TikTok announced today that its revamped creator fund has increased total creator revenue by over 250% within the last six months. The company says the fund, which launched a year ago and eventually replaced TikTok’s original $1 billion Creator Fund, is exiting beta in the coming weeks. TikTok also announced that its LIVE Subscription monetization tool is being renamed to “Subscription” and is soon expanding to non-LIVE creators.
At launch, the revamped creator was called the Creativity Program. As the program exits beta, it’s now being renamed to the “Creator Rewards Program.” Unlike the original Creator Fund, the new program rewards creators for longer content, as it rewards users who make videos longer than one minute. Since rolling out longer videos, TikTok says users are spending 50% of their time watching longer content, while viewership of longer videos has increased nearly 40% over the last six months.
The revamped fund was created in response to complaints from creators who said TikTok’s previous model offered low payouts, with some creators saying they earned a few dollars for videos that got millions of views. When TikTok first launched the revamped fund, it estimated that creators would be able to make more than 20 times what they were previously earning on TikTok.
Although TikTok has been looking to compete with YouTube with the launch of longer videos, it doesn’t offer the same level of payouts that the Google-owned platform does. YouTube, which shares advertising revenue with its creators, paid out $30 billion in three years. TikTok’s new creator fund seeks to appease creators and encourage them to post their longer videos on TikTok, instead of just YouTube.
As for the redesigned Subscription offering, TikTok is offering non-LIVE creators a new way to engage with their viewers through exclusive content and perks. TikTok will initially make it available to creators on an invite-only basis, while eligible creators will get the ability to sign up for access in the coming weeks.
By expanding the tool, TikTok is allowing creators to offer perks to their subscribers for their videos and LIVEs, instead of just LIVEs. Creators will be able to post exclusive videos that only subscribers can view. Users who subscribe to a creator will have a subscriber badge displayed next to their names when they post comments on videos and during LIVEs. TikTok says more perks will become available once the feature is fully rolled out.
TikTok also announced that it’s upgrading its Creator Portal education hub to the Creator Academy to provide creators with updated resources, courses, articles and insights. The upgraded hub is currently in testing and will be available in the coming weeks in seven different languages, with more to come.
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