TikTok has announced that its Creator Fund will close later this year. The focus - when it comes to allowing creators to monetise their content on the platform - is now the Creativity Program which the social media firm began piloting earlier this year.
The Creator Fund was launched in 2020, with TikTok committing to pay out a billion dollars to creators on the platform over the following three years. Along with things like digital gifting and brand partnerships, it was one of the ways that online creators could generate income from their TikTok videos.
That said, it was always somewhat vague as to how payments were made and on what basis. Some creators made decent money, while others complained that they earned very little. And for some, payments were unpredictable.
With the new Creativity Program, payments are more directly linked to views for those creators who have enough subscribers and traffic to qualify. TikTok claims that most creators will make significantly more from the new Program than the old Fund - as much as 20 times more.
Although some creators involved in the pilot have complained about how the payment per 1000 views set for any one creator seems a bit random.
Also, interestingly, the Creativity Program only pays out on videos that are more than one minute long, part of TikTok's slow shift towards encouraging creators to post longer content.
TikTok says that creators in the US, UK, Germany and France who previously earned money from the Fund will be able to roll over to the Creativity Program, with the Fund set to formally come to an end on 16 Dec.