How To Make Money on TikTok in 2026: 9 Strategies

TikTok launched the Creator Rewards Program in 2024 to replace the TikTok Creator Fund and financially compensate eligible creators for their high-quality, original videos. But TikTok’s built-in program is just one avenue for creators to make money on the platform. 

Brand partnerships are another option. According to a 2026 report from influencer marketing platform Collabstr, businesses pay TikTok creators an average of $186 per project. And some of the biggest TikTok stars are going beyond brand deals to actually launch their own businesses, like Alix Earle did with Reale Actives.

In this article, you’ll learn how to make money on TikTok, with tips for getting started from popular creators. 

9 ways to make money on TikTok

1. Collect tips
2. Join the Creator Rewards Program
3. Earn commission through the TikTok Shop affiliate program
4. Accept live rewards
5. Offer subscriptions
6. Promote your business on TikTok shop
7. Sell products during livestreams
8. Partner with brands on TikTok One
9. Create effects

There are several ways to make money on the social media platform, both through TikTok’s programs and outside opportunities. 

1. Collect tips

You can collect tips on TikTok similarly to how you would with a real-life tip jar. Viewers who like your videos can thank you with a donation as small or big as they decide. 

TikTok has a built-in Tips feature that lets you collect money through the payment processor Stripe. To qualify, you need to be at least 18 years old and have 100,000 followers, an account in good standing, and a Stripe account. 

You’ll be able to apply once you meet the requirements. TikTok does not take a cut of your tips, but there are associated processing fees. 

If you don’t meet the requirements, you can collect tips by sharing payment info (like a Venmo username) in a video caption. And if you have 1,000 or more followers, you can add a clickable link to your TikTok bio, which lets viewers access your accounts more easily. These methods let you explore different tipping platforms, like Buy Me a Coffee and Ko-fi.

2. Join the Creator Rewards Program

TikTok pays users who join their Creator Rewards Program for posting original videos that are more than a minute long. To qualify, you must be at least 18 years old, have a personal account in good standing, have 10,000 or more followers, and have received at least 100,000 video views in the past 30 days.

The program is only open to creators who live in the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, France, Mexico, South Korea, and Brazil. 

There is no standard amount you can make through the rewards program. Creators report making anywhere from pennies to thousands of dollars per month. 

Your standard reward (which TikTok calculates based on qualified views) and additional reward (which is influenced by retention rate, search value, watch time, and completion rate) determine your revenue per mille (RPM), or revenue per 1,000 qualified views. 

TikTok notifies you when you’re eligible for the program, but you can also check your status by choosing TikTok Studio on your profile page. In the monetization section, select Creator Rewards Program to apply or learn whether you qualify. 

3. Earn commission through the TikTok Shop affiliate program

With affiliate marketing programs, you promote products on blogs, social media accounts, and other digital platforms using a unique tracking link. If you sell a product, you receive a commission. TikTok Shop’s affiliate program works similarly, except everything is contained within TikTok.

To become eligible, you need at least 1,000 followers. Then you can apply for a TikTok Shop. 

Once approved, you can add products to your TikTok Showcase, a curated storefront of up to 2,000 items. Choose products from TikTok’s Product Marketplace, add items you’ve previously purchased through the shopping cart, or receive a seller invitation from a brand. Request samples from businesses so you can authentically speak about the products you’re selling. 

Promote products in videos, during livestreams, and on your profile page. The platform automatically displays text that explains that a creator earns a commission. 

For example, creator @rachelle.xox’s profile page features the Showcase icon. If you click into her Showcase, you’ll see the disclosure.

Rachelle also promotes products by using TikTok Live. In one livestream, she talked about Daily Ritmo’s journal and walked viewers through its features. As she discusses a product, a clickable link is visible on the right-hand corner to encourage viewers to purchase. 

TikTok suggests a recommended commission rate for each product. However, businesses ultimately decide commission rates. 

If you don’t meet the requirements to apply for the built-in TikTok Shop affiliate program, you can still use TikTok for affiliate marketing, you just won’t be able to create a Showcase. You can reach out to your favorite brands directly to see if they have affiliate programs, or join an affiliate network, then promote your affiliate products by sharing a code in video captions or using a link-in-bio tool.

4. Accept live rewards

Users who have 1,000 followers and are at least 18 years old are able to stream on TikTok Live and accept rewards in real time. 

There are several active communities who use TikTok Live, so you can connect with viewers where they already spend their time. In the second quarter of 2025, users worldwide watched more than five billion hours of content in the Chats and Fashion categories, according to Statista. 

