TikTok opened a holiday gift for creators on Wednesday, revealing new ways for creators to earn cash.
The social video company announced two updates: Tips and Video Gifts. The latter effectively lifts the limitations of existing virtual gift functionality for livestream hosts. Fans can now tip and send gifts to their favorite influencers without the need for live video.
“We know that creators have different goals, motivations, and expectations, from those who make TikTok videos 'just for fun' to those who create as a side hustle or on an ongoing basis,” the social media company explained in a blog post. So with that in mind, it's expanding the feature to allow “the TikTok community to reward their favorite creators.”
Tips and online gifts, such as stickers and icons, have become quite trendy among social media sites, including major sites like Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, as well as startups like Clubhouse and Triller. This is a fairly lightweight way for tech platforms to increase fan enthusiasm and keep creators motivated without making large direct investments.
Here's how TikTok's version of Tips works: This feature has just moved from testing to official release and requires relatively simple setup. After that, a new “Tips” icon will appear on the creator's profile page.
Fans can tap this to see how many supporters and tips that person has already received, or to send their own tips in $5, $10, $15, or custom increments. The limit per trade is $100, and the daily limit is 100 trades or $500. total. If you wish, you can tip anonymously.
TikTok noted that recipients receive 100 percent of the amount that Stripe processes the payment transaction, minus processing fees in some cases.
Eligibility criteria for creators is to have at least 100,000 followers and a TikTok account in good standing that adheres to our community guidelines. You must also be at least 18 years old, and US-based business accounts are not eligible.
Although the monetization process is different, the video gift model is even simpler for fans. TikTok uses gifts as one metric to help identify “quality” content.
“Video Gifts allows creators to get paid by TikTok for each video they make,” the company writes on its feature page. “This encourages creators to spend more time creating quality videos, and viewers show appreciation to creators by doing so. It’s a win-win.”
When creators turn on the video gifting setting, commenters on videos, whether live or previously recorded, can tap to send diamond icons and other gifts.
These new features will be built into TikTok's new Creator Next, a portal with creator-driven monetization features. This section also describes the newly updated Creator Marketplace, which has opened to accommodate more creators.
This section allows related personalities and brands to find each other, much like an influencer matching site. Potential creators must have at least 10,000 followers to be eligible.
TikTok is clearly ramping up its monetization efforts and, in fact, even plans to expand its access globally. The offering in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain will eventually expand to Canada and Australia in the coming months.
