TikTok on Wednesday announced holiday giveaways for creators and revealed new ways for them to make money.
The social video company announced two updates: tipping and video gifting, the latter of which effectively lifts restrictions on its existing virtual gifting feature for livestream hosts, allowing fans to now tip and send gifts to their favorite influencers without needing a live video.
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“We know that creators have different goals, motivations, and expectations, from those who make TikTok videos 'just for fun' to those who make videos as a side hustle to those who make videos consistently,” 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.”
Tipping and online gifts like stickers and icons have become quite popular among social media sites, including big names like Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, as well as upstarts like Clubhouse and Triller. It's a fairly handy way for tech platforms to stoke fan enthusiasm and keep creators motivated without much direct investment.
Here's how TikTok's version of hints works: The feature, which has only just been officially released from testing, is relatively easy to set up, after which creators will see a new “hint” icon on their profile page.
Fans can tap this to see how many supporters and tips the person has already received, and to send a tip in $5, $10, $15, or a custom increment. There is a $100 limit per transaction, 100 daily transactions, and a $500 total limit. Fans can also send tips anonymously if they wish.
TikTok noted that Stripe processes payment transactions and recipients receive 100% of the amount, minus fees.
Eligible creators must have a TikTok account with at least 100,000 followers and adhere to our Community Guidelines. They must also be over 18 and based in the US. Business accounts are not eligible.
The video gifting model is even simpler for fans, but the monetization process is different: TikTok uses gifts as one metric to identify “quality” content.
“With Video Gifting, creators can get paid by TikTok for each video they make,” the company wrote on its feature page. “This motivates creators to spend more time making quality videos, and viewers show them how grateful they are for them — a win-win.”
Once a creator has turned on the video gifting setting, commenters can tap to send diamond icons and other gifts during both live and pre-recorded videos.
These new features are integrated into TikTok's new Creator Next, a portal with creator-driven monetization features. This section also covers the newly updated Creator Marketplace to accommodate more creators.
The section is designed to allow related people and brands to find each other, similar to 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, is also planning to expand access globally: Its availability in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain is set to expand to Canada and Australia in the coming months.
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