The growing popularity of TikTok as a social networking platform has raised this question for every online marketer; How to profit from TikTok?
With over 2 billion downloads since 2017 and 800 million active users, TikTok has taken the world by storm.
Top internet influencers like Gary Vee and Neil Patel are starting to acknowledge the potential of this platform.
Launched in 2017 by a Chinese company called ByteDance, TikTok is an app short for creating and sharing videos.
It made its way to the list of the 10 most downloaded apps in the past decade, ranking seventh ahead of YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, which have been around for much longer.
Most popular among millennials, the content you’ll come across on the app is often lip-syncing, singing, dancing, and comedy videos.
But there is much more to it.
Since the platform is new, it has a lot of potential revenue for those who are eager to jump in early and want to take advantage of it.
Unlike Youtube, Tiktok does not currently have a revenue-sharing model; You don’t pay per view. But that doesn’t mean it’s a closed door.
Through this platform, content creators can get sponsorship and brand deals for their posts and learn how to profit from Tik Tok, especially if they have many followers.
To get you involved in the game early on, I have listed 10 ways you can use to learn how to earn from TikTok today.
Let’s start with ideas.
How to earn from Tik Tok:
- Be influential
An influencer is defined as a trustworthy person in a particular niche.
Brands take advantage of the pre-existing credibility of influencers in the field to promote themselves.
This is what we call influencer marketing.
Linqia concluded, in a survey, that 92% of marketers found influencer marketing to be effective.
In the past, celebrities, athletes, and political leaders were considered influential people.
The late 2000s saw a newly emerging term as “micro-influencers”.
Micro-influencers are people who have gained fame through social media and can make a targeted impact on their audience.
TikTok, as a new social media platform, is discovering ways of influencer marketing.
Small influencers are more cost-effective for brands than big influencers like celebrities and athletes.
The more followers you have on TikTok, the more credible you are as an influencer, and the more likely you are to be sponsored by brands.
Do you want to search for influencers on TikTok?
Use the TikTok user search feature and find influencers to follow.
Below, I have compiled some tactics that can put you on the path to becoming a TikTok influencer and that will help you learn how to make money from TikTok.
Perfect your profile biography
Your bio is the first thing viewers see when they go to your profile.
Tiktok is a fast-paced platform. The faster you can give visitors an idea of what they can find in your account, the better.
Focus on a niche to profit from Tik Tok
If you want to build yourself up as a TikTok influencer, pick one niche and stick with it. Maintain your voice, tone, and style in all your videos.
This rule applies to all social media platforms.
Consistently producing high-quality videos
According to Forbes magazine,
When content quality, quantity, or schedule is inconsistent, it can confuse your customers. Adhering to a regular strategy not only helps create a better customer experience but also helps build credibility, reputation, and trust in the brand.
It is not recommended to post videos intermittently on TikTok.
Whatever your schedule, stick to it. This is how you build loyal followers. Appearing in front of your audience when they expect you the most will help you develop a meaningful relationship with them.
Make sure to post high-quality, entertaining videos related to your field of expertise.
Every once in a while, you can show your lighter side to your audience by giving them a glimpse into your daily life or behind the scenes.
Improve your videography skills
Tiktok is all about short videos, and you have to get your message across within 60 seconds. So double your photography skills.
How can you do that?
- Invest in gear
- Fix the camera somewhere or have a steady hand.
- Shoot with TikTok instead of uploading from your phone
- Use trending music in the background
- Use the right filters, transitions, and rhythms
- Create eye-catching thumbnails
Do a Hashtag search
Hashtags, if used wisely, can make your videos interactive.
You can get the help of this tool from the Influencer Marketing Hub to help you create appropriate hashtags for your TikTok videos.
Although no one outside of TikTok knows how the algorithm works and which hashtags you prefer yet, influencers have a consensus that adding #foryou or a variation of it may increase your chances of being featured on the For You page.
If that happens, your video is likely to get a lot of eyeballs. So don’t forget to add this hashtag.
Interact with your audience
There are many ways to interact with your audience. Understand your audience first, then try to come up with videos and challenges that they will love.
Give a call to action to participate.
