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Real-time broadcasts of daily activities are becoming the most profitable source of income for the social network
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Followers send badges that they previously bought in the application and that flow, although only partially, into the bank and PayPal accounts of the tiktokers
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“What is sold in the LIVES is entertainment and people are the ones who decide how much money they want to send you,” says Eli Pérez, who has turned this trend into his work
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Users of the social network feel “more accompanied” when seeing people they admire in their daily routine, says expert Paloma Fernández
Noel Horcajada started his TikTok channel a year ago. To attend to the requests of his followers, he initiates the usual ceremony for him. Turn on the front camera of his mobile so that his followers can see live what you are doinggreets his audience, between 300 and 4,000 people, with a “what’s up, machinery?”, grabs the taco, hamburger or kebab that is in front of him on the plate and, without taking his intense gaze from the screen, he puts the food in his mouth, after displaying the piercing of his tongue.
@comeconnoel Ig: noelhr_9✨
♬ original sound – Noel Horcajada
“I was not having a good personal stage and the truth is that [grabar estos directos] made me feel accompanied. It helped me a lot”, confesses this young man, who is followed by more than 90,000 people on the platform. Noel Horcajada, from Come con Noel, has managed to earn extra of monthly income eating food on this social network live, although he still does not live from his work on the internet.
Eli Pérez, a Venezuelan living in Colombia, has succeeded. She also records herself doing everyday things: sleeping, training at home or cooking. Two years ago, before dedicating herself to the networks, she was an employee of a hamburger restaurant. She earned US$200 a month. Now, in “a good month,” you earn up to $15,000. “There are people who earn that in a week” with this dynamic, he confesses.
She was one of the youngsters who moved from musical.ly to this app when they merged in 2018. TikTok LIVES became more and more popular over the years, and this January, she joined the trend. It was no longer a few dozen people who connected her mobile so that her followers could see them in real time, but thousands, which forced her to “try harder because there is a lot of competition.” “That’s when I make the decision to do different LIVES, like sleeping,” she recalls.
He believes that “it is a way of show them a little more of your intimacy to the followers,” says this sleepfluencer, which is how those who are filmed sleeping have been called. Everyday life has always interested the general public. Since the first Big Brother to the last reality Produced by Netflix, viewers imitate the interest already expressed in 1998 by Peter Weir in a dystopia that decades later has been composing the real consumption tastes of our society. The Truman Show is now played on TikTokand covid-19 is also responsible for this.
“After the pandemic, as we have been so alone and we have needed union with other people, the guideline of the direct ones has been recreated above all by the youngest, who have learned in this way to connect with others, in this case, with tiktokers they admire. This way they feel more accompanied“, explains Paloma Fernández, a specialist in social networks who trains users of the social network with thousands of followers so that their accounts grow.
Live streams of daily routines help the creator and followers build a better community. Thus, there is not such a big gap between them.”
Lucas Centeno, tiktoker who records LIVES studying
The LIVES, which can only be started by those with more than a thousand followers, help position a person’s profile at the top of the app, because the platform notifies users and they come to see what the content creator is doing. “A sleeping person creates loads of hype (of expectations or fury) in order to see what that person you follow is doing,” says this expert in short videos.
In the previously recorded and edited videos that content creators upload to their TikTok profiles, “there is no interaction with people at all,” he says. Lucas Ryea medical university student who has gathered in his direct studying to more than 3,000 people. Instead, he says, in live shows he can talk or do activities with his viewers, and that “helps both the creator and the followers to create a better community and that there is not such a big separation between them.”
@lucas.pkr But there’s only one real???????? #teamlucass #fypシ #studydirects ♬ original sound – Mmm
In this type of broadcast, communication is constant: those who make them continually answer the questions of their followers and these, if they are satisfied with what they see, send them to the influencers insignia that they previously buy in the application and that flow, although only in part, into the bank and PayPal accounts of the tiktokers.
As EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA already reflected in an article about TikTok dances and as confirmed by the influencers consulted, the recorded content practically does not represent an economic return. “I have videos with more than 24 million views and the highest I’ve been paid for one of them is 47 euros,” confesses Eli Pérez. The same does not happen with the direct ones, which are becoming the most profitable source of income of this social network.
