TikTok is now a normal and convenient way for content creators to make money online.
Some TikTok stars like Azziad Nasenya and Dennis Ombachi have been alleged to make anywhere from Kshs. 50,000 all the way to Kshs. 1,200,000 per month on the app.
This is of course counting influencing deals from local and international brands.
Others like Njoki Murira, Kapinto, Teresia Waithera, Morin Actress, Boina, etc. are also doing well.
Murira for example built a house for her parents recently from her TikTok income. Kapinto and Boina got full-time jobs with NRG radio all from their TikTok content.
So, you might also be spending hours on TikTok or maybe you’re just entrepreneurial and wondering how to take advantage of the platform like they have.
In this article, I will attempt to give you income options on TikTok and how much you can earn.
First things first, TikTok does not pay its creators the same everywhere (in every location or country).
TikTok pays in Kenya but not through its creator fund. You can earn by other means like donations, growing and selling accounts, managing brand accounts, running ad campaigns, selling products, and brand sponsorships.
In Kenya, my case study of 5 influencers over 3 months showed that they earned an average of Kshs. 67,543, Kshs. 97,500, Kshs. 33,600, Kshs 206,000, and Kshs. 301,000 each month respectively through brand sponsorships.
To find out how your follower count can affect how much you make as an influencer, read this article I wrote on “How Much Social Media Influencers Charge Per Post in Kenya.“
You can also check my detailed explanation on TikTok Niches which will earn you consistently.
It is important to know that in the span of the study, the influencers engaged brands in different things like selling hair and makeup products, electronics (mobile phones), women’s clothing, and promoting Telcom brands.
How Do you Get Paid on TikTok in Kenya?
Let us look at each of the ways TikTok Pays you in more detail.
Note that this article is focused more on content creators in Kenya. So, it cannot be used as a general guideline for other countries.
1. TikTok Donations and Virtual Gifts in Kenya
One way of getting donations on TikTok is going Live and collecting donations from viewers. The trick here is to have a large audience watching the Live sessions so that the chances of getting more donations can be higher.
Remember you can only go live if you have over 1,000 followers. You must also be above 16 years old or TikTok will remove the LIVE button from your account.
That said, donations are actually a very genius way for TikTok to monetize the platform for creators.
This is how the donations part works:
Any TikTok user (fan) is allowed to purchase Coins from their profile page.
The coins are bought with cash and for 100 coins you need to have at least Kshs 229 ($1.39) (but this varies depending on the Kshs versus US dollar exchange rate).
When the user has the coins in their profile, they can then donate them to creators whenever they want.
The coins are given by users to content creators as a way of thanking them for all the hard work of entertaining them or keeping them informed on certain topics.
On the side of the content creator, once they get the coins, they turn them into Diamonds. The diamonds can be converted into cash via PayPal.
If you are in Kenya, you need to connect your PayPal account to your M-Pesa account for you to withdraw the cash.
The good thing with the Coins and Diamonds is that any TikTok users anywhere in the world can share their coins and creators can receive them from anywhere too!
Hopefully, in the future, TikTok will allow creators in Kenya to sell items directly via their live streams. That feature is already available in China’s version of TikTok and it lets content creators easily track what they have sold for a brand.
2. Does TikTok Pay Via Creator Fund in Kenya?
A lot of content creators in Kenya wonder if they are eligible for a creator fund.
First, understand that the TikTok Creator Fund is money that TikTok has set aside from its profits to distribute to all the creators on its platform that are performing well.
TikTok does not have a creator fund in Kenya yet. The reason they give is that the users of TikTok in Kenya are not that many yet. The fewer the users in a country or location the less the revenue the company generates in that country and so the lower the Creator Fund.
You cannot earn from the creator fund that is not in your country. So, unless TikTok sets up a fund for Africa or Kenya, this is not a possible way to earn. TikTok creators in a few countries, the US, France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom are the only ones who enjoy the funds for now.
In order to be accepted to a creator fund in your country, you need to have at least 10,000 followers (from your region) and get at least 100,000 views on your videos within a month (30 days). Also, there are other obvious qualifications such as being above 18 years old and regularly posting content.
An important factor to know is that even where Creator Funds exist, it is very unclear how much money can be made. The TikTok website says that the money is awarded based on things like the number of views, the period of engagement, obeying the terms of service, respecting the community guidelines, etc.
If the content creators in markets like the US are complaining that the fund is too small, then I doubt it would be enough for Kenyan creators.
3. TikTok brand sponsorships in Kenya
One of the major ways to earn a decent living via TikTok is through partnering with brands.
