How to Approach TikTok Monetization: Insights, Useful Tips + Sort of a Case Study
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With over 1 billion monthly active users and its short-form content that’s perfectly aligned with today’s fast-paced lifestyle, TikTok is constantly rising on the leather of most popular social media platforms.
Its ability to lure new audiences, convert them into users, and keep them captivated opens a lot of revenue opportunities for you as a publisher to grasp. One of the ways to make a profit is to learn how to monetize TikTok traffic.
So, let’s get into it right away.
We assume you do have a social media strategy in place. Or at least a social media presence. If that’s not the case – run Forest, run!
Wait not a second more staying on the outside of the world’s biggest playground.
Regarding the reasons why you should consider adding TikTok to the equation, these are the two most important ones:
#1 Ranking and potential
We mentioned this, but why not repeat it. TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world. The TikTok app has been downloaded 4.7 billion times (it’s actually #1 downloaded app in more than 40 countries), and at this point, TikTok ranks as number five on the list of most popular social networks.
Just look around you – how many of your friends or acquaintances holding a phone right now do you think are scrolling through their TikTok feed? Probably, most of them.
#2 Audience boost
It’s very likely that your efforts towards creating original and creative content for TikTok will be generously rewarded. It’s what this platform cares about.
TikTok can easily recognize potentially engaging and original posts and present them to users who will be most likely interested. Therefore, your videos can lead you to hundreds of new followers in no time and go viral just like that.
Bear in mind: The mechanisms on which TikTok determines what videos to promote are a bit complex to explain right now (or the post will take forever to read!), but one thing is for sure - in order to get a chance to go viral, you must be consistent with posting. This is how TikTok is used to boost website traffic:
→ with the creative content generation, you increase your popularity on TikTok → more people are about to discover your brand → it will be easier to bring them to your website
TikTok algorithms are super smart. They can detect thousands of signals coming from users in order to establish the type of content they want to see. Which gives you a chance to expand the base of your subscribers quite easily.
Additional mind-blowing statistics
- Around 40% of US citizens use TikTok as a search engine; even more, one in 10 Gen Zers relies on it more than Google
- 29% of TikTok users use the app on a daily level; this makes TikTok the second most engaging network, right after Instagram
- TikTok is the fastest-growing platform for product discovery
- 41% of Gen Zers switched from podcasts to TikTok; they started spending less time on podcasts after they discovered TikTok
- “Funny” content is what more than half of TikTok users are looking to find when entering the app
- 4.43 billion minutes is how much time US grownups spent on TikTok in 2023; compared to 2019, it’s five times more time
How to drive TikTok traffic to your website?
The main reason why we are covering this topic is to establish what are the things you can do to drive TikTok traffic to your website, and finally monetize it.
Here’s what we recommend:
#1 Linking, linking, linking
To lead, you must show which way. Link to your website is your main tool.
- Link in Bio
The absolute must is adding the link of your website or landing page to your account profile. This doesn’t have to be the link to your homepage. Be smart and send them to the page that will make the most conversions (the one containing SmartLink!)
Alert, alert!: There’s a catch, of course. To be able to add the link in bio, you need to have at least 1.000 subscribers, and to use a Business account (there’s an option allowing you to switch from personal to business account).
Also, while we are at the subject of your profile, use this space to present all the info relevant to your business. Don’t leave a blank space, but also don’t add irrelevant things here. It’s important for your users to get a clear picture of what your business is about.
And make sure to be consistent with profile names across all your social media accounts – this helps with brand recognition.
- Link in comment
Clearly, you can add a link in the comment section of your video so your viewers can see and click on it, without having to leave the video to access the website. But the reality is that your comment will go down, further away from the video with each new comment posted, so not that many users will actually be able to find the link easily.
There used to be an option to pin the comment (perfect for link placement), but TikTok abolished this feature.
- “Swipe Up”
Just like on Instagram, here too you have an option to add a link to an external website or landing page through the “swipe up” feature. But to be given this opportunity you must have at least 10.000 followers.
When and if you achieve this goal, you will be offered a “Swipe Up” option in the “Add to Your Video” section of the video editor.
#2 Content strategy is the key
Your content is what will attract and drive your audience towards your website. So, you need to develop a strategy:
- Step 1 – identify your targeted audience; do the research on what type of content your targeted users prefer
- Step 2 – set goals for your TikTok account, whether it is promoting specific products or services, increasing brand awareness, etc.)
