Over the past half-year, the revamped creator fund of TikTok has increased total revenue from creators by more than 250 percent, the company announced today. The fund, which debuted a year ago and ultimately succeeded TikTok’s initial $1 billion Creator Fund, will exit beta in the coming weeks, according to the company. Additionally, TikTok disclosed that its LIVE Subscription monetization tool, which was previously known as “Subscription,” will soon be available to creators who do not use LIVE.
The redesigned creator was initially referred to as the Creativity Program. With the program’s transition out of beta, its moniker has been changed to the “Creator Rewards Program.” In contrast to the original Creator Fund, the new program incentivizes users to produce videos exceeding one minute in length, thereby rewarding creators for such material. TikTok reports that users are devoting fifty percent of their time to longer content since the rollout of longer videos, and that the viewership of longer videos has increased by nearly forty percent in the past six months.
In response to complaints from creators that TikTok’s previous model offered low payouts—with some creators claiming to have earned only a few dollars for videos that received millions of views—the redesigned fund was established. At the time of the revamped fund’s initial launch, TikTok projected that creators could earn over twenty times their previous earnings.
Despite its efforts to rival YouTube through the introduction of longer videos, TikTok fails to provide compensation commensurate with that of the Google-owned platform. In three years, YouTube, which distributes a portion of its advertising revenue to its creators, recouped $30 billion. The purpose of the new creator fund on TikTok is to encourage creators to upload their longer videos to TikTok rather than YouTube alone.
TikTok’s redesigned subscription model provides a novel avenue for non-LIVE creators to interact with their audience by means of exclusive content and supplementary benefits. TikTok will initially grant access to creators solely by invitation; in the coming weeks, eligible creators will be granted the opportunity to register for access.
TikTok’s expansion of the tool enables creators to provide subscribers with incentives for both their videos and LIVEs, as opposed to solely LIVEs. Subscribers will have the ability to view videos that are created exclusively by them. When users comment on videos or participate in LIVEs, a subscriber emblem will be displayed alongside their names when they are subscribers to that creator. TikTok promises that additional benefits will become accessible following the feature’s complete rollout.
Additionally, TikTok declared its intention to transform its Creator Portal education center into the Creator Academy, which will furnish creators with the most recent information, courses, articles, and insights. Currently undergoing testing, the enhanced gateway will be available in seven languages within the coming weeks, with more to follow.