What are social networks without content creators? Nothing. Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok know this well. That’s why the Chinese company owned by ByteDance decided to create a fund with one billion dollars (in the US and UK, it’s translated as a billion) to distribute among creators.
Well, bad news for creators, in line with this very tough year. TikTok’s 1 billion dollar creator fund will come to an end on December 16, 2023, as the company has communicated to users today.
Creators from the US, UK, Germany, and France will no longer be able to monetize their content through the original fund, says TikTok spokesperson Maria Jung. Creators from Italy and Spain are not affected by the change.
A promise that was made during the pandemic
The creator fund was originally introduced in 2020, with the company’s promise to pay one billion dollars over the course of three years to people creating viral content on the app.
Along the way, influencers and other content creators have noticed low payments, sometimes just a few dollars for millions of views, making it impossible to make a living solely through the creator fund.
To make matters worse, TikTok has not responded to questions about whether they have paid out the full 1 billion dollars.
In February of this year, the platform introduced a new monetization method that, they claimed, would result in higher payouts for the most popular creators: the Creativity Program.
Unlike the original fund, the Creativity Program requires creators to make videos over one minute long, a notable shift for an app that started with short videos.
Instead of having a public fund from which payments are made, TikTok announced that earnings would be based on views and other engagement metrics.
Since the launch of the new system, TikTok has been inviting eligible creators to join the Creativity Program; TikTok claims creators can earn up to 20 times the amount they were making with the original fund.
The impending disappearance of TikTok’s original fund is not surprising: the program was limited to a three-year commitment with a fixed amount to distribute. Creators from the United States, UK, Germany, and France who were part of the fund will be able to transition to the Creativity Program.
Earning money on TikTok has always been more unpredictable than on other platforms like YouTube or Twitch. That’s why other platforms have moved to attract all those dissatisfied creators.
