TikTok introduces $6 million fund to pay the creators of its most popular effects

TikTok’s latest revenue stream is all about video effects. The short-form app has introduced Effect Creator Rewards: A $6 million fund that provides payouts to users who develop popular augmented reality (AR) setups.

The seven-figure sum will be doled out among the denizens of Effect House, TikTok’s hub for AR creation. Recipients will be paid $700 if one of their effects is used in 500,000 unique videos within 90 days of its initial publish date. Creators can claim an additional $140 payout if their effect is used in 100,000 more videos after reaching 500K. Every 100K benchmark after that will result in another $140 payment. 90 days after an effect is published, it is no longer eligible for Creator Rewards.

TikTok has been making a concerted effort to court AR innovators since 2021, when the hub then known as Effect Studio entered its beta-testing phase. A year later, TikTok gave Effect House a wider rollout under its current name. About a year after that, Effect House added tools that cater specifically to brands.

“When we launched the Effect House beta – complete with development tools, guides, and learning resources — our goal was to equip designers, developers, and creators with all they needed to build dynamic Community Effects for TikTok’s global community,” reads a TikTok blog post. “Our investment in Effect Creator Rewards furthers that commitment, expanding opportunities for effect creators and helping support and reward their passion and creativity.”

TikTok also wants its community to get with the Program.

The TikTok Creativity Program, that is.

Earlier this year, the ByteDance-owned app introduced its Creativity Program in order to provide creators with a revenue stream that could be more reliable than its flawed Creator Fund. Rather than distributing a static sum among an ever-growing number of recipients (as the Creator Fund did), the Creativity Program prioritizes watch time to offer “higher revenue potential.”

Initially, the Creativity Program was made available on an invite-only basis, but “all eligible creators” call now take advantage of the new monetization stream. Creator Rewards and the Creativity Program are both limited to recipients in specific countries. Creators in “select regions” can make money from their Effects, while users in the United States, France, and Brazil can currently join the Creativity Program.

That’s not the only prerequisite for TikTok’s Creator Fund successor. To qualify, videomakers must also have at least 10,000 followers and more than 100,000 views over the past 30 days. TikTok’s introductory blog post notes that the Creativity Program is intended to support “high-quality, original content that is longer than one minute.”

Thanks to these announcements, it’s a good day to be a TikTok creator — especially if you’re creative enough to design your own AR experiences. To get more details about Effect Creator Rewards, head over to the Effect House website.