnings are clearly high. The tiktoker has become one of the best-loved influencers and is in demand with brands, which, as we know, will pay tens of thousands of euros to promote their products.
Another well-known muser is Virginia Montemaggi, an almost twenty-year-old from Milan with more than 2 million followers. Sought after by many brands, she has already worked with the Instagram page of JORD watches, wearing their watches.
At the top of the list of leading musers and Italian influencers you will find other young names such as Luciano Spinelli, Marta Losito and Maryna.
Abroad, the best-known tiktoker is Baby Ariel, whose TikTok account has almost 30 million followers and whose earnings are around a million dollars. Behind her come Loren Gray, on around 400 thousand dollars, and Jacob Sartorius, whose net worth is estimated at about half a million dollars.
Conclusion
In this lesson of your favourite TikTok Academy we covered how to make money on TikTok. You now have everything you need to understand exactly what TikTok is, how to earn on TikTok and how to shape a branding strategy on this platform.
Stay tuned and keep following us: in the next TikTok Academy lessons we will go deeper and cover other very interesting things…
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