It comes as no surprise that such a fast-growing social platform brings many marketing opportunities – according to IT company Admitad, in 2021 the number of sales driven by TikTokers in Europe has tripled. But let’s get to the main point; how can this trendy social network help you earn money?
Lately, the platform has been gaining a lot of public attention. In 2021 TikTok has officially overtaken Google and became the world’s most popular website. Of course, for some platforms, such fast growth and success didn’t guarantee a promising future (remember the Clubhouse craze?). But that’s definitely not the road TikTok is going down.
Recent research has shown that British TikTok users spend on average about one hour a day watching short videos. Such an adherence opens up unrivaled marketing opportunities. According to statistics, key indicators are constantly growing, which is another proof of the rapid development and popularisation of the social platform.
An actively developing network can become a source of significant income for bloggers and brands. Let’s take a closer look at the actual ways of making money on TikTok.
Why TikTok?
It is a dynamically growing platform that is entirely built on the idea of fast video consumption. The main goal is to engage and entertain the audience, to give them an opportunity to spend their free time in fun and get away from routine matters. A distinctive feature of the network is its young audience – about 60% of all users are between the ages of 18-35.
Among the most visited social networks in the world, TikTok takes seventh place with one billion monthly active users. The amount of active audience on the social network has doubled over the last year.
In the United Kingdom, this young social platform is ranked seventh by the number of users – around 37% of Brits use TikTok. At first glance, its position is not even in the top five, but we have to consider the fact that it competes with such giants as Instagram and Snapchat. Moreover, the platform is still quite young, and the audience is growing constantly.
Interesting fact for marketing experts: around 59% of British TikTok users are female, and the most active category of users whose age is 16-24 years stands for nearly a quarter of all audience.
To start making money on this platform, you don’t need millions of followers. The number of views and engagement rates of your videos are way more important. The platform has a quite low barrier to entry because all videos are being added to the feed of other users and can easily “enter the top”, because initially, according to the algorithms, all creators are equal.
What’s more, small accounts usually have higher engagement rates – 76% for pages that have one to ten thousand followers. The engagement rate of million-plus accounts on average stands at the level of 5%. Another interesting fact: around 30% of all forms of activities happen on weekends. These are the days when you can get maximum audience reactions.
How much can you earn on TikTok?
If you have chosen the path of a blogger, earnings depend on the size of your account and your personal ambitions. At the very beginning, you can charge around 10 GBP for an advertising post. But on average, the numbers are as follows:
- 100,000+ followers – from $100 to $200 per post;
- 200,000 – one million followers – $250-500;
- one million+ followers — from $1000 and more.
For example, Vi Luong, a 24-year-old TikTok blogger with 1.1 million followers, who makes hacks videos and films her daily life, shared some information on how much money she makes on the app. She explained that she makes money both through brand partnerships and the Creator Fund. In the beginning, she was charging between $3,000 to $4,000, but now she can charge between $8,000 and $10,000 for a sponsored video. But if blogging is not your thing, let’s take a look at some other options.
How to monetise a blog on TikTok
- Product Advertising: This is the main way to generate income in this social network. Bloggers tell about the product and leave their exclusive promo code in the video or add the link in the profile. You can promote a product in the form of a review video, direct advertising, or just showing the product in a video without mentioning the brand.
Here are a few highlights from a study by Nielsen:
- 61% of users consider ads from this social network to be unique in comparison with other platforms;
- 43% of users believe that ads on TikTok are well combined with native content;
- 52% of users say they discover new products on TikTok.
- Joining brand challenges: To promote a product, brands often come up with their own challenges, the purpose of which is to attract the attention of the audience and gain popularity. Each challenge has its own rules, but the key component that unites them all is the branded hashtag. It is important to add it to your video.
- Live streaming: If you’ve got more than a thousand followers on your account, you have the opportunity to monetise it using live streaming. It happens like this: you broadcast videos in real-time and your audience rewards you with donations.
