Creating content on social media is increasingly becoming a mainstream occupation. It can be fulfilling too, creating content on the topics or issues you like, and getting paid for it. But is it that easy?
“Most YouTubers are secretly broke,” popular YouTuber Nuseir Yassin, commonly known as Nas Daily, recently wrote on Twitter. Although Nas Daily generated 606 million views across platforms, he earned $33,000 in social media ad revenue (excluding Snapchat). He also gave a break-up of this revenue generated across platforms, which included $100 for 10 million views, and $0 from Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook Reels. “Social media platforms are designed for 2010,” the creator went on to say, adding that “they are designed for users, not creators. User data, revenue, and direct access are all banned from the creator. However…without creators, there is no content.”
Yassin’s comments flag a consistent issue faced by several content creators, which is not getting enough compensation for their work. Social media platforms, in return, earn through advertising, users’ data, etc, while creators get a smaller part from the content created by them.
Hence, for those looking at social media as a lucrative avenue to earn revenue, it is crucial to study how one actually earns, which differs across social media platforms.
Earn directly
YouTube is probably the most easy platform for creators to earn from. The revenue-sharing arrangement is straightforward. For this, one needs to enter the YouTube Partner Program, for which a creator must have at least 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 public watch hours in the past 12 months, and 10 million public views on YouTube Shots in the past 90 days.
However, the way to earn is not that uncomplicated on Instagram. One of the foremost ways is by collaborating with brands. Another way is through badges. “When you go live with badges, viewers can buy badges to support you and get extra recognition, while you earn money from content that you’re already creating,” Instagram explains on its website. One can also sell merchandise for earning. Among the newest additions is the subscription feature. “With Instagram subscriptions, subscribers pay a monthly fee to see exclusive content highlighted with a unique purple ring,” it says.
On Facebook, a creator can earn through in-stream ads, which “help you earn money by including short ads before, during or after your videos. We automatically identify natural breaks in your content to place your ads, or you can choose your own placements. Your earnings are determined by things such as number of video views and who the advertisers are,” Meta says. However, there is a set of eligibility criteria one needs to meet.
Coming to micro-blogs, Twitter boss Elon Musk announced on February 3 that “Starting today, Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads.”
Other platforms like Snapchat, and TikTok and the Indian homegrown ones like Chingari and MX Takatak also have different arrangements through which creators can earn.
The aforementioned ways clearly show there is no one way to earn through social media and that it differs across platforms.
One of the common ways through which creators earn is through brand collaborations. Although one might think one needs to have lots of followers to earn through brands, it is not completely the case.
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Creators are loosely divided into categories based on the number of followers: mega influencers (>1 million), macro-influencers (500,000-1 million), mid-tier (50,000-500,000), micro-influencers (10,000-50,000), and nano influencers (1,000-10,000).
Hence, it might be dependent on the number of followers to only some extent but ultimately depends on the type of engagement the brand is looking for.
At times, nano influencers have a deep connection with their followers, which can make brands pick them for advertising. Here quality matters a lot, which should be such that companies are willing to collaborate.
Affiliate marketing is another way, which requires a creator to promote a brand, its product, or a service.
They then earn a commission based on the sale the company makes. Coming back to the ways to directly earn from platforms, Nas says, from being user-centric, “we need social media to be rebuilt from the grounds up to be more creator centric”. Users were divided on this.