Let’s say your TikTok posts cover a specific subject, such as rearing chicken. There are definitely chicken feed brands and manufacturers that would want to take advantage of your chicken-loving audience. These brands may ask for your help.
A common way to collaborate with brands is that they will send you a product for free (like a bag of chicken feed) and ask you to talk about in it one or many of your videos. They can also add a payment on top for you to specifically ask the audience to buy from the brand.
More advanced contracts will ask you to mention the product in a specific number of posts for a certain amount of money. Our survey in Kenya showed creators ask for as little as Kshs 4,000 per post to as much as Kshs. 300,000 a post. This amount varies according to their following, popularity, and engagement.
It is surprising that even with around 5,000 followers there are brands that will want to work with you.
The key factor they look at is the specific nature of your audience.
An account with 5,000 followers interested in lipstick is likely to be picked over an account with 20,000 followers interested in general beauty products.
While posting about branded content, you should follow the good habit of using #ad #sponsored so that your audience does not feel lied to about which posts are paid for by brands. In some countries, like the US, doing this is a legal requirement.
4. Growing and selling TikTok accounts
A very consistent way that some people make money on social media, in general, is by building an audience for a new account and then selling it.
This has been a proven way to earn and it is not unique to TikTok. It happens on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and even YouTube.
This hustle is common in Kenya with corporates dealing with e-commerce products.
The first thing to do if you are looking to make money is to find a Niche. A niche makes sure you are targeting people with the same interests. This way, when selling the account, you can identify a buyer who can benefit from the audience that you have.
For example, you can create entertaining content on hair. Videos on hairstyles, hair conditioning, hair drying, etc. (Do not review products or showcase specific products. Just keep it general). You will get followers who are interested in the topic of hair.
Once the account grows to around 5,000 followers, you can sell it for anywhere between Kshs 10,000 and Kshs, 150,000 depending on the niche you chose.
Once the buyer (a brand) gets the account, it is very easy for them to sell products. Therefore, this is a very legitimate way you can use to make money from TikTok in Kenya because all parties benefit.
If you are really good at creating an audience, you can enlist your services via Fiverr or Upwork so that more people can find you.
You can also advertise your services on other social media platforms.
5. Managing TikTok accounts for brands and celebrities
You can also make money on TikTok by managing accounts for individuals and brands.
In Kenya, celebrities and small businesses are the common types of clients that will let you manage an account for them.
Sometimes you will find small brands that need someone to grow their audience (number of followers) while still managing the account.
The common activities you will do while managing an account will include answering private messages, removing comments, answering questions in the comment section, sending links to products and services, posting content, and giving reports.
While it seems easy, managing social media accounts – especially TikTok for small brands in Kenya – can be challenging because you need to be really creative and have good production and organization skills.
The income for social media account managers in Kenya (using data from Twitter) ranges from Kshs. 5,000 to Kshs. 60,000 per month for freelancers. In-house employees doing such work are paid differently. Also, the amount of work involved determines the pay. Some companies pay more but require a full-time commitment.
6. Consulting and expert advice on TikTok growth
Besides being an account manager, a very similar way of making money on TikTok in Kenya is through offering expert advice as a professional.
The assumption here is that as a consultant you probably know the Kenyan audience really well and can advise someone for example on how they can make a video that can get 50,000 views in a few days!
As a pro, you will need to showcase your own work. You cannot promise 100,000 views for example while your own account has never gotten to 10,000 views.
Consultants are hired for their expertise and so, TikTok will not be any different.
The fun part is that you can help people become famous, become creators, and boost their impact on thousands of followers.
If you are successful as a consultant, brands can easily retain you as a full-time account manager. And in special cases, they can agree to give you a percentage of any deal that you broker from the account.
To test the price ranges for consulting, I sent several creators a message asking how much they would charge for advice or growth templates. The least quote I got was Kshs. 10,000 for one meeting and the highest was Kshs 295,000 for taking an account from 0 – 100,000 followers.
Social media consulting is just one among many other ways young people are making money in Kenya. If you want to find out similar things to do to earn, you can read this article that I wrote on “Ways to Make Money Online in Kenya.“
7. TikTok Advertising – the ads platform
This is a simple way to make money if you are just on TikTok to sell products.
TikTok, like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, has a platform that you can use to create and manage adverts for your business.
The simplicity is because you just need to invest money upfront to generate traffic to whatever product you are selling. You can create links to a website or any other digital location where your products are located.
You have to be cautious however and make sure your target market is on TikTok. In Kenya and globally in general, TikTok has a lot of younger audiences.
