If you have been on TikTok over the last week, you might have noticed the current trend of “using TikTok to pay your debts”. While this sounds like a good idea in theory, it isn’t going to happen for most people and I have the reasons why.
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What is the trend?
In a nutshell, once you hit 10k followers and 100k views within the last 30 days, you get put on the TikTok creator fund. Anyone who is in the fund has the ability to earn money. So, people are doing to math to work out how many followers and views they need to enter the fund, and how many views they need to get the money they want to clear their debts. Some people are asking for millions of views to help save their homes and get a fresh start. The beauty of this is that it doesn’t cost anyone money, TikTok is paying them. So, you, the viewer, don’t need to put your hands into your wallet to help someone out. Your money stays in your bank account. And if you want to join in, you can, you just need to be entered into the creator fund to make money from people viewing your videos.
Nobody is going to follow everyone
At the start, I went on a massive follow binge, trying to follow as many people as I can under 10k followers. It went well for a day. Then I got tired and nearly put in TikTok jail for mass following. I even done my own video, not asking for followers or views, but to head here instead because I want to beat Goop and their 2 million views a month. However, I noticed a lot of bigger accounts, people who have several thousand followers (we are talking 250k+ here), were taking part in this trend, asking people to view their videos so many million times, but weren’t following anyone back to help boost them. And because I wasn’t fast enough with the following people back who found me, they unfollowed me within a few hours of following me. That’s just rude.
Creepy dudes
Let me make this very clear for those of you who are new, I’m married. Happily married. We are coming up to our 9 year anniversary this year (and yes, this blog is older than my marriage). I have no desire to have dudes in my inbox telling me I’m beautiful. My husband tells me several times a day. He texts me everyday when he is at work to tell me how beautiful I am. I, and I cannot stress this enough, do not need or want some random man telling me I’m beautiful. If that was my kink, I would start an Only Fans or get into FinDom. In trying to get more people to my site and help out others, I ended up with a bunch of dudes telling me stuff that is only reserved for my husband. Plus, I’m older than the average social media girl, I’m nearly 40. My ego does not need this. Please, remove yourself from my DM’s because I will not entertain this bullshit. I’m not the only one, I’ve noticed over the last 24 hours, a lot of women are asking for more female and women followers because creepy men are messaging them. It won’t be long before everyone gets fed up with it and sets their profiles back to private, undoing all of the work they have done to get into the creator fund.
It’s boring
The reason we all go on TikTok is to escape our reality for a while. I am a big fan of the ASMR and CleanTok videos. Why? Well, the ASMR videos as quiet and I have a loud house with four kids, two cats, and a husband who doesn’t believe in subtitles when he is watching Netflix. It’s quiet. As for CleanTok, well, four kids and two cats, need I say more? There is something so yummy about watching someone in the world clear their kitchen when yours is still a mess after having the dishwasher on twice in the day. These are my videos of choice. Being a part of the pay of debt thing was good for a day or two, but after a while, it got really boring. It was the same thing over and over and over again. There is only so many of those videos that I could watch or play in the background. If people want to make money on there, they will have to create some original content that makes people want to watch.
The creator fund is not stable
I’ve been on the internet for a while and I’ve seen some stuff. One of the things that you have to understand is that making money with social media is not stable. None of the platforms are stable. This is why I blog. I have complete creative control over what goes on here and I don’t have to worry about things getting reported and taken down for no reason. A few years ago, when Instagram was having a clear out, a lot of people lost their accounts and their form of income. These people had no back-up. They lost everything. Putting your eggs into this basket might just ruin you, especially if you start to rely on it to pay your bills every month. I cannot stress this enough, if you are hoping to use TikTok to fund your lifestyle, make sure that you have a backup or are using it to promote an existing business. Because if they delete you, you will be left at the bottom with nothing to show for it.
People lack follow through
This point is on the back of a couple of the other points I have made; people lack follow through. When I made my video, I didn’t ask for follows or likes, I just wanted people to head over here and have a look around. If they didn’t like, grand, they could click out of the site and never think of it again. If they did like it, great, they can keep coming back and sign up to my email list that I rarely use. Despite getting over 1k views on my video and engaging with a lot of other accounts telling them what I wanted, my traffic barely moved. I even stated that I make money with ads on this site and it would be better (and more stable) way for me to make money. The link for my site is in my bio. But hardly anyone clicked through because my traffic remained at the same level. People might have good intentions with this trend but to follow through and do what is asked of them, even through it’s only a click and costs them nothing, nah. they can’t be annoyed.
There you have it folks, TikTok isn’t going to be clearing peoples debts unless they start pumping out some fun and original content, or have a back-up plan in the form of a business. It just wasn’t meant to be.