What Social Media Platforms Pay the Most to Content Creators?
Jourdan Aldredge
May 9, 2024
For those old enough to remember a time before YouTube and social media, it’s absurd how much these different social platforms have changed our everyday lives. Not only are our content-consuming habits vastly different from those of the early internet (or pre-internet) days, but the ways artists and creators can do what they do best are drastically different.
Suppose you’re looking to get your start in content creation today or simply looking to monetize your current content ventures and channels better. In that case, you have some critical questions about where you want to focus on sharing your content.
Let’s look at the biggest social media platforms today and explore how much they each pay their content creators to advise you best on where you might want to build your audiences and create your content.
When starting your brand and launching your channels across different social media platforms, there are more ways to monetize your content than you might think. This article will cover some of the most basic ways these platforms provide earnings for your content.
However, outside of direct payouts from YouTube and other platforms, you can also consistently earn quite a bit more by finding your sponsors or selling a product or service on your own.
And truthfully, these other monetization approaches can be potentially much more lucrative than just social app payouts. But they require you to wear more hats than just a “content creator” one. You’ll have to level up your ad sales, partnership development, and content marketing expertise to excel in these areas.
That being said, if you are launching a brand and perhaps several different channels, it’s helpful to understand the current landscape and what social media platform pays the most for content creation—at the very least, so you can start deciding how much you want to focus on some more than others.
While many of these platforms don’t directly share their payouts for different types of content creators, and sometimes the ad payouts can be pretty tricky to understand, here are some of the best data available on what these leading social platforms pay content creators for their videos.
According to YouTube’s channel monetization policies and guidelines, the average YouTuber can expect to earn around $0.018 per view, equating to around $18 for every 1,000 ad views on their videos. Many outside sources have also compiled and reviewed these numbers, confirming the same.
TikTok is quickly becoming the world's second most important and popular social video-sharing platform. Despite its potential legal issues in the future, it’s still one of the best apps for content creators to launch a brand and career.
As far as earnings go, the TikTok Creator Fund, which offers ways for content creators to monetize their content directly with TikTok, reportedly pays between 2 and 4 cents per 1,000 views.
If you’re looking to launch a brand in particular, Instagram might be the best option for those looking to build an audience and sell a product or service to them directly. However, for content creators looking to monetize their content directly, Instagram might not be your best bet unless you funnel your audience to a more lucrative platform like YouTube.
That’s because Instagram doesn’t pay creators directly for views. Instead, your best bet with Instagram would be to offer monetization through sponsored posts, affiliate marketing, or the new IGTV ads.
Like Instagram, Facebook—which also owns and operates Instagram—has a similar story. Facebook, aka Meta, offers some payout for content creators by allowing them to include ads in their videos or articles or more directly from collaborations with brands or their live videos.
Still, based on various reports, the payouts for ads on Facebook Reels, for example, only range from around $0.01 to $0.02 per 1,000 views, with even those numbers subject to fluctuation at times.
X, aka Twitter, is similar to other social media platforms in that it does not pay per-view, per se. Still, it offers two video monetization programs, Amplify Pre-Roll, and Amplify Sponsorships. These programs provide an opt-in advertising program to serve pre-roll against your premium video content shared on Twitter.
X, aka Twitter, also offers a Super Follows program that allows creators to earn monthly revenue by providing an extra level of content and interaction as a monthly subscription. You can set the price—$2.99 and $9.99 USD—and the type of bonus content and interactions.
Finally, perhaps the most lucrative content creation platform right now isn’t meant for recording and uploading videos but rather live streaming content directly to your viewers in real-time. Twitch has notably launched some now-famous content creators into very lucrative careers in video game streaming and other forms of live content.
With Twitch, users can monetize in one of four ways: giving streamers the option to add monthly subscriptions to their channel (which is collected in a 50/50 split between the streamer and Twitch), adding Twitch bits donations, running ads directly on their streams, or selling games or in-game items for video game streams.
All are quite lucrative options worth exploring, and if net streamers can find and build an audience on the platform, they can earn high payouts.
Ultimately, your monetization efforts will only be as reasonable as your content creation capabilities. The real trick isn’t to focus on monetization but rather on building a channel and growing an audience for your specific type of content within your focused niche.
Here are some additional tips to keep in mind for launching and monetizing your social channels:
Suppose you grow organically as much as possible, especially early when launching your channels. In that case, you can tackle monetizing your content much more strategically and better align with what your audience will feel comfortable with.
So, to start, focus on creating content that feels fun and meaningful to you. When you get to a point where it makes sense to use royalty free music for your content, that’s great. However, feel free to experiment with content style and presentation as you slowly explore how to monetize your content and which social platforms are right for you.
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