TikTok took over the short-video social media by storm at the height of the pandemic.
It was the secret “therapy” for most Gen Z’s and millennials who opted to dance away their stress, lip-sync their favorite songs, or just binge-watch on those who offered this fun!
Today, it has become the go-to platform for Gen Z’s and millennials who want to unwind, pass time, or just keep themselves busy and happy while enjoying the fun that TikTok offers.
Even Gen X and boomers are getting hooked on Tiktok!
Thanks to its cultural diversity, a carefree approach to life, and a passionate community that prioritizes enjoying what life has to offer over senseless judgments!
As long as you have the time and internet to keep swiping up and watching, you’ll love every moment you spend on TikTok.
No wonder it’s now a common phenomenon to binge on TikToks while waiting for that flight in the lobby and waiting in line at the bank. In your commute. And so many other situations.
But did you know that you can make money on TikTok? Yes! Many TikTokers are making a living out of the platform, and some are getting rich. Like really, 8-figures US dollars rich!
You, too, can monetize your TikTok and make money. I won’t promise you riches, but I guarantee you will make a living out of the platform with the right approach and consistency.
In this step-by-step guide, I’ll share the 13 proven and tested ways that other TikTokers, like you, are using to monetize their TikTok.
All you need is your TikTok account with your followers and your effort to share your videos to keep them hooked and happy consistently!
And it doesn’t matter whether you dance, lip-sync, teach a foreign language, share quick recipes, or even share funny stories on the platform.
As long as you have a good supply of passionate TikTok videos and build a following, you should start making money on TikTok.
I’ve included free tools like Lnk.Bio to help you get up and running with the monetization right away.
But before you learn how to make money on TikTok in 2022, let’s first answer the three important TikTok money questions that you must be having at the back of your mind!
1. Can You Make Money on TikTok?
Yes, you can make money on TikTok. With just one simple monetization strategy and juicy content, you can make enough money to pay all your living expenses and comforts.
And when you get a little creative with your content and take your monetization game a notch higher, you can build real wealth and get rich with TikTok.
Over 10,000 people ask Google if “you can make money on TikTok” every month. That tells you that you’re not alone, which is a good thing!
I say a good thing, because with such a huge number of people looking to monetize their TikTok comes really resourceful people who can teach you how to do it!
As a person who is interested in helping you make money on TikTok, I understand why you would want an answer to this question.
You are either looking to see if it’s worth monetizing your TikTok content, or if it’s worth creating content for TikTok with making money as your main objective.
Truth is, so many people are living off TikTok. Some like Kat Miss Excel have quit their good “normal” jobs to focus on TikTok and the money they get has afforded them the freedom to travel and experience life!
Some like Addison Rae are getting rich with TikTok money. I mean really rich that she has bought a gorgeous $3 million LA mansion house with an infinity pool, panoramic views, and a grand entryway.
And she is not alone, other Gen Z’s like the D’Amelio sisters, Charli and Dixie, are grossing 8-figures rich on TikTok.
And there are many other TikTokers including Josh Richards earning so much money from the platform to afford beautiful houses and high-end cars among other luxuries that life accords to people with enough money to spend.
So, here comes the next question!
2. How Much Money Can You Make on TikTok in 2022?
Knowing if you can make money on TikTok is something. But learning how much money you can make on TikTok is the real thing!
That might explain why over 5,000 people have asked Google this question in the past month alone!
So, before you go ahead with implementing my proven ways to make money on TikTok, let’s break down the figures that you should be expecting out of the process.
The easiest way to make money on TikTok is through the Tiktok Creator Fund. I say easiest because with this method all you need to make money is TikTok video views!
The usual earnings out of the process are about 2 to 4 cents (USD) for every 1,000 views. Well, for the benefit of simple math let’s settle for 3 cents (USD).
If every 1,000 views earn you 3 cents, you will need about 33,333 views to earn one US dollar. And 33,333,333 views to make $1,000 US dollars with the TikTok Creator Fund.
But over 30 million views in exchange for $1,000 isn’t a good ROI strategy for me. And I’m sure, it’s not worth the effort for you! There are many ways to make $1,000 per month on TikTok with less than one million views.
TIP: When I say one million views, I don’t mean one Tiktok video with one million views. I mean the total views on all your TikTok videos for that time period.
Let me explain this further. Say you shoot and upload 50 TikTok videos in one month, and each video gets 20,000 views. That means 50 by 20,000 views which are 1 million views.
With one million views and the engagements from comments and likes, you can easily make as much as $10,000 (USD) monthly from affiliate sales, selling merch, or digital products.
