You might have heard of TikTok. You might have heard both positive and negative things about it. Did you know, that just like a lot of other apps and social media sites, you can make money with TikTok? User-generated video is a huge part of marketing, not only yourself and your own brand, but also collaborations with other businesses. Let's take a look at how to make money on TikTok.
What Is TikTok?
So let's first discuss exactly what TikTok is. You might have heard of it by it's previous name of Musical.ly. TikTok absorbed Musical.ly and became the app we now know. Users create their own videos, upload them and other users can then watch them. Short form entertainment allows us as users to be entertained or informed quickly before moving onto the next video.
We're living in that world at the moment, we need our starter, main and pudding all at the same time. We don't want to wait. When you log into TikTok, you're greeted with loads of videos. Lots of these might not be of interest to you, teenagers lip syncing to a song you don't know or doing some strange dance, but others might actually be up your street. There are also features that you would expect from a social network such as the option to like videos and slide into other users DMs.
Why Is TikTok So Popular?
The popularity of TikTok comes from the fact that even those with the smallest followings can create videos tat have the ability to go viral. Many do as well. Your average Joe can become a TikTok celebrity overnight. Publishing a video and then waking up to thousands of new followers and millions of new video views is a real possibility on TikTok. It's accessible, easy to use and literally anyone (aged 13+) with a mobile phone can produce content for it. There are lots of challenges which become popular and users can easily get involved with these crazes, offering their own take and uploading their own video. According to the states, TikTok has been downloaded more than 2 billion times. In the first quarter of 2020, it amassed 315 million downloads, which is the best ever quarter by an app. This makes 2020 the year of TikTok.
How To Make Money On TikTok
So, now we've discovered what it actually is and why it's so popular, let's look at how to make money on TikTok.
Grow Accounts & Sell Them
Just like buying, growing and flipping websites, people are creating, growing and sell TikTok accounts. This is becoming much more popular than eCommerce and selling products online. I suppose it's like anything. If you're able to create something that is popular, with an audience and maybe even already turning a profit, you can sell it for a decent amount of cash. If you find a niche within the concentration of content on TikTok, which appeals to people and ideally gets a lot of views, you'll be surprised at how many people might be interested in buying it. To them it's likely worth the money. They don't need to grow a brand new account, they can simply tap into the already established audience.
There are many ways that accounts can turn a profit to show just how much they could be worth if they were to be sold to an interested party. TikTok Live allows you to launch product whilst live streaming or even hold live auctions for products. You also have the ability to add a link in your bio which can direct your audience to a specific website to make purchases. If you have an audience who are regularly buying products, you could reach out to a company who might like this niche market. They might make you an offer for your account so they can sell their products. If you are able to come up with a successful method of how to grow accounts and sell them on, you can rinse and repeat over and over.
TikTok Creator Fund UK
The TikTok Creator Fund UK has recently been launched. This gives awesome opportunities to those creating exceptional videos. They're starting with over £50 million of funds available to creators. Just like other platforms where you can make money, you need to fall into a criteria before you're able to access the TikTok creator fund UK. You must have 10,000 followers and over 10,000 video views in the last 30 days. You must also publish content which is in line with the community guidelines of TikTok. There are plans for this fund to rise in monetary value. This would mean that even more creators will be given the opportunity to earn from their hard work and creativity.
Donations
If you know anything of Twitch, TikTok has a feature which works in a similar way. Content creators on TikTok can collect donations from their audience, as a kind of thank you from producing the content. Users can buy coins, which are around about £1.40 for 100. The user can then choose who to send these coins to. Obviously if you have a decent number of followers and are producing videos that are regularly going viral, making people laugh or providing decent information, users may send you some coins as a thank you. These quickly add up,especially if your video gains thousands of views. There are TikTok users making enough from creating content for the platform to live off. How would you like a slice of that action?
TikTok also created donation stickers so you can donate directly to charity. Creators can use these on their videos and live streams to raise funds for their favourite charities. All directly within in the TikTok app.
Share Your Knowledge
Maybe you have done something super successful or found a way to grow your TikTok audience? Positioning yourself as a knowledgeable individual and sharing that knowledge in exchange for cash is a great way to make money. If you're able to sell that knowledge, you're winning. You can also sell information from the niche area you are making videos for. Utilising that link in bio to move people to your own website and turn views into cash.
Sign Up To TikTok
So, the question of how to make money on TikTok? The answer begins with signing up to the platform. As you can see, there are many ways in which you can utilise TikTok to make money and you could easily add it to your current business as a additional revenue stream.