TikTok’s billion-dollar Creator Fund is ending next month for U.S. users

TikTok has announced that it will be shuttering its Creator Fund for TikTok users in the United States in just over a month, on Saturday, December 16, 2023. The fund will also be closed for users in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, but it will still be available for creators in Italy and Spain.

TikTok launched the Creator Fund in July 2020 during the height of pandemic lockdowns when social media usage was skyrocketing and interest in TikTok was at a then-all-time high. The original fund saw TikTok set aside $200 million across three years to pay out to participating creators. TikTok later increased the amount to $1 billion and then $2 billion.

But while the Creator Fund’s billion-dollar figure garnered headlines, some TikTok creators voiced frustrations, saying they received just pennies for every 1,000 video views, making it hard to earn a living by just being a TikTok creator alone. As Engadget noted, Hank Green, one of the most popular social media creators, revealed that he was only earning 2.5 cents per 1,000 TikTok views under the Creator Fund.

In response to the ongoing dissatisfaction with its Creator Fund, TikTok launched its new Creativity Program earlier this year. TikTok says that its Creativity Program will give creators the potential to earn up to 20 times more than they did via the Creator Fund. In order to be eligible for the Creativity Program a TikTok creator needs to have at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the past 30 days. To qualify for payouts, videos also need to be longer than a minute in length.

“We developed the Creativity Program based on the learnings and feedback from the Creator Fund, and we’ll continue listening and learning from our community as we explore new features and enhance existing ones to further enrich the TikTok experience,” a TikTok spokesperson said while noting that all creators currently part of the Creative Fund can upgrade to the newer Creativity Program.