TikTok's Latest Idea Is a Paywall for Premium Content Bundles

pcmag.com:

TikTok today introduced another way for creators to quickly earn some cash from their content by locking it behind a paywall.

It's called TikTok Series(Opens in a new window), and allows premium content to be bundled together in a Collection before positioning it behind a paywall. Anyone who wants to view the content bundle simply needs to pay a fee, and that fee is sure to vary because TikTok is allowing a premium Collection to contain up to 80 videos, each of which can be 20 minutes long—that's potentially 26 hours of video.

Creators can choose how much to charge for access, with TikTok stating it should be a price that "best reflects the value of their exclusive content." Buying access to the content will be possible either through direct in-video links or from a creator's profile.

According to Variety(Opens in a new window), TikTok won't be taking a cut of the earnings from Series initially, beyond platform and processing fees. A revenue split with creators may come eventually, but a TikTok representative said, "As Series is in its early phase, right now we’re focused on building the product and hearing feedback from our creators to improve the product."

Last month, TikTok introduced a way for creators to make money (if they are popular enough) through an invite-only Creativity Program Beta. It builds on the Creator Fund TikTok introduced back in 2020, and shows the social media service is focused on attracting creators by offering them a variety of ways to earn money, which is also a great incentive to keep the quality of content as high as possible. And if this all sounds very familiar, it's probably because Instagram rolled out a similar feature early last year.

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