I’ve been on TikTok for around 5 years on and off.
When I first started posting, I honestly didn’t take it seriously at all. I was just making random videos without any real plan behind it. Then one of my videos suddenly went viral.
That’s when I realised TikTok could actually be useful for making money. Not necessarily because TikTok itself pays loads, but because new clients and opportunities can find you through the platform.
At the time, my content was mostly focused on content creation and videography, and suddenly people were discovering my work through TikTok without me paying for ads.
That completely changed how I looked at the app.
Over the years, I changed niches multiple times and experimented with different types of content. During the Olympics, my hockey niche exploded and I ended up getting around 6 million views in 10 days with thousands of comments.
From the outside, that probably sounds like a dream.
Most people assume millions of views automatically mean huge money.
The reality was very different.
I even got comments saying things like, “I’m making you money by commenting, so be grateful.” And I’m like… whaaat? I made 2 cents that day lol.
Ironically, I made significantly less money during that period than I did in periods where I had fewer views and fewer followers.
Why? Because viral content alone is not a business.
Can Viral Videos Make You Money?
Yes, a viral video can create opportunities, especially for brand deals.
For example, I could roller skate outside, put some music behind it, make it look cool, and suddenly get offers for brand deals for the skates, the hat I’m wearing, the T-shirt brand, the Coke I’m drinking, and so on.
But there are a few problems with this. You have to go super viral, be brand safe, show charisma in your older content too.
And creating a video like that with 10 million views has about the same probability as winning the lottery.
So yes, it can happen but this is not exactly a business strategy.
During the Olympics, I was essentially offering entertainment and viral moments, but I had no real products or services connected to it. People watched the videos, enjoyed them, commented, argued, laughed, and moved on.
There was no deeper system behind it.
That experience completely changed how I see TikTok monetization.
The creators making real money are usually not the ones simply chasing millions of views every week.
They’re the ones using TikTok as a tool to build something outside the platform: a business, community, service, product, brand, or audience that actually converts into long-term income. And honestly, that’s the part most people never talk about when they explain how to make money on TikTok.
Oh, and you also need to offer something that people actually want lol.
It is much easier to make a sale when you offer an incredible amount of value and help people than when you just entertain them or educate them.
How TikTok Monetization Actually Works
TikTok has several monetization tools built into the platform, and people often assume these alone are enough to make creators wealthy.
Sometimes they are. Most of the time, they aren’t.
Let’s break down how TikTok monetization actually works and how creators really make money from the platform.
TikTok Creator Rewards Program
This is the monetization system most people mean when they talk about “getting paid for views.” TikTok pays creators for eligible videos through the Creator Rewards Program, which replaced the older Creator Fund in some countries.
The important thing to understand is this:
TikTok does not simply pay you per view. The payout depends on many things, including:
- where your viewers are from
- how long people watch
- whether the video is original
- engagement
- watch retention
- your niche
- advertiser value
- video length
Generally, creators with a US audience often earn more than creators whose audience comes mainly from smaller advertising markets.
Longer videos also tend to perform better monetisation-wise than ultra-short clips because TikTok wants people staying on the app longer.
This is why one creator can get 2 million views and make decent money, while another creator gets 2 million views and makes almost nothing.
A lot of creators are shocked when they finally monetize because they imagined viral views automatically meant huge payouts.
Sometimes they’re earning what works out to cents per thousand views. Other times, they may earn more. It varies massively.
And this is why views alone are not a business model.
TikTok LIVE Gifts
TikTok LIVE is where many creators actually start making more meaningful money. Not cents, but dollars lol.
When creators go live, viewers can buy virtual gifts using TikTok coins. The creator then receives part of the value after TikTok takes its cut. But keep in mind, most gifts are tiny.
If you see a creator getting 100 gifts in a short period of time, it does not automatically mean they just made $200. It could mean they made around $2.
Some gifts are expensive, but those are barely given to anyone. When that happens, it’s basically an event. This is why you’ll often see creators pushing LIVE streams heavily.
A creator with a loyal audience, strong personality and good engagement can often make significantly more through LIVE than through normal video views.
But again, community matters more than follower count.
I have 18k followers, my LIVE was watched by 5,000 people in total, and I made 7 cents overall. I’m not joking, guys.
Some creators with smaller audiences make very good money from LIVE because their followers genuinely support them.