There are two in-platform monetization options specific to TikTok Live: 

Live gifts

Creators make money on Live by accepting Live gifts. Viewers buy coins (each is the equivalent of about 1¢), which they can then use to purchase virtual gifts, such as a rose icon for one coin and a private jet icon for 4,888 coins. 

These gifts show up as diamonds on your account, which you can then exchange for money. TikTok takes a percentage of the gifts. 

A study by FXC Intelligence, an information technology company that tracks cross-border payments, estimated that in 2023, TikTok took a 77% cut of gifts sent to European creators. According to TikTok’s internal 2025 data, more than 60,000 creators in the US received rewards worth more than the median part-time monthly income (about $1,500). 

To accept gifts when you’re live, tap settings from the Live screen and toggle the Live Gifts setting on. 

Scaled Live rewards

Scaled Live rewards is a performance-based program that determines a creator’s reward based on their popularity (calculated by the number of diamonds they earn) and rewards percentage. 

The rewards percentage can be as high as 53% depending on whether the creator completes weekly missions and missions for each livestream. Missions include length of livestream, new unique followers, and content engagement. 

5. Offer subscriptions

Subscriptions give an opportunity to turn your viewers into long-term supporters. TikTok has a built-in Subscription feature, where fans pay a monthly fee for perks like badges, subscriber-only livestreams, and exclusive access to videos.

Scott Davis, a psychic medium who runs paranormal series Phantom Forensics with Dalen Spatt, offers subscriptions on his TikTok account, @scottythemedium. There are three tiers (Scottys Fans, Supporters, and Platinum Supporters), and they all offer stickers, subscriber-only videos, and a subscriber-only space. 

To use TikTok’s subscription feature you must be at least 18, and have 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the past calendar month. TikTok evaluates creators’ eligibility each month. 

To get started, go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu icon on the right side. Select TikTok Studio. Under the Monetization section, choose Subscription. There, you’ll be able to check your eligibility or join the program.

When you join, you’re able to set your prices between $2.99 and $99.99 a month. 

If you don’t meet the requirements, you can try promoting a subscription on external platforms, such as Patreon or Substack, to your TikTok followers.

6. Promote your business on TikTok shop

If you want more control over how you make money on TikTok, consider starting a business and selling your products on TikTok Shop. In 2025, TikTok Shop accounted for 18.4% of total social commerce in the US, and it’s projected to reach 24.1% by 2027. 

TikTok’s largest overall demographic is between 25 and 34 years old, but a 2025 YouGov survey found that TikTok Shop’s biggest audience is between 35 and 54. 

To start selling your products on TikTok Shop, create your website. The Shopify starter plan, which is $5 a month, lets you share products on social media platforms. Use the TikTok for Shopify app to manage orders and inventory from the TikTok shop on your Shopify admin.

To connect your TikTok Shop and Shopify store, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Shopify admin and click on Settings and then Sales Channels.

2. Click on Shopify App Store, search for TikTok, and add the channel.

3. On the Set Up TikTok Shop page, click Connect on the TikTok Shop section and log in.

4. You’ll be prompted to Connect to Shopify, where you can review TikTok Shop Merchant Terms of Service. Click Connect.

5. Go to the Shop Information section and click Verify.

6. In the Upload Documents dialog box, fill out the required fields. Click Next and Finish Setup.

If you want to launch a business quickly without having to deal with sourcing or producing items, try print on demand or dropshipping:

Print on demand

Print on demand doesn’t require purchasing inventory upfront. Instead, you design your products, and the supplier only produces an item once a customer places an order. 

If you create a website on Shopify, you can integrate with different print-on-demand companies and manage and design from your admin. 

When your store is up and running, use the TikTok for Shopify integration to connect your website to your TikTok shop. 

Dropshipping 

Dropshipping lets you sell products without holding inventory. You’ll source items from a dropshipping supplier, who then ships orders as your customers place them on your site.

If you have a Shopify store, you have a few options, such as finding a dropshipping supplier on the Shopify App Store. There’s also Shopify Collective, which connects you to businesses who use Shopify and will ship products to your customers when you make a sale. Here’s how to get started with Shopify Collective:

1. Go to the Shopify Collective page and click Get Started at the top. It’ll ask you whether you want to join as a retailer or supplier. Click Get Retailer App.

2. Log into your account and choose what website you want to install Shopify Collective.

3. Shopify Collective will appear under your apps, and you can begin to search for the products and suppliers you want to add to your website. 

7. Sell products during livestreams

Livestreams drive sales. In a 2026 survey of 1,000 consumers, Adobe found that 37% of respondents purchased a product during or after watching a live shopping stream. And TikTok drove the most impulse purchases during livestreams.

