The $1 billion TikTok Creator Fund will cease operations on December 16, 2023. The changes will affect content creators in the US, UK, Germany and France, company spokeswoman Maria Jung confirmed. Authors from Italy and Spain will continue to work as before.
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In July 2020, TikTok, the platform that has become the cradle of many viral trends, announced the creation of a fund to support creators worth $1 billion over three years. The aim of this initiative was to encourage the creation of quality content. But despite sizable budgets, many YouTubers faced small payouts, sometimes just a few dollars for millions of views. This circumstance made it impossible to make a living solely from fund payments. The company did not provide any information about whether the entire declared volume of the fund was paid out to creators during its operation.
In February this year, TikTok launched a new monetization program – the Creativity Program. It offers creators revenue based on the number of views and other indicators of their audience’s engagement. An important difference from the original fund is the requirement to create videos longer than a minute. This is a significant change for an app that has become known for short clips.
Since the launch of the new monetization program, TikTok has been inviting creators to switch to the new system. According to Jung, income under the creativity program can be 20 times higher than that of the original fund. The transition to a new program requires not only a change in the content format, but also a review of the monetization strategy on the part of the authors.
The end of the TikTok Creator Fund is in line with the company’s original plan. It envisaged a three-year cycle with a clearly defined budget. At the end of this period, the fund expires. However, this does not mean the end of all content monetization opportunities. Creatives from the US, UK, Germany and France who previously participated in the fund can now participate in the creativity program.
It’s worth noting that earnings on TikTok have always been more unpredictable than other platforms like YouTube or Twitch. Notably, YouTube has offered creators advertising revenue from Shorts, its TikTok alternative, which could be seen as an answer to the problem of low payouts.
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