Meanwhile, creators with millions of passive viewers sometimes struggle to earn much at all from it.
TikTok Subscriptions
Some creators can also offer paid subscriptions. This works similarly to platforms like Twitch or YouTube memberships.
Followers pay monthly for perks such as:
- exclusive content
- subscriber-only chats
- badges
- behind-the-scenes access
This can become stable recurring income, but realistically, only a small percentage of followers will ever subscribe. You need a very loyal audience for this to work properly.
I know creators with hundreds of thousands of followers who only have around 30 subscribers. I know you imagine it like this:
“If I have 1,000 subscribers, I can make 3k a month.”
But getting 1,000 people to subscribe to you is so hard you can’t even imagine.
You would have to offer truly exclusive content that people cannot find anywhere else.
People will not usually subscribe just because of your charisma, humour, looks or cool lifestyle.
If they give you money, it is usually because you helped them make money or helped them achieve something valuable, like losing weight, learning a language, writing a better CV, improving their business, or solving a real problem.
And again, if they can find that content online somewhere else for free, they probably won’t pay you.
TikTok Shop and Affiliate Marketing
TikTok Shop has exploded recently, and honestly, this is where some creators are making not cents, but dollars lol.
Creators can:
- sell their own products
- promote products from brands
- earn commission through affiliate links
You’ve probably seen videos where creators are constantly linking products directly in the video.
Sometimes these videos feel almost like modern TV shopping channels. But before you imagine yourself sitting on the beach making money from TikTok Shop, read this.
From many affiliate products, you only earn a very small percentage.
So you may need to sell thousands of products just to pay the electricity bill. That sounds like a lot of effort for very little return.
Why would I put so much energy into trying to sell a £14.99 coffee and earn 90 cents from the sale, when I could try to sell my own product or service and make much more money from that with less effort?
And to be fair, there’s also another downside.
A lot of accounts become repetitive sales machines and lose their personality completely.
Some creators are now building audiences almost entirely around selling products instead of creating strong content.
Brand Deals and Sponsorships
This is where many mid-sized creators actually earn the most money.
Brands care less about follower count than people think.
What they really care about is:
- engagement
- trust
- audience loyalty
- niche relevance
- conversion potential
A creator with 10k engaged followers in a strong niche can sometimes earn more from sponsorships than a creator with 100k random followers.
I have done many brand deals, and unfortunately, this is also not always a good way to make money anymore unless you’re Jeffree Star or something.
Back in 2022, the minimum pay for a TikTok video was often around $100, no matter the views.
Also, if you get a brand deal and they only pay you if you hit a certain amount of views, forget it.
That is such a bad deal.
You’ll end up making videos for free.
Now, even though my account is much more popular, some brand deals are maxed out at around $65 per video.
The fee is declining because there are just so many creators, and companies know everyone is desperate lol.
Paid Promotion Can Kill Your Views
By the way, when you mark your video as paid promotion, which is required by law when something is sponsored, TikTok often puts that video into what I call the “sales algorithm line.”
And then your views and engagement can completely disappear unless you pay to boost it.
I have seen this so many times.
The video doesn’t even need to look salesy, but the views can drop from your usual 100 percent to 5 percent.
Recently, I also discovered that even if you don’t add the paid promotion label because you want to be smart, the algorithm can somehow sense that you’re trying to promote something you don’t usually promote.
And that video can end up in the same dead zone as obvious paid promotion content.
This is not just my experience either.
I’ve seen creators who usually get 100k views per video post a paid promotion video, and that video had 2k views after 2 days.
That is insane. It honestly looks like sabotage, to be fair. But guess what? We can’t change it.
And that’s also one of the reasons why big content creators can still be broke.
The Biggest Misunderstanding About TikTok Money
People think:
- followers = money
- comments = money
- viral videos = full-time income
That’s not really how it works.
Random comments themselves are not making creators rich.
Comments help engagement and visibility, which can indirectly help monetization, but somebody commenting “😂😂😂” on your video is not directly funding your lifestyle.
And honestly, some creators with millions of views are making surprisingly little money.
Numbers Don’t Equal Success
I want to give you a real example of viral content versus building a community.
I personally know two creators with around 80,000 followers each, but their results are completely different.
Let’s call the first creator Sam.