For Dasha Derkach, TikTok has changed the way her business, Enchanted Scrunch, makes money. She saw an increase in sales after switching her marketing efforts from Instagram to TikTok. 

“It has significantly boosted our sales,” Dasha says. “Before TikTok, we got around two orders a week. Then, once we started, around 100 a week. Now we also do TikTok Lives nearly every day and get almost 500 orders a week.”

To livestream, you’ll need 1,000 followers. If you use TikTok Shop or TikTok Showcase, you can link your products directly to your livestreams. 

8. Partner with brands on TikTok One

According to Influencer Marketing Hub’s Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2026, 31% of businesses will turn to TikTok to team up with influencers in 2026. That’s more than twice as much as Instagram, which came in second place, with 15%. 

TikTok One connects creators with businesses so they can collaborate on ads. To join TikTok One, you must be at least 18 years old, have an account in good standing, have at least 10,000 followers, and have 1,000 post views and three new posts within the past 30 days. 

Creators can set expected rates, brand preferences, and upload a portfolio to help brands find them. 

They can also search for opportunities, like Branded Missions, to work with businesses. With Branded Missions, companies put out a call for user-generated content. As creators post their videos, brands boost videos that are organically performing. When the campaign ends, creators get paid for their participation and paid video views. Businesses outline payment terms in the Branded Mission brief. 

Here’s how to find Branded Missions:

• On the TikTok Creator Marketplace Discover page
• In your inbox
• A shared link to the Branded Mission

Creators who create ads on behalf of brands will have to disclose the partnership. For example, in one video, creator Kat Clark unboxes and sets up a couch that Belffin sent her. At the bottom of the screen, the words “Paid partnership” are visible. 

9. Create effects

Effects are filters or interactive features you can add to your videos. For example, the “I’m Single Because” effect prompts a user to start recording a video and then reveals three reasons why they are single.

The Effect House program lets you earn money for creating these effects. To qualify, you need to be at least 18 years old, live in an eligible country, and become a gold, platinum, or diamond badge creator. To earn these badges you need the following:

• Gold: This badge requires you to publish five effects and have at least three effects used in 1,000 videos. 
• Platinum: To earn platinum status, you need to publish 10 effects and have at least three effects used in 100,000 videos. 
• Diamond: For the diamond badge, you need to publish 20 effects and have at least three effects used in 1,000,000 videos. 

There are a few different ways to earn money through the Effect House program:

Effects Creator Rewards

To join the Creator Rewards program, you need to be a gold badge creator. Creators are paid based on how many public videos use their effect within the first 30 days after it’s published. The maximum payout per effect is $14,000, and the maximum a single creator can collect per month is $50,000. 

Challenges

Challenges are competitions hosted by Effect House. There’s a theme for each challenge, such as a holiday. The goal is to create an effect that is high-quality, original, creative, and relevant to the theme. Creators participating in challenges can earn cash, swag, and exclusive badges. 

Branded effects

According to TikTok, brands are increasingly interested in creating effects for their marketing campaigns. With that comes the chance to create branded effects for companies, who can purchase them through TikTok for Business. 

TikTok tips to inspire you

• Get comfortable with being “cringe”
• Bring your whole self
• Be intentional

Here are a few tips from experts to help you make the most out of TikTok. 

Get comfortable with being “cringe”

You don’t have to figure out your niche from the beginning. Tori Dunlap, who helps people increase their financial literacy through Her First $100K, explains that it will likely take you some time. She didn’t realize what her niche was until she was three years into posting content.

This meant she posted content that felt cringe, but it was all a part of her journey to finding what worked for her. “It’s not pretty, but it had to be done in order for me to understand what was going on,” she says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “If fear of being cringe, fear that you don’t have all the answers right now is holding you back from starting, [it’s OK]. You’re going to figure it out as you go.” 

Bring your whole self

Being your authentic self can lead you to other like-minded people. Charlotte Palermino, cofounder of skin care brand Dieux and a TikTok creator with nearly 500,000 followers, uses the platform to talk about topics that actually interest her, like sunscreen, tariffs, and AI.

“If you feel like you could just talk about something for 10 minutes, then make a video on it and try to cut it down to two,” Charlotte says on Shopify Masters.

Dieux was an early adopter of TikTok Shop, and the brand received 15 million views of Shoppable videos, some of which feature Charlotte speaking about Dieux products.

Be intentional

You don’t have to post every single day to engage your audience. A 2026 Dash Social report found that posting less than six times a week resulted in higher For You Page engagement than those that posted more frequently. On TikTok, engagement was 63% higher for less-frequent posters.