You can therefore make a lot of money selling products that are popular with teenagers and young adults.
It is also worth knowing that TikTok adverts work well with relatively big budgets. You can commit Kshs. 3,000 and above per day for effective results.
While researching TikTok accounts, I found a case where a brand used Kshs 1,489,100 to advertise and generated revenues above Kshs 11,000,000.
How Much Does TikTok Pay Per 1,000 views or 1 million views in Kenya?
While the creator fund is not yet functional for the Kenyan market, there is a chance that it will be available soon.
Once you can get paid via the TikTok fund in Kenya, your earnings per 1,000 views or 1 million views could be similar to what creators in other markets in the world get paid.
According to a survey of TikTok influencers in the US, the TikTok Creator Fund typically pays out around $20 to $40 for every one million views. However, this is only an estimate based on the data collected, which indicates that TikTok pays between $0.02 and $0.04 per 1,000 views. In Kenya, this could mean you will earn between Kshs. 2,000 and Kshs. 5,000 for 1 million views and about Kshs. 20 to Kshs, 40 per 1,000 views.
These earnings are good but they are below what YouTubers in Kenya earn. You can find out how popular YouTube channels earn in Kenya in this article that I wrote “How Much You Will Earn From YouTube as Vlogger in Kenya”.
A Summary of How You Get Paid on TikTok in Kenya
Let’s summarize ways to earn on TikTok in Kenya in a table.
(Earning difficulty levels include Very easy, Easy, Average, Hard, Very Hard).
Disclaimer – the earning range is based on our survey of actual brands and accounts.
The figures could vary for other users’ cases.
Now that you have made money on TikTok, the next question is how do you withdraw it?
We look at this in the next section
Withdrawing Money from TikTok in Kenya After Getting Paid
First, before considering a withdrawal, you should know that TikTok needs you to have a minimum of 10,000 coins which is about 100 dollars (around Kshs. 15,900 using current dollar exchange rates).
The standard practice is converting the coins into diamonds and then into cash when withdrawing.
The maximum amount you can withdraw from TikTok to PayPal is 1,000 dollars a day (about Kshs. 130,500).
So if you have a balance of $3,600 in your TikTok account, you would need to withdraw it in 4 days. (transacting $1,000 on each of the first three days and then $600 on the fourth day).
To withdraw money, go to your TikTok ‘Profile’, click on ‘Settings and Privacy’, select ‘Balance’, then go to ‘Live Gifts’ and press ‘Withdraw’. You will then be prompted to log into your PayPal account.
Withdrawing money from TikTok in Kenya requires you to have a PayPal account that is linked to an Mpesa account or bank account. TikTok can only disburse funds via PayPal accounts and not directly to banks or other money transfer services.
So, the first step is to open a PayPal account and make sure you give the actual and correct details. This is because PayPal is very strict on Africans due to recent cases of financial fraud and so they will randomly ask for proof of details.
For example, they might ask for your bank statement to verify your name and address. If you had created an account with the wrong address then the worst case is that they’ll close your account or create a limitation on it and that means you will not access your money.
They usually hold money in a suspicious account for as long as 180 days.
The second step is to link your PayPal account with Mpesa via the https://www.paypal-mobilemoney.com/m-pesa platform. This will allow you to transfer money from PayPal to your Mpesa in a few minutes.
The emphasis here is that you make sure your PayPal account has the right information. At some point, you will have to verify it with the PayPal Support Team by offering additional details from your bank.
Verification allows you to raise the limits of the amount you can transact.
If you do not want to use Mpesa to withdraw, you could also use Equity Bank. They are the only bank that is flawless with PayPal withdrawals and they recently started doing instant transfers just like Safaricom’s Thunes.
They however work really well with bulk transfers. Although nowadays Mpesa also allows up to Kshs. 150,000 per transaction.
Lastly, in case PayPal withholds your money the first time you transact with them, just give it time because they often hold money being sent to new accounts for about 24 hours before they make it available to withdraw.
If they raise a concern and limit your account, the best action is to call their support center and talk to a human agent. Explain yourself and make sure they sort you before they drop the call.
I have written a detailed article about making PayPal withdrawals while in Kenya.
Looking for other ways to make a consistent income in Kenya even without lots of capital?
- Doing Remote Work for Global Companies While in Kenya
- Freelancing via Fiverr as a Beginner
- Writing Articles for Direct Clients
- Unique Ways to Make an Income Online
- Small but Very Profitable Businesses in Kenya.
And, many more! Feel free to explore!
