TikTok pulled in around $23 billion in 2024 and reached an estimated $28.6B–$33.1B in 2025 (depending on total revenue vs. ad revenue estimates).
But most founders assume that revenue comes from ads.
Yes, ads ARE the biggest piece (about 77%) but the rest is virtual gifts, subscriptions, brand-creator deals, and a shop business that grew from $11B GMV in 2023 to a whopping $64.3B in 2025.
And the seven streams mentioned below are the ones every well-monetized TikTok-style app uses.
As we continue, we’ll cover what each monetization model pays, who it works for, when to use it, and where founders most often get it wrong.
1. Virtual gifts and coins
Virtual gifts are the highest-frequency stream on every high-rated TikTok-style app.
Viewers buy in-app currency (called coins) and send animated gifts during live streams with creators cashing out a share.
This is where the platform makes the most money per active user, and it’s the easiest stream to launch.
The numbers:
On paper, TikTok splits gift revenue 50/50 with creators.
In reality, that 50/50 number is the share after Apple or Google have already taken their 30% cut at the app store.
So when a viewer spends $1 on coins inside the app, Apple takes about 30 cents, TikTok takes another 35 cents or so, and the creator ends up with roughly 23 cents.
An October 2024 analysis by FXC Intelligence pegged TikTok’s effective take at 77% of every dollar viewers spend on gifts. The data is real: TikTok crossed $6 billion in app-store revenue in 2024, the first app ever to do so, and most of that is gifts.
This means that: The split you pick on day one is the most important business decision you’ll make on this stream, because once your top creators start earning, you can almost never lower it.
Best fit for this model:
Music, dance, and live performance verticals. The emotional, in-the-moment nature of gifting fits performance content far better than educational content.
When to turn to this model:
Day one. There’s no minimum audience required
Common pitfall:
Setting your creator split too low because TikTok does. TikTok can take 77% because creators have nowhere better to go. You’re a new app, and since have no leverage. Generosity on day one is your single best recruitment tool.
2. Creator subscriptions
Subscriptions are the most predictable revenue line on this list.
A fan pays a creator a fixed monthly fee for exclusive content, badges, and direct access. It compounds month over month instead of resetting.
Let’s talk numbers:
TikTok lets creators charge between $2.99 and $99.99 per month, with most defaulting to around $5.99.
Outside the US, TikTok takes 50% of subscription revenue and offers a 20% bonus for hitting growth targets, pushing the creator share to 70% at best.
For US and Canadian creators, TikTok raised the base creator share to 70% starting October 2025, with the same 20% bonus available, meaning eligible US creators keep up to 90%.
Best fit for this model:
Faith, education, fitness, and niche hobbies. These audiences are loyal, recur naturally, and pay for ongoing access to people they trust. Entertainment audiences subscribe at much lower rates.
When to turn to this model:
When you have around 10,000 monthly active users and at least a few dozen creators with built audiences.
Common pitfall:
Launching subs with no exclusive content. Subscribers need a clear answer to “what do I get for $5.99?”. Is it exclusive videos, subscriber-only chat, badges, no ads, what?
Pick at least two before you try your hand at this model.
3. In-feed video ads
This is TikTok’s largest single revenue line by a long way.
Brands pay to insert short video ads between the organic posts in the feed.
The platform keeps most of the money, with some flowing to creators through a separate rewards program.
The numbers:
A short-video ad on TikTok costs advertisers around $4.80 to $9.16 per 1,000 views (CPM) globally, with US CPMs in competitive categories running $10-$20 and emerging markets like India at $2.50 to $6.
The average click-through rate is 0.84%, and the average conversion rate is 0.46%.
On the creator side, TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program pays $0.40 to $1.00 per 1,000 qualified views, so a video with a million views earns roughly $400 to $1,000.
Best fit for this model:
General entertainment, lifestyle, and fashion verticals. Mass-appeal content gets the highest ad rates because more brand categories want to advertise on it.
When to turn it on:
When you cross around 100,000 monthly active users. Below that, ad fill rates collapse and the ads you do show look unsold.
Common pitfall:
Enabling ads before you’ve solved the brand-supply side.
For instance, if inventory exists, but if no advertisers are buying, fill rates stay under 10%.
So, either partner with a programmatic network like Google AdMob, Meta Audience Network, or build a direct-sales team.
4. Brand-creator marketplace
This model is where brands and creators connect for paid partnerships, and the platform takes a cut of every deal. TikTok runs this as the Creator Marketplace.
The global influencer marketing industry was worth around $32.5 billion in 2025, and a healthy chunk flows through these in-platform marketplaces.
The numbers:
This is what brands pay creators on TikTok (based on audience size): nano-influencers (1K-10K followers) earn $5-$25 per post, micro (10K-50K) earn $25-$125, mid-tier (50K-500K) earn $125-$1,000, macro (500K-1M) earn $1,000-$2,000, and mega-influencers (1M+) earn $2,000 and up (sometimes more).
Brand-side data from InfluenceFlow puts these higher: a 100K-follower creator commonly charges $1,500-$5,000 per branded video, and 1M+ creators charge $5,000-$25,000+.
To get into TikTok’s marketplace, creators need at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the last 30 days.
US TikTok creators collectively earned over $5.5 billion from brand deals in 2025.
And the platform’s cut on these deals usually runs 10-20% of the deal value.
Best fit for this model:
Beauty, fashion, food, fitness, and gaming as these categories dominate the brand spend because products fit cleanly into short-video content.
When to turn it on:
When you have 100,000+ MAU and a creator tier above 10K mark. Brands won’t show up to a marketplace that’s missing supply.
