If you’re looking for ways to make money on TikTok, you’re in the right place.
Previously known as Musically, TikTok is one of the world’s fastest-growing social media apps with about 800 million monthly active users and over 2 billion downloads across the Apple Store and the Google Play Store.
Over the past few years, it’s evolved from a simple short videos creation app to a powerful marketing tool that individuals and business brands of all shapes and sizes are leveraging to reach their target audiences.
According to TikTok, a user opens the TikTok app an average of 8 times per day.
If you’re interested in how to make money on TikTok, you need to have the right strategy.
In this post, I cover the top 5 strategies to start making money on TikTok this year.
So without much further ado.
How to Make Money on TikTok
People are making big money on TikTok in 2020: According to Digiday, brand takeover ads on TikTok cost anywhere between $20,000 – $200,000. Pretty impressive, huh?
Obviously, if you’re not one of the world’s most popular celeb, your average earnings may vary depending on your TikTok follower count, engagement, etc.
However since there’s so much opportunity on TikTok, even lesser known people can still monetize their TikTok accounts despite the very high competition.
Following are the top five ways to make money on TikTok in 2020 including if you’re based out of Kenya and everywhere else in the world:
What's Covered in This Article
Go live on TikTok and livestream to your followers
To be able to make money on TikTok, you need to have at least 1,000 followers on TikTok.
And although the age minimum for TikTok in general is 13, you need to be at least 16 years old to use the TikTok livestream feature.
TikTok users can go into their profiles to purchase digital ‘coins’ at the rate of $1.39 for a hundred coins.
If you’re over 18, and you go live on TikTok, your followers can donate ‘digital coins’ to you which you ultimately can convert into ‘diamonds’. Once you collect a minimum of 10,000 diamonds, you can convert them into US dollars at a rate of $50.
Affiliate Marketing
To monetize your TikTok account and make money on TikTok with affiliate marketing, you need to join affiliate programs related to your TikTok account niche.
To make money on TikTok you can post your affiliate links to your TikTok or recommend products in your TikTok videos and make a commission on any sales you generate.
If done well, affiliate links can make you a tonne of money on TikTok.
To make money on TikTok, check out affiliate networks such as Shareasale, Clickbank, Awin, etc. You can also join individual affiliate programs directly from the brands’ websites or by Googling: “BRAND + affiliate program.”
Since TikTok, just like Google and YouTube, has a solid user base of engaged users, it’s an additional place where potential customers for businesses hang out every day making it a perfect place for promoting affiliate links.
You need at least 10,000 followers on TikTok To be able to post a clickable link on your TikTok bio. For instance, a fashion blogger Sophie Shohet uses this feature to promote affiliate links:
Print on Demand and Merchandise
You could also consider making money on TikTok by designing eye-catching merchandise such as e-cards, face masks, lapel pins and badges, t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, wedding-postponed gifts, stickers and tattoos, social distance bracelets, etc.,on anything funny, entertaining, educative, or relatable.
Once you’ve done so, list them on print on demand (P.O.D) platforms whereby you simply upload your artwork, and the company takes care of everything else – printing and shipping your merchandise to the final customer on your behalf – such as Spreadshirt, Teespring, Zazzle, Sunfrogshirts, Merch by Amazon, etc.
You can then plaster links to your POD shop on to your TikTok account.
TikTok followers pay close attention to TikTok bios and captions, so using affiliate marketing links is a great way to grab their attention and make that sale.
Since links in TikTok bios are non-clickable for accounts with less than 10,000 followers, adding a URL may not be the best idea if you haven’t already hit this threshold as fans will need to copy the promoted link to be led to the respective landing page.
Thus, it’s better to link your Instagram and YouTube accounts in your bio and then make a call to action on your videos inviting your viewers to click on either the links.
With the affiliate links, you will earn a commission on each sale you generate from your TikTok account.
Use relevant hashtags each time you post a TikTok video.
Shout outs
According to Social Toaster: 92% of individuals trust word-of-mouth recommendations, 76% of people say that they’re more likely to trust content shared by common people than brands, and 82% of customers want to get referrals from friends before making a purchasing decision.
It’s no secret therefore that TikTok has strong sales potential, so more and more brands want to use TikTok to get their products and services, reach out to their target audiences, and increase sales.
With shoutouts, you can make money on TikTok either directly on your account if you have a significant enough following, or by reaching out to TikTokers with large followings and paying them to shoutout your brand, service, account, etc.
Take advantage of freelancing platforms such as Fiverr, and list your TikTok Shoutout gig.
According to Business Instagram, over 25 million businesses and 2 million advertisers are on the platform.
Brand deals on TikTok creator marketplace
TikTok Creator Marketplace is the official platform for brand and creator collaborations on TikTok whereby brands get to meet the most popular creators on TikTok.
Unfortunately, to be able to make money on TikTok through the creator marketplace, you need an invitation from TikTok. Brands are paying up to $1,000 per post for 15 seconds of work.
Put together a media kit for brands that you’re interested in working with you.
Check out Canva.com for free media kit templates.
Make TikTok videos for businesses
Gone are the days when only big brands could afford TikTok marketing. Today, brands of all sizes want to use TikTok to promote their products and services.
While these massive brands have a great in-house resource to create their TikTok videos, smaller business owners often make use of freelance talent to minimize their social media marketing costs. Thus, they often want to find creators to make TikTok videos for their businesses at a low cost.
List out your TikTok video making gig on Fiverr, or check out popular online freelancing platforms such as Freelancer and Upwork potential works like the one below:
Find Freelance Clients
TikTok is not just about posting trending videos and participating in challenges.
On it’s journey to hitting 1 billion active TikTok users milestone, it has become a fantastic platform for networking, especially for creatives.
Leverage your TikTok videos as an online portfolio to showcase to your potential clients.
No matter what freelancing service you offer, you can use TikTok to find clients.
Furthermore, you can be proactive and pitch your services – just find a TikTok account that you’d be interested in working with and slide in their DMs.
The most important key to success is credibility in your niche, so it’s important to have a portfolio of work on TikTok and let your visitors that you’re accepting new freelance opportunities.
Your Turn
All in all, investing your time and effort into TikTok will eventually pay off in the long run. And you’re not too late to jump onto the TikTok bandwagon and start to monetize your TikTok account today.
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