I’ll show you how in the next sections!
3. How Much Do TikTokers Make & How?
Still on search trends, for the last month alone, over 12,000 have also asked Google “how much do TikTokers make”.
Well, maybe they all are just curious! But my instincts tell me those asking this question and those asking if “you can make money on TikTok” are the same guys!
So, Who Makes the Most Money on TikTok?
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, Charli D’Amelio is the current highest-paid TikToker. She has over 135 million followers and makes estimated annual earnings of $17.5 million as of 2021.
Charli started posting dance TikTok videos in June 2019. Since then she has gone viral to be the top highest-earning TikTok star for three years in a row!
But how does she make money on TikTok? I would say multiple monetization strategies including her own line of influencer merchandise.
She has forged partnerships with reputable brands like EOS cosmetics. Such brand partnerships pay influencers a lot of recurring income.
Charli has appeared in a Super Bowl commercial. And she was invited by Prada to cover Paris Fashion Week.
She joined Hype House along with he sister Dixie where they signed a joint venture deal with Hollister. Together, they have many other brand promotion deals including one with Morphe Cosmetics.
What’s more, she does high-end promotions from time to time with her latest being Dunkin Donuts which named a drink after her – “The Charli” Drink.
From the numbers above, you can see that there is a Gen Z TikToker out there earning so much more money than a CEO of a blue-chip company like DuPont.
Other Highest-Paid TikTokers include:
2. Dixie D’Amelio – Over $10m annual earnings with about 57m followers (She’s Charli’s older sister).
3. Addison Rae – Over $8.5m annual earnings with a whopping 86m followers (She also went viral by showcasing her dance moves).
4. Bella Poarch – Over $5m annual earning with a massive 87m followers (Unlike the other three, she first rose to fame by lip-syncing to Millie B’s “Soph Aspin Send).
5. Josh Richards – Over $5m annual earnings with over 26m followers (He gained popularity due to his dancing, singing, and lip-syncing videos and he is a testament that any gender can earn huge incomes from TikTok).
Other top TikTok earners include the likes of Kris Collins and Avani Gregg who both gross over $4.75 annual earnings with about 42m followers.
Keep in mind that other non-US TikTokers like Arishfa Khan and Awez Darbar are charging over $20,000 per post in their influencer partnerships.
That’s not only a lot of money, but it’s also proof that you can get rich with TikTok from just anywhere around the world!
Now that you know you can make money on TikTok. Earn a living with TikTok. And even create real wealth with TikTok it’s time to learn HOW to monetize your TikTok like a pro in 2022.
13 FREE Ways to Make Money on TikTok in 2022
By now you already know you can make money on TikTok with the TikTok Creator Fund. It’s FREE and great if you amass massive views on your videos. But it’s not the best way to monetize your content!
The other way to easily make money on TikTok is if you’re an already established brand, then you create TikTok ads, promote your products or services, and then make a profit in the process.
The problem with this is that you will need to be an already established brand with an Ad spend. So, it’s simply the paid way to make money (profit) on TikTok. Not Free!
But with me, I’ll help you learn the FREE ways to monetize your TikTok. All you need is a TikTok account with a reasonable number of followers and consistently great content.
If you don’t have that yet, click here to learn the insanely creative ways to grow your TikTok account and take it VIRAL with no followers.
But going viral with one or two videos is not enough, so, click here to learn the best way to get consistent with supplying your TikTok account with juicy content ideas that keeps your followers on the wait.
Now that we are on the same page, let’s monetize your TikTok content with the following 13 FREE proven strategies.
TIP: To help you do this hassle-free, I recommend taking advantage of the following FREE TikTok monetization tools:
1. Many.Bio – Create a Beautiful Landing Page in TikTok Bio
Many.Bio is a TikTok link in bio tool that allows you to create a micro landing page where you can display multiple links to your promotions and other social media platforms.
It works just the same as Linktree but with way more useful features in the FREE plan and much more feature sets in the Pro plan.
With Many.Bio, you should start collecting leads that you can turn into customers and clients! You can also use the same link on your Instagram and YouTube to make the most out of it!
2. ShopInBio – Set Up a Shop and Sell from Your TikTok Bio
ShopInBio allows you to set up an online store with just a few clicks. You don’t need to know how to code or make a website to use it.
The set-up process is as easy and as smooth as creating a TikTok profile. With the online store, you can sell your own merch, create and sell digital products, or even set up a dropshipping store.
It also allows you to integrate a payment processor so you can process payments and get paid out of your hustle!