In just 2 years, Sam gained 80k followers and had 11 videos pass 1 million views. One of his videos even hit 16 million views.
If you saw his account, you’d probably assume he’s making loads of money. He isn’t.
In fact, I was genuinely shocked when I found out he was broke.
Despite all those viral videos, he barely has a community on TikTok. People watch the viral clip and move on.
Now let’s look at Kurt.
It took Kurt 4 years to reach 80k followers. He posted way more content than Sam and only had 4 videos go above 1 million views.
But TikTok is actually Kurt’s full-time income.
He pays his bills from it. Why?
Because Kurt built a loyal community instead of constantly chasing viral hits.
His followers come back every day to watch his videos, join his lives, interact with his content, and support what he does outside the app too.
He even got invited to TikTok headquarters for creator events and insider updates because TikTok values creators who keep audiences returning to the platform consistently.
Sam gets more views. Kurt built a business. That’s the difference.
Why Some TikTok Creators Stay Broke
The biggest mistake I see creators make is treating TikTok like a dumping ground for content.
Post. Hope it goes viral. Repeat. That’s it.
Sam uses TikTok mainly to push traffic to his YouTube channel. He rarely goes live, doesn’t build relationships with followers, doesn’t explore collaborations, and doesn’t really try to create a deeper connection with his audience.
People can sense that.
Meanwhile, creators who actually make sustainable money usually do one thing differently: they build trust and community.
And that matters way more long term than one random viral video.
How Creators Actually Make Real Money
This is the important part.
For most creators, TikTok itself is not the business. TikTok is the attention.
The real money usually comes from what creators build outside the app.
One of my TikTok videos made me over $1,000. This would never happen with TikTok monetization tools.
The video got 600k views. It did not have a call to action, but I did have my email in my bio.
It was a short, quick tutorial showing how to do something using ChatGPT.
People started emailing me to hire me so I could help them.
And listen, even though I showed exactly how to do it in the video tutorial, they still paid me to do it for them. So the video itself was not the business.
The video showed me as an authority. It showed that I knew what I was doing.
I got hired for projects worth over $1,000 in total within 7 days.
That is real TikTok monetization. Not 2 cents from a viral hockey clip. Not 7 cents from a LIVE.
Not hoping someone sends you a giant gift.
Real money came from using TikTok to show expertise and attract clients.
How to make money on TikTok If You Don’t Have 1,000 Followers Yet
If you don’t have 1,000 followers yet and can’t put a clickable link in your bio, put your email address there.
Seriously.
Imagine you make one video and get one client for $100 from it.
You don’t need 600k views to do that.
My video wasn’t salesy either. I just genuinely wanted to share a hack I had learned myself.
I had no intention to sell anything, and people sensed it. Reverse psychology lol.
My hockey TikTok is much more popular. It gets millions of views every month, my lives are engaged, people ask tons of questions, and some people even recognise me on the streets and at hockey games and want to take pictures with me.
But it doesn’t make me almost any money. Why? Because there is nothing to sell.
There is no clear product, no service, no strong business model.
There is value in terms of information and entertainment, but not enough to make real money from it.
So my numbers are great, but numbers alone do not feed you.
I know creators with 10 million views a month who are still broke.
They still work in a supermarket, an office job, or another normal job to pay the bills.
Final Thoughts
You do not need millions of followers to build an income online.
You need trust, consistency, and a reason for people to keep coming back.
TikTok can absolutely change your life, but probably not in the way most people think.
The creators making real money are usually not the ones chasing viral videos every day.
They’re the ones building something outside the platform while using TikTok as the tool that brings people into it.
We think being a content creator is so cool and that you can get rich from it.
In 2020, maybe yes but now the market is full of content creators.
It’s like winning a jackpot lottery of 1 million dollars, but then another million people win too, so you only get 1 dollar.
Oversaturation.
Be smart about it.
Don’t just chase views.
Build something.
Offer something valuable.
Help people.
Use TikTok as the attention machine, but don’t rely on TikTok alone to pay your bills.
Free TikTok Ebook
If you want to start using TikTok more strategically instead of just posting random videos and hoping one of them magically changes your life, I created a free TikTok ebook to help you.
Inside, I share practical tips on growing your account, creating better content, understanding what works on the platform, and using TikTok in a way that can actually support your goals.
You can download the free TikTok ebook here.
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