This fund rewards creators who generate a creative and valuable content for the platform, but it does not serve as sustenance. “I can’t make a living from TikTok, neither me nor anyone else. From the platform, from TikTok paying us, impossible. From the brands, yes,” resolves Juan López (@juanloppeez), a 21-year-old fashion tiktoker who has more 100,000 followers and 4.7 million I like and videos with more than 1.3 million views.

What this fund provides to featured creators who decide to activate it in their account – they have the option not to do so – represents a residual income. In a previous report, Alex and Arina, father and daughter, known for being the creators of the viral choreography of Desperate of Rosaliathey indicated that TikTok “doesn’t pay much.” Although this social network does not have segregated income statistics, this Ukrainian calculated that, for every million views, “pay between 10 and 30 euros.”

The tiktokers Dominicans Stiver and Darling, from the account @stiver06, who created the trend song viral caile from Luar La L, assured that “there are months in which 20 euros appear in your account; another month, 10 euros, or there may even be a month in which you find yourself with 100”, amounts not comparable to those paid by YouTubewhere, “depending on the country, for every 1,000 views, you earn one euro”, that is, between 50 and a hundred times more, Alex revealed.

This February 26, this Creators Fund will no longer be available in our country. “We continually learn from our communityas we evolve our monetization programs to provide the best solutions so that creators on TikTok can generate income,” company sources indicate. The Spanish Newspaperfrom the Prensa Ibérica group.

Same playing field

This newspaper has contacted several influencers who have revealed that they did not have the creators fund activated. Only one of them, Juan López himself, has reasoned the reason for his decision: “If the creator joined this function, TikTok, as a company, would have to pay him from that moment on for something for which it did not pay him before.” , hence Maybe it gives you less visibility or fewer visits so you don’t pay so much. “I preferred not to risk it.”

“For the little money that the Creators Fund generates per visit, it is worth having more visibility, getting to work with more brands, having more collaborations and a larger audience,” says this creator, who adds that this function in the United States ” “It is more developed, just like on YouTube. You don’t charge the same for a video in Spain as for one in the United States.” Starting February 26, those who received something from the fund and those who will not play in the same playing field: that of potential brand advertisers.

From TikTok they encourage creators to monetize their content through collaborations with brands. For this, the company offers TikTok Creator Marketplace, a functionality that connects creators with brands or brands with creators, so that they can close any negotiation on their own, outside the platform. There are other similar applications, such as Skeeperswhich allow budding influencers make your way in the professional environment of social networks.

TikTok, more attractive for brands than other networks

TikTok is attractive to brands because it presents “much more heavy what Instagram”says a worker in the sector who is looking for influencers for campaigns of large and medium brands. “People have better metrics because there are many more views on this social network, but interaction on TikTok is more difficult to achieve,” she points out.

These same sources reflect that the influencers They also “prefer to advertise on TikTok, because The content published on this social network is very ephemeralnot like the one who climbs the feed of Instagram, and it requires less effort for them, they work less on it (so to speak), because it has to be more organic.

Juan López frequently works with at least three emerging Spanish fashion brands. He makes at least five collaborations a month, but They are not always paid and they reject many offers “because maybe the brand doesn’t interest me.” “Even if some brands don’t pay me, I prefer to have a friendly relationship with them. And emerging brands at a national level cannot always afford what I ask for. I consider that I have quite expensive rates for the level of followers I have on TikTok, because I make very elaborate content: there is a story and a development behind it,” he explains.

“Emerging national brands do not usually pay more than 100 euros, unless they trust your profile a lot, to make a video and show the garment. And pray that they do not ask for more content. What I ask for a video of about 40 or 50 seconds on TikTok is 300 euros. It’s very expensive, but I’m not charging for it because they can’t afford it and I do a lot of it for free because I’m very interested in a certain brand,” says this influencer who maintains that he does not know how much the rest of the creators in his echelon of followers earn.

Content ‘Packs’

Juan López believes that “brands want creators to have a community and interaction with the public.” The sector sources consulted by this newspaper indicate that the influencers They usually move by packs, They don’t usually work for a single content” and the brands appreciate it because they get a “better price” with these grouped contents.

“From my experience, what I can say is that there are people who think they are going to charge a lot and in reality they have a good price for the market,” these sources point out. Provides the example of one of the main influencers of our country, which has a community of 7.4 million followers on TikTok and whose identity prefers not to reveal due to confidentiality issues. He says of her that he has a cachet “affordable for the numbers he handles,” while “others have half the followers and interaction and ask for twice as much as her.”

“What they have asked me most is 25,000 euros for contents of a influencer who has 3.7 million followers on TikTok and 1.5 million on Instagram“, these sources confess. “Although they have smaller communities on Instagram, they charge less for campaigns on TikTok” than for those on Instagram. The fixed prices of the influencers who usually work with brands increase “if their content is boosted (use an account or a character to level up) with paid content: they usually ask for 2,000 or 5,000 euros more than the cache they normally have.”

What are brands looking for?

These sources state that what brands are typically interested in is “affinity with the content published by brands.” influencers and that the profile catches their attention, but in the end it depends a little on the activation, depending on what they want to achieve. If they want to get community, amplification, followers, then they pull a macroinfluencer. “If they want truthfulness and quality followers and content, they select a smaller one.”

The Mexican Iker Mendoza is behind the account of his sneaker cleaning business, Sneaker Repair Saltillo, he has accumulated almost 150,000 followers, but in the three years that he has been generating content for this social network “I have only generated money for content with the live videos of TikTok in which he cleaned tennis shoes (sneakers) live in the early mornings”, an income that comes from the donations with which they reward the influencers who join those direct.

He makes money by converting visits and likes in your profile to purchases in your store. “I had a teacher who, when I started making videos and I told him that I had some views and some likes, he said to me: ‘And how many sales did it generate for you? Your likes are not going to pay for the sales.’ What he told me made me change my mind completely and focus more on the business than on social networks,” he says.

“At the moment, What brands are always looking for is to create a squada team of creators mixed that provide them with both things: one macroinfluencer that gives them amplification, mixed with medium and perhaps some microphone, that gives me that veracity and credibility,” conclude the sources in the sector.