1. Advertise & Sell Your Products
Advertising and selling your products is by far the easiest way to start making money on TikTok.
Well, that’s if you have the products or you know how you can quickly make or source such products.
But if you don’t have the products, don’t “cancel” this method just yet. There are creative ways to get products to sell on TikTok.
If you already have the products, I recommend setting up a quick online store with ShopInBio and adding the unique link to your TikTok bio.
Next, start creating hot TikToks that show off how passionate you’re with your products and what makes them unique.
If you have friends who are on TikTok, invite them for quick shoots with your products and let them share their experiences.
I highly recommend that you make the TikToks and the experiences as authentic as possible.
The great thing about products is that we all love something. And people always want to identify with certain people.
If you love dancing and maybe your fans identify you with a certain style, why not start selling fashion around that style.
As always, start low and take the slow but great steps to go big and high!
2. Drive Traffic to & Sell Digital Products
Selling physical merch is not the only way to sell products on TikTok. You can create and start selling digital products.
Such products as printable recipes, a paid course, and PDFs are a great way to monetize your TikTok efforts.
An excellent case study of someone who is raking in millions by selling digital products on TikTok is Kat: Chief Excel Officer.
Not many people are fond of the spreadsheet. In fact, that’s why most people out there prefer hiring a bookkeeper.
But Kat has made it really fun and easy to learn your ways around MS Excel. She shares valuable cheatsheets and easy tricks on how to get around and get the most out of Excel.
Her language is Gen Z-centric to make things more fun and easy to understand. I love her content! Through it, I now use excel for my budgeting instead of a piece of paper and a pen!
To monetize her efforts, Kat has created a number of great courses on how you can use MS Excel and Google Sheets like a pro. Her “Complete Microsoft Office Suite” course goes for $997.00 and it’s a hotcake as I write this!
You too can create a digital product and price it from as low as $1 to as high as you deem its value to be. And you don’t need knowledge of Excel to make this possible!
Do you like cooking? Why not share quick recipes on TikTok and then create printables out of it?
Do you know a foreign or indigenous language that you can teach? Why not create a great PDF cheatsheet and sell it for as low as $10?
Do you know a skill that other TikTokers might be interested in? Well, it’s time to get out that notebook and pen and start drafting a plan on how to get value out of it!
TIP: The best way to monetize your TikTok with digital products is by sharing a lot of FREE content first and fast! Build a following, and ask what they would want to learn in-depth, then create a course or eBook or PDF out of that!
Once you are ready, you can set up a store with ShopInBio. And there are also a lot of other platforms to host your products for free including Gumroad!
3. Become an A Consultant
Creating courses and printables and PDFs is the modern way of teaching many people. Guys like Russell Brunson, the ClickFunnels co-founder, call it scaling in his book, Expert Secrets.
With courses, you don’t need to be there at that moment to teach people. And I highly recommend taking that route if you really want to make a ton load of money from TikTok.
But not everything can be packaged as a course or PDF. Some services call for a one-on-one setting. That is in fact how Kat started making money on TikTok. You can read it from the CBNC link I shared.
Do you like dancing off music and sharing it on TikTok? Well, there must be people in your hood who like it. Maybe your fellow Gen Z who also wants to learn the moves and how to be carefree in front of the camera.
Why not start a dancing class. You don’t need to make things so formal. In fact, the more authentic it gets, the better. You can set up weekend dance sessions. Same case with lip-syncing classes and a new language!
4. Dropshipping but Buy & Repackage & Sell
Dropshipping has been around for many years. It’s a way of selling other people’s and brands’ products as if they are your own.
Today, some TikTokers are making a living by dropshipping on TikTok. All you need is to create an online store with a platform like ShopInBio.
But the main drawback of doing dropshipping the regular way is that sometimes you can get so many returns and the process is daunting and fatally costly!
The best strategy is to buy unbranded products from platforms like AliExpress and then brand them as if they are your own, before selling them on TikTok.
5. Affiliate Marketing with Link In Bio
Selling your own merch or digital products or drop shipping on TikTok comes with dealing with products and people.
But with affiliate marketing, you won’t deal with any products, at least directly. All you need is to add a referral link to the product and make money on TikTok.
The great thing about making money with affiliate marketing on TikTok is that you can start doing it from the word go. You don’t need to prepare any inventory or create anything.
All you need is to create a landing page with Many.Bio, add your referral links buttons and put your unique link in your TikTok bio.
Next, you can start making your TikToks and drive your followers and fans to the link in bio. The rest of the magic will happen from there!
With affiliate marketing, there are so many opportunities. Maybe you have your signature dance shoes, why not add a referral link to the store where you bought them?
