• TikTok will reportedly be shuttering its Creator Fund.
• This fund paid creators based on the views they generated, but as more creators joined TikTok, the smaller payouts became.
• TikTok has multiple ways for creators to monetise their content but not all are available to all users around the world.

While it was a good idea when it launched, the TikTok Creator Fund was rather flawed in its execution from the off.

The idea saw ByteDance paying creators a share of this fund based on the number of views their content brought to the platform. While this was great in the early days of TikTok when there were fewer creators, as more folks tried their hand at making short form videos, the Creator Fund payouts became smaller.

This was wonderfully outlined by TikTok stalwart, Hank Green last year.

Now, according to reports from publications such as Time, TikTok will be shutting down the Creator Fund. At present TikTok shares as much as $2 billion between creators that meet its eligibility requirements.

These requirements include meeting a threshold of 10 000 followers and 100 000 views over the last 30 days. Unfortunately, the Creator Fund is only available for creators in the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain.

With the Creator Fund being shut down, there is potential that TikTok will turn hard into the Creativity Program. This program encourages creators to make longer videos and get rewarded for that content. The requirements to take part in this programme are exactly the same as the Creator Fund but it is still in a beta testing phase.

This program isn’t the only way creators can monetise their content on TikTok. There is the Creator Next program, the Creator Marketplace and many other avenues to turn your short-form videos into money including approaching advertisers directly.

The Creator Fund being shuttered may negatively impact the bottom line of creators who still earn from it but according to reports, earnings from the Creator Fund are incredibly low. Considering there are more than a billion monthly active users on TikTok and Creators are sharing a $2 billion pool, the payouts being low are to be expected.

We do have to wonder whether TikTok plans to expand the reach of the Creativity Program once it’s out of beta testing. As mentioned, the Creator Fund was only available in a few regions so an expansion to give folks outside of the US, UK, and Europe a chance to earn money from their content would be great.

It’s not clear what TikTok will do with the money allocated to the Creator Fund should it shutter.