TikTok Shuts Down Its $1 Billion Monetization Fund

TikTok is ending its $1 billion creator fund on December 16th, 2023, the social media giant announced earlier today.

This means that TikTok creators in the US, UK, Germany, and France will no longer be able to make money from their content via the original fund, according to a TikTok spokesperson Maria Jung. Content creators in Italy or Spain, however, will remain unaffected.

In 2020, the creator fund was initially launched, with the company committing to give out $1 billion over a span of three years to individuals producing viral content on the app. However, influencers and content creators have consistently raised concerns about the meager payouts, often amounting to just a few dollars despite amassing millions of views.

This has rendered it essentially impossible to make a reliable amount of money solely through the creator fund. TikTok has not provided an official response on the matter.

Earlier this year in February, TikTok introduced the Creativity Program as a new way to make money on the platform. The company promised higher payouts with this new method but it also required creators to make content longer than 1 minute, which is different from what the app blew up for. Instead of paying creators money through a pool, the new program based its monetization on views and other engagement, similar to YouTube.

Ever since the new Creativity Program was launched, TikTok has been inviting new content creators to join the platform. Jung says that creators have been able to earn 20 times more than the original fund.

The fact that TikTok’s original fund is coming to a close isn’t unexpected, as the program had a predefined three-year duration with a fixed allocation. Creators located in the US, UK, Germany, and France who are currently participating in the fund will have the option to transition to the Creativity Program.