How to make money on TikTok

What are the ways to make money on TikTok?

Here are the seven main routes. Six run through TikTok's own programs and platforms. The seventh, selling your own product or app, needs no program at all.

The first six pay you for an audience you already have. The last one pays you for a product people want, whatever your follower count.

How many followers do you need to make money on TikTok?

It depends on the route. Creator Rewards has the clearest bar: 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the last 30 days. You also need a personal account and to be 18 (19 in South Korea).

Subscriptions and Series are also built for established accounts. When TikTok expanded Subscriptions in 2024, creators needed to be 18 or older. They also needed 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the past month. Series opened in 2023 to adults with at least 10,000 followers.

LIVE and Shop affiliate open earlier. Stack Influence's 2026 guide says going LIVE generally takes about 1,000 followers and age 18. That bar varies by region. Shop affiliate has its own follower minimum, which Digistore24 says may vary by region too.

So a sensible order for a new account: sell your own product first. Add LIVE and Shop affiliate as the audience grows. Apply for Creator Rewards, Subscriptions and Series once the account passes their bars.

TikTok updates these bars. Check each program in TikTok Studio before you plan around a number.

How does the TikTok Creator Rewards Program pay?

Creator Rewards pays for original videos at least one minute long. A video earns from its qualified views: unique views from the For You feed, watched for at least 5 seconds. It starts earning once it passes 1,000 of them.

The rate per 1,000 qualified views is not fixed. TikTok weighs originality, play duration, search value and audience engagement. Duets, Stitches, Photo Mode posts, sponsored videos and unoriginal content earn nothing.

The full rules, the menu path to join and the reasons videos fail are in TikTok Creator Rewards Program, explained.

How to make money on TikTok LIVE, Subscriptions and Series

Stack Influence's 2026 guide to LIVE Gifts describes how they pay. Viewers buy Coins and send them to you as Gifts. TikTok turns Gifts into Diamonds, which you redeem for money at a rate TikTok sets.

The same guide says you must be 18 (19 in South Korea) to collect gift rewards. You also need a personal account in good standing.

Subscriptions let fans pay you a monthly fee. Since TikTok expanded them in 2024, subscribers can get videos and LIVEs only they see. Perks include badges and Sub Space, a space for creators and their subscribers.

Series is the paid route for recorded video: a collection of premium videos behind a paywall that fans buy to watch.

Can you make money on TikTok with brand deals and TikTok Shop?

Yes. Both pay you for selling someone else's product.

TikTok Shop affiliate: you promote products sold on TikTok Shop and earn a commission when people buy through your posts. Digistore24's 2026 overview shows commission rates differing by product category.

Brand deals: a brand pays you to make a video about its product. TikTok One is TikTok's own platform where creators sign up to find these paid projects. You must be 18 or older to sign up.

Either way, disclose it. For paid partnerships, TikTok asks you to switch on its branded content disclosure setting. In the US, the FTC says an endorsement must make any material connection with a brand obvious. That includes free or discounted products.

How to make money on TikTok without many followers

Sell something of your own. A product, a service, a course or an app can earn from the first customer. It does not wait for any program's follower minimum.

Post short, frequent videos that show the product solving a real problem. Give the profile a clear next step. The For You feed and search reach people who do not follow you, so a small account can still find buyers.

Those posts can keep being found after they go out, as our post on organic reach vs paid ads explains. As the account grows, the other routes open one by one. Growth is a views problem: see how to get more views on TikTok.

Making money on TikTok with more than one account

Every route above rewards the same thing: original videos, posted steadily, that find the right viewers. One account gets one set of chances a day. Several accounts, each with its own niche and its own videos, get more of them.

Each account still has to qualify on its own. Creator Rewards checks followers and views per account, and originality per video. A clipping agency runs into the same rules.

Tiktok Farm builds phone farms for this: real iPhones running the official apps, one account per phone. They post your own videos on a schedule. It buys no views, likes or followers. It promises no earnings, and TikTok can limit or remove any account. Tiktok Farm is not affiliated with TikTok.