The TikTok Creator Fund is expected to shut down in mid-December, after the app launched a revamped Creativity Program closer to 2023’s beginning. Photo Credit: Mourizal Zativa
About six months after announcing the Creativity Program, TikTok is officially ending its original $2 billion Creator Fund.
Multiple outlets have reported on TikTok’s plans to retire the three-year-old Creator Fund, though at the time of this writing, the ByteDance-owned app hadn’t acknowledged the news with a formal release or social post.
In any event, the same sources have pointed to a Saturday, December 16th end for the Creator Fund. First announced back in July of 2020, this fund was initially billed as a support resource through which TikTok diehards could “realize additional earnings” for their on-platform “care and dedication.”
TikTok creators who met certain requirements were eligible to apply for a share of the Creator Fund, which started with a comparatively modest $200 million before rising into the initially noted $2 billion range. Of course, the highly controversial TikTok, which was at the time of the fund’s rollout facing the clear-cut possibility of a stateside ban, aimed to attract new creators (and keep existing creators onboard) by doling out the involved capital.
But it wasn’t long before several factors, TikTok’s many users and views among them, drove the fund’s average per-view compensation down to a miniscule level. In February of this year, when YouTube Shorts implemented a new revenue-sharing model, the Creator Fund reportedly paid only two cents per thousand views.
Also in February, TikTok debuted the Creator Fund’s replacement, the “Creativity Program,” in select markets. The beta (which is ongoing) was then expanded, and the complete list of eligibility requirements was published, in May.
While further details about the Creator Fund shutdown and the enhanced significance of the Creativity Program are undoubtedly on the way, it’s worth noting that Instagram Subscriptions is now said to have more than one million total active subs.
Meta announced the milestone, which represents one of several testaments to the relative variety of revenue opportunities for creators today, alongside a “new invite-only holiday bonus on Instagram.” The latter, as its description suggests, will compensate eligible individuals in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea for “sharing their creativity,” referring to photos as well as reels, over Instagram.
Also on the table for creators is the revenue-sharing program of Twitter/X (which launched the offering over the summer) and a growing stable of services that cater to ultra-dedicated supporters with exclusive content and/or one-on-one interactions.