Users can purchase packs of between 36 coins and 17,500 at prices ranging from 50 cents to 307.79 euros. These currencies are exchanged for gifts in the live shows of their favorite tiktokers. Many of them spend their coins on the battles of direct: two influencers face each other in a ring virtual to show who is the most ‘liked’ and receives the most badges.
Once the battle is over, the ‘fighters’ will receive a series of diamonds in their TikTok wallet that they can exchange for US dollars. That compensation will vary, according to the social network, of several factors, including the quality of the content or the number of followers of the winner. The application places the winners in the weekly top of direct and rewards them with visibility. The platform keeps a significant portion of the profits, although the percentage it absorbs is not public.
“The users who usually help me are always the same and new people are also arriving who like what you do and stay. What is sold in the LIVES is entertainment and people are the ones who decide how much [dinero quieren] send you,” says Eli Pérez, who has won several such battles.
TikTok has changed the life of this Venezuelan. With these retransmissions, in a few months, he went from having 30,000 people who saw the contents of his profile to reaching 2.5 million followers. “Realizing that I could make money doing LIVES, I took it on as a job,” she says. was connecting between two and ten hours every day.
This influencer has managed to “meet goals that seem impossible with a minimum salary,” she says. She has entered into direct karaoke sessions of hers and now, thanks to her fans, she has put out her own music. A month ago, she launched, together with Alexa Plus, GUARACHO and Adrexx, her song Cupid.
Monetization
There are four main ways to earn money through TikTok: edited videos, direct videos, collaborations with brands, and promotion of your own products through the social network. To monetize edited content, users must be part of the Creators Fund of the platform, a select group that can only be accessed by those with more than 10,000 followers.
When a tiktoker enters this select group, the growth of their profile slows down. “Perhaps they were seeing a large growth in daily followers and, when you get into the Creators Fund, it stops,” says Paloma Fernández. She invites her students to experiment with other ways of monetizing: “We are going to make valuable content so that people who love me can reach sponsorwe sell products from our businesses or do direct”.
Brands enter TikTok to take their cut too. The Mexican Iker Mendoza is behind the account of his shoe cleaning business, Sneaker Repair Saltillo. He did not enter the social network to promote his services, but the pandemic led him to share his work with his followers. He recorded live polishing shoes and then came the “boom“, as he himself calls it.
@sneaker_repairsaltillo The live is at 10 pm. Do not miss! #fyp #viral #saltillocoahuila #saltillo #cleaning #calzado #tenis #adidas #yeezy ♬ Don’t Go Yet – Camila Cabello
His following grew to nearly 140,000 today, and he was contacted by manufacturers and sellers of sneakers, accessories, and cleaning products to promote their wares. He started at age 15 and is now 18. On Saturday, September 24, he opens his first physical sneaker cleaning branch in the town of Saltillo, in the state of Coahuila.
Cross-platform direct
Many content creators share the same streams on TikTok and the Twitch streaming platform. Others, like Lucas Centeno, have created a studio channel on Discord to which more than 5,000 people from different educational courses have joined.
In this way, they add the visibility that both applications send them and create two complementary communities. One of the keys to this strategy, says Paloma Fernández, is based on diversification: “It is to not have all the eggs in the same basket, because the same thing can happen to TikTok as to Facebook: before it was number one and people ended up moving to other social networks.
In this way, influencers “give more people the opportunity to be discovered” with content that they do not have to modify and that “it costs them nothing” to share on other social networks. “If TikTok doesn’t work in a few years and closes, they already have followers in the others. It’s a way to make sure you don’t lose that community you’ve worked so hard to create“, he argues.
However, some of these young people do not yearn for their fame on the internet to last forever. Surely, will die with the fall of this social network. Or even sooner if they lose interest in live shows or are too busy off-screen. Eli will be able to have a musical career. Lucas will have become Mexico. Iker will continue with his shoe cleaning business.
Tiktok for Noel Horcajada, for example, is a “Hobbie“. You have already studied Marketing and Advertising and will continue to post content on this platform “until I stop having fun”. When that happens, Come with Noel will come to an end.
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