Donations are stickers that users can purchase for their internal currency – coins. For each sticker a blogger can receive 80% of its value (the remaining 20% goes to the social network).
- Driving the audience to other social networks: Viewers spend 95% of their time on the platform watching the recommendations feed, which consists mainly of videos and accounts that are still unfamiliar to them. This is how TikTok is different from other social networks. Therefore, once you’ve managed to catch the interest of a user on TikTok, do not hesitate and drive him to your Instagram. There he will be able to follow your updates, and you will be able to communicate with him and sell goods.
- Scriptwriting: Once you understand how network algorithms work and how to use trends, you can monetise this skill by creating content for other individuals or companies. At the same time, you can both create the script and participate in the video.
- Promoting musicians: Since TikTok is a video platform, music is one of the main components. Any user can take a song from the application’s library or overlay their original sound. Tracks that become viral bring popularity to their performers, help them to get promoted and earn money. That is why musicians order videos with new compositions from TikTokers.
- Advertising other TikTok bloggers: It is very convenient to advertise other accounts on TikTok – just create a duet video with a novice blogger. The cost of participation depends on your reach.
- Setting up targeted advertising: To get great content, brands need creative people who will create this content. If the company itself doesn’t have an employee who knows how to do it, they have to hire an expert from outside, and this can cost a lot.
Therefore, it makes sense for some brands to use targeted ads on TikTok. It will be cheaper, and the results won’t leave you disappointed. BUT, there are not so many specialists on the market who know how to set up effective and qualitative ads on this particular platform. After all, the specifics of setting up ads on TikTok are very different in terms of creatives and features of the landing page.
Whether you have experience in targeting or not, we recommend learning on TikTok. Creatives from this social network smoothly move to Instagram, and the acquired skills will help you to set up ads on any platform in the future.
- Advertising via affiliate networks: This method is similar to advertising goods (see the #1 option), but there’s an advantage – you do not need to look for customers on your own. They are all already collected on one website. After registration, you’ll get access to more than 2000 advertisers.
Another advantage is that your earnings are not limited to a fixed amount. They depend directly on the number of customers you bring. Cooperation with affiliate networks is based on the CPA payment model (cost per action) – you get rewards for action. According to it, users have to perform a targeted action, which can be a product purchase, placing order or registration, and you get a reward for each customer you’ve brought.
The process of monetisation via the CPA network is quite simple. After signing up on the platform, you have to choose the country and categories of goods and services that you want to advertise. List TikTok as your workspace. Then select affiliate programmes of brands you’d like to cooperate with and join them. After that, you just have to use your affiliate link and unique promo codes in the next publications and watch the money flow to your personal account.
Useful tips from seasoned TikTok bloggers:
- Analyse trends. Follow popular TikTok bloggers, see what catches the audience the most and embed it in your videos. This will help you get to the recommendations feed.
- Post content at least five times a week and stick to a pre-made content plan.
- Interact with the audience: answer their questions and comments, broadcast live-streaming.
- When advertising a product, ask the advertiser for a brief that you would stick to. But don’t forget to leave some space for your own creativity. This will make advertising look more native, which is important for maintaining audience loyalty.
- The video should be interesting and easy to understand. Users come to TikTok to relax and unwind. The most popular are videos that intrigue, motivate action, and make you watch to the end.
- Try to catch the audience’s attention in the first three seconds. Involving headlines, a bright first frame, a question to the viewer will help you with this.
- Motivate viewers to leave comments under the video, so they will rank better.
TikTok is already helping content creators earn some money (sometimes even fairly good ones). But still, it is at the development stage. There is no established top-list of leaders among bloggers, any video can break into the recommendations and get millions of views. Thus, if you want to stay on top of trends and get the most out of this platform, right now is the best moment to dive deep into it. Try different methods of monetisation, combine them and work on maximising profits.