Do you have a signature watch? Please add a referral link to where your followers can get it?
You teach a foreign language on TikTok and you know a book on Kindle that is quite resourceful? Please add that Amazon Kindle affiliate link and start earning from your efforts.
Do you share really great recipes on TikTok? Well, we all need those cool ingredients that you use and it’s time to start making something out of our purchases.
Simply put, affiliate marketing lets you get creative with making money on TikTok and still enjoy your life like every other TikToker!
6. Brand Partnerships & Influencer Partnerships
All the highest-paid TikTokers that I shared above make a lot of money through brand partnerships.
Brand deals will make you money and get you recognition. With recognition, you get even more followers. And fans. And status. Including outside TikTok. You start getting invited to shows and functions. That gets you even more deals that make you more money!
To earn from brand partnerships, you will need to start by amassing a good following on TikTok.
Next, you can approach the brands that align with your content and style and give them offers for sponsored promotions.
Depending on your country, the number of your TikTok followers, and the size of the brand, you should expect to earn anything from $200 to over $20,000 per sponsored video.
With influencing brand products, the ball is on you. So, it’s time to take your TikTok viral and get these brand deals!
7. Influencer Marketing for Vacation Rentals & Restaurants
Did you know you can make a living promoting vacation rentals, restaurants, and food on TikTok?
If you didn’t, now you do!
So many TikTokers are getting paid to market AirBnBs, vacation rentals, and restaurants on TikTok.
Like brand partnerships, you will need to start by building a following on TikTok. Then you will need to pack light and start approaching these vacation rentals and restaurants.
I recommend that you start small. A good idea is to approach the AirBnBs in your hood and the restaurants in your town. Then, start getting further from your area and bigger with your partnerships.
The best thing about this promotion is so many people want to travel and eat at these cool restaurants. With the right approach, you can make so much money!
8. Earn from TikTok Creator Fund
We have already addressed the TikTok creator fund where you get paid directly through TikTok. To apply for the creator fund, you need:
- To be 18 years or older.
- Have at least 10,000 followers.
- Have at least 100,000 views for the last 30 days.
Click here to read much about the TikTok creator fund. How it works. How to apply. And how the funds are calculated and where to access them!
9. TikTok Virtual Gifting
Like the Creator Fund, TikTok also has the LIVE Gifting feature. I believe they understand that not all TikTokers can monetize their efforts with merch on the platform, which is super cool!
The TikTok Live Gifts allow creators to get rewarded when hosting TikTok live streams. Users who are 18 years and older can buy TikTok coins through the app, which they will use to send gifts as they enjoy your live stream.
Later, you can redeem these gifts for real money. To go live on TikTok, you need to have at least 1,000 followers. If you have really generous fans, TikTok allows you to withdraw up to $1,000 per week.
10. Donations (Buy Me a Coffee, etc)
Another way to get rewarded for your TikToks efforts is by requesting and accepting donations. And a great platform to set up a donations page is Buy Me a Coffee.
TIP: Please don’t beg for the donations, instead, tell your fans you have a BuyMeCoffee account in your link bio where they can support your craft.
11. Become a Video Vixen
Do you enjoy dancing like it’s the last thing you would wanna do before you leave this world?
Then you already know that this is what most TikTokers live for! In fact, the highest-paid TikTokers went viral by dancing.
A great way to make money out of your talent is to start following a music group or producer or artists who you would want to take part in their video shooting.
That way, you can become a video vixen in one of their videos and make money. The move will also get you more followers and fans, hence more deals!
12. Plan and Host Paid Events
Before the pandemic, hosting paid events was the go-to money-making machine for Instagram influencers.
All they needed to do was forge partnerships with other influencers and brands. Then plan an event and bring their friends, followers, and fans.
You too can get creative and make money on TikTok by hosting paid events, especially if you partner with other TikTokers.
13. Growing Accounts and Selling Them
The idea of how to make money on TikTok is to grow TikTok accounts and sell them. Technically, TikTok terms are against selling and buying TikTok accounts!
But that is as per TikTok terms! In reality, if you don’t mind operating in the “gray,” you only need to create a new TikTok account.
Next, go viral and list the “account for sale contact.” You will be surprised by the many people and brands willing and ready to pay for it!
That said, you now have the proven ways on how to make money on TikTok in 2022. I challenge you to get consistent and passionate with your TikTok content!
With consistent craft comes more followers. And with more followers comes more opportunities to make money and attract the right brands!
Featured Image Source: Photo by May Gauthier on Unsplash