Why TikTok stars are criticizing its creator fund

Being part of TikTok’s creator fund is apparently a lot less lucrative than it may seem, even for some of the app’s biggest stars. Over the last few days, some high-profile TikTokkers have taken the unusual step of publicizing how much — or in this case, how little — they are making from the fund.

TikTok is still relatively early in its monetization features for creators. Instead of a revenue sharing arrangement like YouTube’s Partner Program, TikTok pays its top stars out of a creator fund. Launched in 2020, the fund started out with $200 million, and TikTok said last year it was increasing the fund to $1 billion over the next three years in the U.S. But the company hasn’t provided details on how much it has distributed or how much participants can expect to earn.

But according to one prominent streamer, most creators are earning very little. Last week, Hank Green, who has more than 6 million followers on TikTok, shared a YouTube video titled “So… TikTok sucks.” In the 24-minute video, he details his experience in TikTok’s creator fund, and estimates that he currently makes about 2.5 cents per 1,000 views on the platform — a fraction …read more