Connect and collaborate with other influencers
Networking should be at the heart of your strategy to become a TikTok influencer.
Team effort is always essential to success.
Find out the people in your niche who can benefit from you and your TikTok content, as well as what you can earn from them.
Feel free to reach out to specialized influencers and introduce yourself for collaboration. Your TikTok account will act as your wallet.
If they are more established than you, you will gain knowledge, follow-up, and experience.
Black Friday: 11 marketing ideas that will make your sales boom
- Create your brand
“Your personal brand is your reputation. And your reputation is forever the foundation of your career.”
An effective personal brand will differentiate you from the competition and allow you to build trust with potential customers and employers.
TikTok is not just about dancing, joking, and syncing videos.
Many social media experts, including lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs, use it to educate the public. Their accounts have gained thousands of followers through their valuable content.
TikTok’s algorithm is exceptionally sharp. If the content is good, your videos will be shown to the right audience.
Also, only 34% of users on TikTok actively post daily.
The rest only consumes published content.
So establishing yourself as an expert in your niche by consistently posting valuable content will help develop your personal brand.
It also increases your profit margins when you start selling your items, because you are a seller yourself and do not act as an affiliate for anyone.
- Sell your goods
Once you have developed your own brand and have a loyal following, it is a good idea to start launching your own (physical/digital) product.
When it comes to selling, traditional tactics on TikTok will not work.
The app is not the place for serious sales presentations.
The majority of users on TikTok are in the age group of 16 to 24.
They come here to entertain themselves and not to buy things. But demography and age are trending upward at a rapid rate.
This is the case with most social media platforms.
They start with young people, and as they get older, they start to gain traction with older users.
But with the right tactics, you can sell and influence their buying decisions.
Keep it simple.
A light video showing your products will be more realistic.
Clothing, hair products, cosmetics, exercise equipment, dance courses, and online courses for anywhere can do well on TikTok.
How you promote will make a difference.
If you don’t have your own, be affiliated with stores like Amazon or Walmart, etc.
Or even using print-on-demand companies to sell T-shirts as requested by your followers without the need for a store or managing the complex shipping process.
Give a call to action (CTA) to purchase the videos and use the “link in bio” to drive traffic to your sales page or blog.
- Collaborate with brands and publish sponsored posts
High-end brands are turning more towards “micro-influencers” to promote their brand rather than celebrities, athletes, and public figures who remain at the top of the influencer hierarchy with millions of followers.
In September 2016, L’Oreal partnered with 5 beauty bloggers in the UK for a campaign.
None of these beauty bloggers have a following equal to a celebrity, but their combined reach has surpassed 5 million engaged viewers.
Why are brands turning to smaller influencers?
Because micro-influencers are niche, closer to their followers with excellent conversion rates.
In TikTok, the engagement rate is very important. The higher the engagement rate, the higher the chances of getting paid for each post.
The Influencer Marketing Hub has provided a tool that can calculate your TikTok engagement rate and it will give you a rough idea of how much you should earn per post.
So once you have a decent and targeted following on TikTok, you can reach out to relevant brands yourself through suggestions, or brands can contact you themselves as well.
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, TikTok influencers can earn salaries ranging from $200 to $20,000 for a single sponsored post, depending on their level of influence.
- Start live streaming on TikTok and earn money
Like Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube, Tiktok has a live broadcast feature where you can talk and interact with your audience if you have at least 1000 followers.
Live Streaming on TikTok has more and it is another way how to earn from TikTok.
TikTok Go-Live has a feature where followers who like your content can give you coins to show their support.
Your followers can buy coins from within the TikTok app, and when they donate these coins, you can convert them into diamonds, convert them into cash and withdraw these funds to your PayPal account.
You can convert 50% of the coins into cash, and the rest will be distributed between TikTok, the App Store, and Google Play.
- Promote your TikTok account
There are more than 100 social media networks around the world. Each social media platform has a different audience with a penchant for another type of content.
The idea of social media promotion is to share your content as widely and effectively as possible across multiple social networks.
TikTok is a vertical video-sharing platform, the content is similar to Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook stories, which is also conducive to video publishing.
