What’s Wrong With Creator Funds and How to Monetize Short Video Content Without Them

Creator Funds no longer pay as they did. Be it TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or Reels – you don’t earn as much as you thought you would when you just enrolled.

Agree with that? Here’s the next take for you then: you don’t need to squeeze the most out of the platform’s built-in monetization programs. 

There are alternative options on how to monetize your social media traffic – and that’s exactly what we are going to share with you in this post.

So if you’re about to give it all up and go back to the factory floor, read this first.

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What are Creator Funds?

Just to make sure we’re on the same page: Creator Funds, or Creator Rewards Programs, are built-in monetization programs offered by social platforms. Basically, it’s when TikTok, YouTube, or others pay you directly for your video views. 

And this seemed pretty generous! For example, some publishers could boast $8,000–$12,000 monthly earnings from TikTok videos – yes, made exclusively through Creative Funds, without any extra monetization efforts. 

So what happened?

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What Happened To Creator Funds: Publishers’ Problems

Sad statistics: more than two-thirds of publishers earned much less than they expected. Some might suggest it was a trap: attract tons of publishers and then drastically cut their CPMs. However, it seems lower CPMs – or, to be more precise, RPMs, which reflect how much creators actually earn per 1,000 views –  are not the only issue.

We collected the most popular complaints from Reddit & BlackHatWorld.

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Platforms are changing the rules

In 2026, TikTok significantly shifted its monetization model. Its top priority became TikTok Shop: the built-in e-commerce feature that promotes shoppable content and monetizes creators through sales rather than views. As a result, publishers can no longer rely on views alone, and earnings from traditional content have declined.

Here’s one real story:

YouTube Shorts has also changed how creators get paid. Earlier, payouts came from a dedicated Creator Fund with fixed bonuses. Now, creators earn a share of ad revenue: the income depends on how much advertising revenue the videos generate. It makes earnings from views less predictable and often lower.

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Reaching recommendations is tricky

All the short videos become visible thanks to an algorithm that decides to whom and when to show your video. And this algorithm is updated from time to time. Almost every next update comes along with the same pattern: publishers note that the number of impressions drops 5-10 times.

Here are some complaints from creators:

• I don’t understand why YouTube does this. The same Shorts perform well on other platforms, but on YouTube, they barely appear in the Shorts feed. It feels like the algorithm simply doesn’t give new videos a chance, regardless of quality.

• My previous Shorts were getting hundreds or thousands of views, but my latest video was shown to only 24 people. According to YouTube, that’s all the impressions it deserved.

• Even when my videos show decent average watch time, they often don’t get many views. It seems like, unless retention is extremely high from the start, TikTok quickly stops showing the video to new audiences.

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Platforms stop monetizing certain content

You invest time and effort into creating engaging content: edit videos, add creative elements, and build an audience that seems to enjoy the format. However, once you try to enable monetization, TikTok or YouTube Shorts suddenly label your content as non-original. And, obviously, deny you access to Creator Rewards programs.

Here is what one creator shared about his experience with TikTok:

As a result, he lost 9 months of work, 300K subscribers, 25M views, and the opportunity to earn. Editing other people’s videos is a rather popular format; millions are doing this. But that’s a red flag for Creator Funds… and a pretty solid volume of traffic goes to waste.

Another story with no happy ending so far is like this:

Quick note: There are also GEO-limits, and they are pretty harsh. TikTok’s Creator Rewards are only available in select countries like the US and Europe, YouTube Shorts monetization depends on being in a region where the YouTube Partner Program runs, and Instagram Reels payouts are overall restricted: in most cases, they are available upon special requests.

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How to Monetize Short-Form Video Content Outside Creator Funds?

We have a short and very precise answer: Monetag SmartLink. Well, at least it’s one of the most reliable and proven ways we know.

How does it work? Instead of relying on what the platform promises, you create your own funnel:

Funnels can vary. For example, many publishers prefer redirecting viewers to a website or a Telegram channel, and place SmartLinks inside the content there. 

Anyway, it’s easier to show how it works, so here are a couple of real examples:

• $10K from Instagram Reels in nearly a year. The engineering student made up to $10 000, by launching Instagram Reels and automating DMs using SmartLink. In exactly 8 months, his income was $10 000. No complex funnels, but it works.

• $4000+/month with TikTok and Smartlinks. Once an ordinary guy from the Philippines registered on TikTok, and collected hundreds of thousands of views for his videos. He added Smartlink to Monetag SmartLink is added to all of its projects in the video description or commentary. The system then automatically showed relevant ads to each user. The result was great: a steady $3000-4000/month with total earnings of about $70 000.

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What’s Next?

We hope this helped prevent at least one creator from giving up on their content. If this creator is you, welcome to Monetag. We’re here when you’re ready.