Common pitfall:
Building a marketplace before either side has significant no. of creators or viewers. A creator-discovery tool with no buyers equals zero.
5. Live streaming tips
Live tips overlap with virtual gifts (both flow through the same coin system on TikTok), but the use case is different enough to treat separately.
Gifts and tips during live streams power live shopping, music performances, gaming sessions, and dance shows.
Let’s see numbers:
Live shopping on TikTok converts viewers to buyers at 3-8%, compared to 2-3% for traditional e-commerce.
Top TikTok live creators report earning $200-$2,000 per stream from combined gifts and tips.
According to a December 2025 Ipsos study commissioned by TikTok, more than 60,000 US TikTok LIVE creators now earn at least median part-time income from gifts alone, and 1 in 5 receive a gift on their very first stream.
Best fit for this model:
Music, dance, live commerce, faith, and gaming. Anything where live, real-time engagement is the reason people show up.
When to use this model:
Day one, alongside virtual gifts.
Common pitfall:
Not optimizing creator UI for what actually drives tips. hort streams, off-peak hours, and creators who don’t acknowledge tippers in real time kill the economics.
6. Premium memberships
Premium is the platform-level subscription tier, and it works like this:
Users pay you (not a creator) for ad-free access, extra storage, exclusive features, or AR tools.
Snapchat+ is the clearest case study because Snap publishes the numbers in SEC filings.
The numbers talk:
Snapchat+ hit 25 million paying subscribers and a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate by February 2026, up from 14 million at the end of 2024.
Pricing tiers look like this: Snapchat+ at $3.99/month, Lens+ at $8.99, Snapchat Platinum (ad-free) at $15.99.
25 million paying subs out of 453 million daily active users is a 5.5% conversion rate, which is above the industry rule of thumb of 2-5% for premium tiers.
Now, this means that premium only works if there’s a clear reason to pay. “The same app but no ads” gets you under 1% conversion. Snapchat+ succeeded by bundling storage, exclusive AR lenses, and early-feature access.
Decide what your premium tier actually does before you launch it; three or four tangible perks that the free tier doesn’t have.
If you can’t list them in a sentence, your conversion will be terrible
Best fit for this model:
Apps with a clear utility or feature differentiator like extra storage, exclusive AR tools, ad-free experience
When to turn it on:
When you have around 10K MAU with a feature stack that genuinely justifies $3.99–$9.99/month.
Common pitfall:
Launching premium with nothing beyond removing ads.
7. E-commerce and Shop
E-commerce is the fastest-growing revenue stream on TikTok and the one with the biggest margins because physical goods don’t trigger Apple or Google’s 30% in-app purchase fee.
Creators tag products in videos or live streams, viewers buy without leaving the app, and the platform takes a commission.
What do the numbers say:
E-commerce has the best margins of any stream on this list because it skips the Apple/Google tax but it’s also operationally the most complex.
The “buy now” button is the easy 10% of building this stream; the 90% is fulfillment, returns, customer service, fraud, and chargebacks.
Don’t tag a single product until you have a logistics partner committed.
Take rates between 5-15% are normal; charging more chases sellers to other platforms.
Best fit for this model:
Beauty, fashion, wellness, home decor, and electronics. Beauty alone is around 22% of TikTok Shop GMV.
When to use this model:
When your audience has clear purchase intent. Beauty and fashion apps can launch commerce early because the buying behavior is built in.
Common pitfall:
Letting creators tag products before you’ve solved logistics. Cart abandonment above 70% is normal when shipping is slow or returns are painful. Get a logistics partner in place first, then begin operations.
Which revenue stream should you turn to first? A four-phase playbook
Most TikTok-style apps fail at monetization because they enable everything too early.
Ads kill watch-time when fill rates are low, subscriptions go steep without an audience willing to pay, and marketplaces ghost if either side is missing. Order matters as much as choice.
Here’s a phasing that’s worked across the deployed short-video apps we’ve looked at:
Phase 1 (Day 1): Virtual gifts + Live tips
Both are creator-driven, work without scale, and don’t require third-party supply (no advertisers or buyers).
Even a 1,000-DAU app can show a working gifting economy. Start here.
Phase 2 (~10K MAU + active creator base): Creator subscriptions + Premium memberships
Both need enough audience trust that paying makes sense.
Premium requires a real feature stack. Don’t launch a premium tier just to remove ads. And subscriptions require creators with audiences willing to pay them monthly.
Phase 3 (~100K MAU): In-feed ads + Brand-creator marketplace
Both are two-sided markets that need scale on both sides. Below 100K MAU, CPMs collapse and brands won’t show up.
Above it, programmatic and direct ad sales become viable, and creators above 10K followers attract brand spend.
Phase 4 (Vertical-fit specific): E-commerce and Shop
Beauty, fashion, and wellness apps can run commerce earlier (sometimes alongside Phase 2) because purchase intent is built into the audience.
Keep in mind: These phases aren’t set in stone. A faith-vertical app with 5K DAU but 80% creator overlap can run subscriptions at scale much earlier.
A general-entertainment app with 1 million MAU might still struggle to make commerce work because purchase intent isn’t there.
So use this playbook as a default, not a rule.
What’s next?
Most of the founders we talk to underestimate two things: how much of the gross revenue actually disappears before it reaches a creator (Apple, Google, platform cut, payment processing), and how long it takes for ad revenue to become viable.
Pick the two revenue models that fit your vertical and audience size today.
Build for the rest as the audience grows. Plan creator economics backwards from the net payout, not forwards from the price tag.
That’s the single biggest difference between TikTok-style apps that survive past year one and the ones that don’t.