To gain followers, post your TikTok videos to your Facebook and Instagram stories.
- Add your TikTok account link to your Instagram bio and send a call to action to follow you.
- Compile your own TikTok videos and publish them on your Youtube channel.
- Provide your TikTok account link in the description and make a call to action to continue.
- This way, you can introduce your TikTok account to your followers on other social media channels. Some may follow you.
- You can also add links to Instagram and Youtube channels on your TikTok profile.
- Create a TikTok account and sell it
This is one of the great ways people make money with the app.
You can launch a profile about a specific niche such as hair products or cosmetics. Post good quality content consistently. This way, you can increase your followers and engagement rate.
These accounts can be sold to whom it may concern. There are some online platforms like Fameswap that mediate this process.
These practices are legitimate but have their pros and cons. Do your due diligence before buying or selling any of these accounts.
- Invest in TikTok Ads to Increase Your Reach
Advertising is one of the most popular non-organic ways to increase your reach and impressions.
Like all other social media platforms, TikTok also allows you to run ads.
The most common are In-feed ads. These ads are TikTok videos that appear silently in viewers’ feeds. Aside from the little hashtag in the description that says “#ad”, there’s no other way to tell if a video is an ad.
Some types of TikTok ads are:
- Infeed Native Content: This type of ad is similar to Stories ads on Snapchat or Instagram and supports multiple features such as website clicks or app downloads.
- Brand Takeover: This allows brands to take over TikTok for the day. They can create images, GIFs, and videos with embedded links for landing pages or hashtag challenges.
- Hashtag Challenges: Instead of trying to make a hashtag challenge go viral on your own, you can use a promoted hashtag to get more engagement.
- Branded Lenses: Branded lenses are similar to Snapchat’s 2D and 3D lenses for faces and photos.
- Become an advisor to TikTok
Once you have spent a good amount of time on TikTok and have grown at least one account into a loyal following, you will get to know the ins and outs of the platform.
You will understand the TikTok algorithm better and know the best-performing content on the platform
So you can then offer your services as a TikTok consultant. Many influencers have already participated in TikTok and offer their consulting services.
As a TikTok advisor, you can help your clients how to earn from TikTok and:
- Write the perfect CV
- Gain followers and share
- Connect with other influencers in your field
- Collaborate with brands and sponsored posts
- Create content and avoid creativity barriers
- High-quality video images can go viral.
Remember, it’s just a consultation. You are not supposed to do anything yourself.
- Provide TikTok management services
Influencers have a lot of things on their plate. If you are good at TikTok, besides consulting, you can provide management services as well.
This way, you can be a full-service TikTok agency that offers different levels of packages.
What services can you provide with counseling?
- TikTok content planning and marketing strategy
- Coming up with creative video ideas
- Create, edit, and upload videos
- Dealing with their followers
- Reach out to collaborators on their behalf
- Give ideas about their brands.
Question and Answer
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a short video creation and sharing app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
It has more than 800 million users worldwide and has surpassed Youtube, Facebook, and WhatsApp in downloads.
How does TikTok work?
TikTok is a video creation platform that allows you to create entertaining videos.
Videos can be edited within the app; Background music can be added from the TikTok library and published on the web.
What is the hashtag Tik Tok?
A hashtag search is necessary to get your post noticed by the TikTok algorithm.
The Influencer Marketing Hub has launched a tool to help you. Adding # for you or any shape increases the chance of your video appearing on the “for you” page.
How long can TikTok be?
A TikTok video can be anywhere as short as 2 seconds to a maximum of 60 seconds. Many music-related videos take about 15 seconds because most of the music available only takes 15 seconds.
How does TikTok make money?
TikTok makes money with ads, running branded hashtag challenges, and coins that your followers donate to you.
Is TikTok Free?
Yes, TikTok is a free app. It only costs you when you want to donate coins to the people you love and want to support. These coins must be purchased. Exchange rates between coins and dollars vary over time.
TikTok is a fast-paced platform that differs from other social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
There aren’t many standards, best practices, or rules about what works and what doesn’t. It’s still a relatively new platform, and resources (like this) are created as the platform matures.