- Step 3 – brainstorm and execute content ideas; combine different types of videos – try tutorials (TikTok audience adores this format), behind-the-scenes concept, create teasers for your website content…
The idea of promoting the website content through your TikTok videos is actually a quite good move. For instance, if you are about to release a free ebook on how to become a yogi master, create an engaging video around one chapter of the book (mindfulness, for instance), and ask viewers to visit your website and download the book to get to the next step – regular yoga practice.
And know this! With a TikTok audience, your content must check one of these two boxes – it must offer them some value or be amusing and based on humor.
If you manage to meet these criteria the chances are users will make an effort and check your website.
#3 Call to action
Just placing the link is not enough. It won’t get the job done. You need to focus on creating the right CTA (call-to-action) and think hard about where and how to incorporate it in the post.
Placing a link in the bio section won’t be very helpful if you don’t ask your visitors to click on it. A strong CTA can make all the difference in terms of your website traffic boost.
Suggestion: What’s a common strategy is including freebies in your post description. You can offer gifts to every user who follows the CTA in the form of website registration for instance, through the link in bio. This should motivate your audience to really click on the link.How to get more TikTok views?
In the closest correlation with how to drive TokTok traffic to your website is how to get more attention on this platform. We offer you a couple of tips:
- Partner with TikTok influencers – This is a strong yes if you want to increase your visibility within the platform. Just make sure your targeted audience is the one gathered around this specific influencer you are about to collaborate with. Think about paying for shoutouts or using a Duet feature:
@meghantrainor #duet with @brookieandjessie this was my 14th attempt. So tell me I nailed it.💖 #beenlikethis ♬ Been Like This – Meghan Trainor & T-Pain
- Use hashtags – We mean it, use them, always! They are triggering the TikTok algorithm to start sharing your content with users who were engaged with videos marked by the same hashtags. This is the tool to bring you a targeted audience.
- Pay attention to posting time – According to Hopper, the best time to post on TikTok is between 10 am and 11 am mid-week. Clearly, there are different theses (you should explore them all) but the fact is your audience is more open to engaging with new content at certain parts of the day and week.
- Make videos short and sweet – TikTok audience has a super short attention span, so your videos should be up to 30 seconds long. If you create longer content and viewers move along before the videos end, it will affect your completion rate which is one of the most important ranking factors.
- Stitch other people’s content – When you stitch, you incorporate someone else’s video into your own, but only 5 seconds of it. This is a great option for diversifying your audience and gaining more views.
Sort of a case study: Olya’s horror stories
We are now about to present a story of a TikTok creator who found a way to monetize her TikTok traffic, but hasn’t yet dived into it.
So it won’t be a classic case study, but it will show you how one can build up the TikTok audience in a creative and unique way, and we will suggest how to approach the monetization part afterward.
About the creator: Lessons she learned with her first TikTok experience
Olya M. started using TikTok just for fun. But after some time she understood there’s a huge potential within this platform, the one that could lead her to gaining some profits.
“What I love about TikTok is that it gives you an audience without any investment. So you can get quite a lot of traffic right away,” says Olya and furthermore explains:
“Its recommendation engine works really well. It finds people who will like your video, and it’s really smart. I think it’s much smarter than Instagram or YouTube. It can literally give you millions of impressions.”
She used to have an account where she posted memes and funny videos, pretty much usual TikTok content. But given there are plenty of people doing exactly the same, it was almost impossible for her to stand out.
The main problem was that the account didn’t have the exact topic. When you create different types of videos, there’s no consistency in your content and people don’t know why to subscribe, what they can expect from you.
“In my experience, people subscribe when they want to see something similar. If your videos are all different, there’s a higher chance they won’t do it. That’s probably why my first account had only around 100 subscribers.”
There are two things she learned from this failed attempt to gain a TikTok audience:
- You need to be unique – whether in terms of your appearance or the idea behind your TikTok account
- Your videos must be of high quality – even if you’re just filming yourself dancing or joking
“Filming yourself with the phone’s front camera simply won’t do the job anymore.”
New attempt: Creativity in place
Last year, Olya decided to start again, with a new account. She came up with the idea of creating short videos with horror stories. So she gave it a go.
In most cases, Olya was the one inventing the stories, from scratch. But some were inspired by films and stories she saw on the Internet.
This time around making videos was, in a way, more simple. She was not filming herself, and it was easier to create the footage.
