TikTok has announced that it is closing its Creator Fund. The monetization program will officially shut down this December. After that, creators in the U.S., U.K., Germany and France will no longer be paid through the program.
TikTok has been paying its creators through the Creator Fund since its launch in 2020. The platform paid millions to creators, gaining thousands to millions of views on their videos. In total, TikTok dedicated one billion to the fund, but there’s no official word on whether the platform actually paid out that much to its community. Overall, the Creator Fund was often criticized by the TikTok creator community. The biggest complaint was the system’s extremely low payouts. Creators would receive mere scraps, even if the video gained millions of views. Even MrBeast called out TikTok for how little it was paying. Back in January 2022, MrBeast tweeted that in total, his channel, which he estimated had about a billion views, had only made $14,910.92 — making around just $25 a day. For smaller creators, it was even less.
Alternative to Creator Fund
Last February, TikTok announced that it was launching the Creativity Program Beta. The new program aims to resolve the issues that the Creator Fund faced. TikTok promised that this new monetization program would have higher payouts, as much as 20 times the amount that was offered in the previous fund. According to a report by Insider, creators have noticed a huge difference in their payouts when they switched to the Creativity Program.
However, creators must create videos longer than one minute to be eligible for the Creativity Program. Creators must also have at least 10,000 followers and have accumulated 100,000 views in the last 30 days. The program was initially available by invitation only; however, it’s unclear if the program will be available globally in the future.
“The Creativity Program was developed based on the learnings and feedback we’ve gained from the previous Creator Fund, and we’ll continue listening and learning from our community as we explore new features and enhance existing ones to further enrich the TikTok experience,” TikTok wrote in its announcement.