“I would create pictures with AI, or I would film a dark corner that seems creepy, for instance. And that was the footage for the story. For some videos I created comics.”
But the most important part was the voiceover she did with the help of artificial intelligence. She made it so the voice sounded super scary. Some people said it was the most effective part.
Also, she added subtitles.
How Olya reached millions of views
She uploaded 2 or 3 videos and got around 500-600 views for each. Then, there was her 4th video – a real story about some artist who went mad, and this was the first video that gained around one million views. It went viral and brought her the first 10.000 subscribers.
“The power of TikTok is that you can get 10k subscribers from a single video.”
But also, this single video that went viral gave a boost to all the previous ones she uploaded. It’s because people started checking her account. So the others then gain millions of views as well.
She continued posting and now she has more than 70k followers, 1.4 million likes, and regarding the posts – the one with the biggest number is a video with 4 million views.
On average, Olay’s posts have between 200 and 500k views. However, all of them are followed by an impressive number of comments and shares. And every single video brought new subscribers.
Here are some stats that will give you an insight into her video performance:
Horror stories: Monetization strategy
“My idea was to create a Telegram channel, something related to this topic, and then to send the traffic there. And of course, to place Monetag’s SmartLink to monetize the traffic”.
SmartLink is an ideal solution for monetizing social traffic. Its clever algorithm picks the best out of thousands of offers for each user, so it comes with a high conversion rate. It’s super effective and reliable, since it makes sure users have a substantial ad experience based on their personal inclinations, GEO and device preference.
Now, the idea was good, excellent even, but there were two main issues that prevented Olya from moving on with these monetization plans:
- First, she did not post on TikTok on a regular basis and she started losing the audience.
TikTok wants you to post regularly. The platform won’t punish you for losing the step right away, but she had an omission a couple of times.
“Once, I hadn’t posted in a month, but TikTok forgave me and gave me views (in millions). The second time it was the same, not harmful. But then when I had a third long break, and when I posted again, my video got only 4.000 views (compared to 1 million I had before).”
- The second problem was her target audience – they were too young.
Olya’s TikTok stories were her hobby at the beginning. It was later on that she saw an opportunity to monetize this traffic.
“If I had the same thought right from the start, I would choose a different topic. It’s because my statistics show most of my audience is 18-25 which is not, in my opinion, the best age group to monetize.”
Her tip for people who want to run TikTok for the purpose of monetization is to consider a concept that will suit an older audience.
“If you have a super specific niche, like me in this case, you can get stuck.”
Olay’s additional insights and advice
#1 In my experience, not many people check the bio (to see the link). So, focus on adding a clear CTA.
#2 You can get information on when your audience is most active – it’s part of TikTok statistics. And this refers to your followers but also potential subscribers who have similar interests and patterns. But it seems to me the time when you add the videos is not of crucial importance. I uploaded them at different times and I didn’t notice any difference. If the content is engaging, it will find its way to your audience.
#3 Don’t rely on your own taste. The videos I liked had for instance 15k views, and the ones I didn’t fancy too much gained millions. Do think of your target audience always and adjust the content to meet their expectations.
#4 Zoomers (Generation Z) are very sensitive. Some of my viewers wrote to me to add disclaimers since they got really scared while watching the videos, even though it is super clear what my account is about. So, just keep that in mind.
#5 TikTok has great and responsive support. Some of my videos were blocked because people made complaints (due to scary content). But TikTok reconsiders these decisions very fast. In my case, the ban was removed after an hour or two.
Final Thoughts + Takeaways
According to TikTok, 90% of users say that this platform makes them happy and that it never gets boring.
There’s no secret formula to TikTok success, but you can try to support this concept – entertain your audience, bring in feel-good materials, and don’t be tedious. This, plus be unique, creative, and consistent with your posting. Simple as that.
As for what we wanted to highlight in this article, here are some main points on how to monetize TikTok audience:
- Place link to your website anywhere you can (bio, comments, “swipe up”)
- Use call-to-action and ask users to click on the link to your website
- Rely on Monetag’s SmartLink to profit from your audience engagement
- Invest in your content – you need strategy, diversity, website content promotion, and all that wrapped in high-quality videos
- Make sure to post new videos on a regular basis – this is what TikTok appreciates and rewards with larger audiences
Go on, dive into TikTok, cumulate the audiences, and take them to your website. We will be waiting on the other side, ready to jump in and help you monetize your efforts.
